Was social work always committed to social justice?

Developing Social Justice
Was social work always
committed to social justice?
Malcolm Payne
Emeritus Professor, Manchester Metropolitan University
Honorary Professor, Kingston University/St George’s University of London

The global definition of social work

Method -1: When is ‘early’ social work?
 Historical controversy
• Social help in society, or
• The current iteration ‘social work’
 When does the term ‘social work’ or ‘social
worker’ emerge?
• First usage: 1890
• Early usage: UK 1912
• Competing alternatives
• 1928 International social work days

Oxford English Dictionary definition

Tufts, J. H. (1923) Education and Training for Social Work. New
York: Russell Sage Foundation:
Devine, E. T. and Brandt, L. (1921) American
Social Work in the Twentieth Century. New
York: Frontier Press: 2.

Public vs ‘private’
Charity
Philanthropy
Giving
Social work
Relief Public welfare
USA & UK
Guilds of help
Poor Law
Welfare services
UK
Breckinridge, S. P. (1927)
Public Welfare
Administration in the United
States. Chicago: Chicago UP.
USA

Selected citations:
“social work”
books
1890-1935
Method -2: text selection
Known literature
Books
British Library catalogue
search:
- “social work”
- Books & monographs
- oldest first
- first hundred
- to 1935
Selected literature, 1890-1935, preference to 1928, general materials on ‘social work’
27 books
3 papers
11 books
Known literature
Lowry – paper
compilation to 1938
8 papers
6 books
Exclusions (BL search): Salvation Army, other religions, foreign language
Selection criteria (Lowry): ‘General concepts’, Marcus (casework), Reynolds, Lurie (socialists)

Examples of texts and authors: 1
 To illustrate the nature of the texts
 To illustrate the role and importance of some
of the authors

Papers: selection
 Lowry, F. (1939) Readings in Social Casework 1920-1938:
Selected Reprints for the Case Work Practitioner. New
York: Columbia University Press (for the New York
School of Social Work).
• ‘General concepts underlying social work practice’
 Cannon, M. A. (1928) Underlying principles and common
practices in social work. In Lowry, 14-21.
 Kelso, R. W. (1922) Changing fundamentals of social work. In
Lowry, 3-13
 Lee, P. R. (1929) Social work: cause and function. In Lowry, 22-
37.
 Lenroot, K. F. (1935) Social work and the social order. In Lowry,
54-66.
 van Waters, M. (1930) Philosophical trends in modern social
work. In Lowry, 38-53.
• Well-known account of the psychodynamic casework
 Marcus, G F. (1935) The status of social case work today. In
Lowry, 122-35.
• Well-known socialists
 Lurie, H. L. (1933) Case work in a changing social order. In Lowry,
755-63.
 Reynolds, B. C. (1935) Social case work: what is it? what is its
place in the world today? In Lowry, 136-47.

Simon Patten: why was he important?

Edward T. Devine: why was he so important?
 1896-1917 General Secretary,
New York Charity Organisation
Society
 1897 The first to use the term
‘case work’
 1904-7, 1912-17 Director, New
York School of Philanthropy
(from 1919 New York School of
Social Work)
 1904-1917 Professor of Social
Economy, Columbia University
 1926-8 Professor of Social
Economics, American
University, Washington
The Social Welfare History Project:
http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/people/devine-edward-t-3/

Social economy
 Social economy finds its particular field in the study of those conditions,
activities, and agencies which promote or hinder the making of every individual
into an industrially efficient and hence independent human being, and in the
relief of those who cannot by their own efforts realize the social standards of
the community of which they are a part.
 Social economy may be said to be…the community in its conscious efforts to
promote the social good, to redress injustice, to overcome pauperism, and
disease, and crime, to increase the points of beneficent contact with the
physical and social environment.
 Social work, social legislation, and social thought are the three main branches
…of social economy (Devine, 1906: 18, 18, 45).
 The broad object of social economics is that each individual shall be able to live
a normal life according to the standard of the period and of the community. The
narrower object of social work is:
• (1) the care of those who through misfortune or fault are not able under exiting
conditions to realize a normal life for themselves or who hinder others from
realizing it and
• (2) the improvement of conditions which are a menace to individual welfare, which
tend to increase the number of dependents and interfere with the progress and best
interests of others who may be in no danger of becoming dependent.
(Devine, 1922: 3)

Clement Attlee: why was he important?
 Settlement experience
 Earliest social work lecturer appointed by the LSE
 Subsequently prime minister…
 …at the time of the creation of the post-war
welfare state

