The Poor Farm: Public Assistance in Crawford County, Indiana in the late 19th and early 20th century

Abstract

Government-funded public assistance, or welfare as it is commonly referred to, is often regarded as a modern solution to the social and economic needs of a country’s citizens. Many Americans, I included, were taught early on in our general education that the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt, with his revolutionary plan known as the New Deal, instituted the concept of the modern welfare system in the United States. The New Deal, however, was far from the first time that the government had taken an interest in aiding citizens who were in need. Many forms of public assistance date back hundreds of years. The state of Indiana, for instance, provided a form of public assistance from its founding through a system of mandated poor farms in each county throughout the state. Managed at the county level, these poor farms aided a variety of citizens in need from the mid-1800s to just after the end of the second world war. These poor farms operated on many modern principles and practices and in many cases arguably more efficient and equitable than many of the practices that are instituted in the United States today. These principles and the practices in our past can not only offer us insight into the history of government-funded public assistance in Indiana but also can contribute to the efforts to reform our current ineffective and non-sustainable welfare system.