Method -2: text content
 Mentions of social justice
 Concerns for injustice, unfairness, oppression
 Concerns for/identification of
oppressed/disadvantaged groups
 Class analysis
 Explicit perspective of particular oppressed groups:
• Poor (paupers, pauperisation)
• Women
 Concern for reform, environmental interventions

Analysing the text: Devine and van Kleeck (1916)
 …speaking generally it is certainly true that the so-called charitable
activities of the country are faced in the forward direction; that their
desire is not merely to help individuals, but to improve the conditions of
life; that they think of themselves as social, educational and preventive
agencies...
 The change is revolutionary and complete. Almost as a matter of course
workers in philanthropic activities now sympathize with wage-earners in
all lawful, and perhaps in some technically unlawful, attempts to
improve their condition. They recognize the absolute necessity of
protecting and whenever possible raising general standards of living.
They oppose child labor and a seven-day week. They are apt to go
beyond labor unions themselves in favoring minimum wage laws. They
have worked for compensation legislation and are getting ready for
sickness and old age insurance. The very tasks in which they are engaged
compel a generous sympathy with all who suffer from bad social
conditions and a righteous indignation against those who profit from
social injustice and inequitable laws, customs and prejudices…
Devine, E. T. and van Kleeck, M. (1916) Positions in Social
Work. New York: New York School of Philanthropy: 6.

Some themes from the literature:
Explanations of social problems and the
role of social work

Early accounts of social work:
benevolent, judgmental
 Mr William Groom, a young workman…used to observe with great
distress the large number of boys who were drinking in the saloons
of the city…his work became known to a few persons of wealth and
position, who…agreed to guarantee a sufficient sum annually to
enable him to devote his whole time to the work among the
boys…the movement spread rapidly…more than a hundred boys of
all sorts and sizes – many ragged with bare feet, were sitting
absolutely quiet and orderly, with eager intelligent faces…No trace of
anything coarse or low appeared…the rescue of boys of the most
depraved and degraded class… (Grey, 1889: 1-3)
 …To comfort the forlorn, to assist the struggling and to raise up the
fallen…yet another outlet for that stream of Christian sympathy and
benevolence…The Samaritan Fund has become increasingly
important…in view of the great and widespread interest that is now
taken in social work of every description…[and] is the link which
connects the general curative work of the Hospital with the various
organisations outside that are concerned with the poor…The
instrument…by which the …Fund works is the Case Paper. This
excellent method of recording the dealings with a patient is…the
invention of the Charity Organisation Society, and its advantages are
so manifest that it has been generally adopted by social workers and
by the Poor Law authorities… (Phillips, 1912: 5-17)

Social work as broad social action - 1
 The social workers of the [1850s] fully realised the evils involved in
such [poor housing] conditions, and chief among the agencies
working on behalf of the poor must be placed the various societies
and individuals engaged in providing and improving housing
accommodation (Bosanquet, 1914: 16)
 Social work in London: My brother and I used to occupy our spare
time in visiting the poor districts of London and getting to know
the residents. We came this way to witness many sad and
pathetic, and sometimes amusing incidents. There is still great
poverty in London; but it is not as bad as it used to be. I am happy
to think that at the present time much more attention is being
directed to the grave necessity of better houses for the people
(Fox, 1924).
 Under the growing factory system, the workers began to call for
the advice of the expert rather than the help of the philanthropist.
And so emerged the social worker in his more modern rôle. Sidney
and Beatrice Webb are foremost examples of the new type. [They]
stimulated others to set up organizations for research. They
probed into the country’s experience and patterned anew poor
relief, prisons, trade unions, coöperatives, municipal trading,
and…presented a complete constitution for the Socialist
Commonwealth of Great Britain. (Hewes, 1930: 18-19)

Social work as broad public service: 1

Social work as broad public service - 2
Macadam, E. (1925) The Equipment of the Social Worker. London: Allen and Unwin: 22-3.

Industrialisation
 The first duty of the social economist who would increase the efficiency
of the individual then is clear. It is to put an end to the conditions which
have made men inefficient through destroying their health.
 …the foundations of modern industry were laid…Labor was essential but
not in all grades dignified. Power in most of the states was in the hands
of a selective few...Government was the expression of the will of
property holders. (Chenery, 1922: 24)
 Laissez-faireism, the hands-off, policy was developed not to fend off the
friendly offices of governments from infant industries, but to prevent
those governments from exerting themselves in the interests of
consumers and workers when the infant industries had grown great
(Chenery, 1922: 25).
 …the social engineer of today, as he surveys western industrial
development, is sure to be caught by harmful social effects which cluster
around certain old industries…We often talk of “the interest,s referring
to the conscious aggressive policy of the big combinations, diverting
profits to themselves at whatever cost to the small competitor or to
public welfare. (Hewes, 1930: 4, 8)

The industrial revolution; laisser faire
 From complete freedom of contract we have moved to an ever
increasing state regulation of conditions…we now have the conception
that it is the duty of the State to act as the co-ordinating factor in making
all individual efforts work for the good of the citizens…to day we
consider that it is possible for the community by collective action to alter
man’s environment, whereas then it was thought that any interferences
with environment would be acting against nature, and against all sound
economic principles (Attlee, 1920: 18-19).
 Social work itself has taken form and shape from the structure of
economic organization……It was not until the wastes of the industrial
revolution brought unemployment, overwork, and starvation, to the
masses of people whose method of work and manner of life was so
suddenly changed, that the adjustment of their difficulties became a
major undertaking. The social worker in the guise of the benefactor and
philanthropist then appeared with this for his job. The clientèle of these
early social workers…did not think of themselves as members of an
oppressed class. Many of them regarded their individual suffering as a
dispensation of Providence. But their very numbers and their
concentration in towns soon made for a sense of solidarity (Hewes,
1930, 15, 17).

The city: urbanisation
 In these two statements [progress derives from men’s achievements;
women’s role is motherhood and social life] lies the social core of the
women’s question. We live in an age of shining economic development,
of rising wealth, and of marvellous technological advances, in which,
however, all of men’s planning and effort is directed toward production,
achievement, and the mastery of nature. Human life as such – its
emergence and its passing, its inner development – is held in low
esteem. In all countries, it is a concomitant of the new structure of the
economy, of the development of industry and of the growth of the big
cities, that the health and life of human beings is neglected and
recklessly abandoned to accident or to economic forces, that one
attends to the dead machine more carefully than to the ‘human
machine’ (Salomon, 1912: 231).
 …the motive of loyalty to institutions can manifestly be intensified and
enlarged in two directions, It can be broadened into civic patriotism;
and it can be at once vitalised and humanised by a recognition of the
worth and claims of the individual…(MacCunn, 1911)

Democracy
 The rise of democracy has changed the outlook of the social worker: formerly
social work was done for now with the working classes…today working men
and women claim full citizenship…I do not intend here to go into the old
controversy as to natural, political and legal rights, or to discuss the theory of
the social contract. The object of our coming together and living in a society is
that we may have a better chance of obtaining the means to live a good life
than if we remain isolated. We claim the right to as full an opportunity of
expressing our personalities as has anybody else, and that implies a duty of
securing as good an opportunity for others as we have ourselves (Attlee, 1920:
19-21).
 Under whatever auspices case work is destined to go forward, a respect for
personality will be essential. Such respect implies a democratic point of view.
Social case work cannot progress under those who have the autocratic spirit…
Democracy, however, is not a form of organization but a daily habit of life. It is
not enough for social workers to speak the language of democracy; they must
have in their hearts its spiritual conviction of the infinite worth of our common
humanity before they can be fit to do any form of social work whatsoever
(Richmond, (1922: 248-9).
 In spite of the rising tide of political democracy, social distinctions were well
fixed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The differences between the
rich and poor were wide and deep…(Chenery, 1922: 77-8).

Child and female labour and the family
 Industry transferred the work of women and children from the home to
the factory. The workingman’s wife and children perforce forsook their
home in order to obtain employment. To the extent to which women
and children were drawn from domestic industry to factories it is
accordingly fair to say that machinery entered and broke the circle of
the workingman’s home. Industry has also augmented vastly the sum of
national wealth and income…Have employees of industry been paid a
living wage? Have wage earners had a fair share of the increased
income made possible by the factory system? Have mechanics and
laborers been able to obtain justly proportionate shares of the wealth in
whose creation they have played so essential a part? (Chenery, 1922:
77)
 Abundant immigration from Europe, however valuable its social and
political consequences may have been, has tended to keep full the
reservoir of “surplus” workers and has made possible the continuance
of a low wage system. (Chenery, 1922: 94)

Social work and religious work
 By social work we mean, of course, an endeavour to remedy or prevent social
evils, or to promote social well-being.
 …”Social Work” rightly understood is something more than even the sum of the
efforts to deal in detail with the aggregate of social imperfections. It should not
aim only at dealing with things as they are, it should rather imply “all kinds of
work done by people with the specific intention of making the world better and
happier.” (Professor S. J. Chapman)(Chadwick, 1909: 10)
 …social work gives and very tangible and very necessary object to religious
work; while, if we regard our social work from the religious point of view, we
are immediately provided with the right spirit in which it should be done, and
the true motive for it (Chadwick, 1909: 18)
 Social evils, as we all know, are physical and moral disorders resulting from the
non-observance of the laws of justice and charity which should regulate the life
of the community…We are bound always to combat moral evil, and as for
physical, there is a vast current of it which is connected with the former, either
as cause or effect, and which, therefore, we should aim at removing, without
being afraid of changing the character of life as essentially a time of probation
or trial. (Gibbs, 1911: 1, 1-2)

Socialist Christianity
 The New Era: A Review of Social Work and
Movements in the Churches (Title banner, 1892)
 The policy of The New Era will follow Christian
Socialist lines…We do not look for the solution of
social problems to the rigid and heartless theories of
a Liberalistic economy which teaches that [people
are commodities], that the law of free competition
was given by Moses, that selfishness because a
natural is a laudable instinct…
 We hold that any theory of economic relationships
which overlooks the dignity of [human] descent…and
the unknown potentiality of good and nobility which
dwells within [people], is a crass blasphemy against
both God and humanity. (Editorial, The New Era 1-2)

Religion and social conservatism - 1
 The most obvious weakness of religion in social action is that it
always seems to create a spirit of generosity within terms of a social
system, without developing an idealism vigorous or astute enough
to condemn the social system in the name of a higher justice.
Religion, in other words, is more fruitful of philanthropy than of
social justice…Frequently it is religion’s sense of the absolute that
betrays it into social conservatism…The world of injustice is taken
for granted… Slavery was taken for granted… (Niebuhr, 1932: 18-
19).
 The strong emphasis on the doctrine of self-sacrifice has again and
again tempted the church into a critical attitude toward the
assertion of rights on the part of the oppressed, on the ground that
this represented an expression of selfishness. The inclination to
interpret the nonresistance of Christ as an example for all those
who suffer from social injustice appears again and again in Christian
history, and betrays the church into an acceptance of social injustice
because injustice can not be resisted without the assertion of self-
interest and the return of evil for evil (Niebuhr, 1932: 21).

Religion and social conservatism - 2
 Another root of the social conservatism of religion, which tempts it to
practice charity within the limitations of a social system without raising
ultimate questions about the justice of the system itself, is the natural
determinism of religion. ..Paul put the logic of determinism clearly in
Romans 13: 1-2
• Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but
of God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.
 The idea that social and political arrangements must be virtuous because
they exist under an omnipotent God who could change them if he
would, grows out of a natural inclination in the very heart of religion…to
aggrandize the object of worship, God, until it becomes coextensive with
the whole of reality. A variant of this doctrine was to assume that the
present status of society was ordained of God after the fall, to deal with
man’s sinful condition….Religious determinism has again and again
betrayed the institutions of religion into an attitude of indifference
toward the miseries of the poor, the argument being that God has
ordained poverty, as well as the fate of the particular individuals who
suffer from its deprivations (Niebuhr, 1932: , 22-23).

Religion and socially conservatism - 3
 …religion is…preoccupied with the motives of ethical actions and finds it
difficult to deal with the entire situation (Niebuhr, 1932: 24).
 Religion does not deal with the problems of justice, for justice is a
concept which emerges when a careful calculation is made of conflicting
rights and competing responsibilities. Equalitarianism, which is the most
rigorous type of justice, has never been born out of the heart of
religion…It is when intelligence discounts all the deceptions and
hypocrisies by which inequalities of privilege are maintained and
justified that the idea of equality, as a rational goal of social organization
emerges (Niebuhr, 1932: 27).
 Since the depression reached America, we have been treated to the
hypocrisies which flow from voluntary charity upon a national scale.
America alone, of all industrial nations, has failed to learn the lesson
that voluntary charity is insufficient to establish justice or to alleviate
actual human suffering when society deals with a basic problem of the
distribution of wealth (Niebuhr, 1932: 29)

US social context - 1: the frontier
 [Humanity] has faced three extraordinary problems. the
first was the simplest: taking possession of the physical
world, the appropriation of natural resources. The second
was more complex: the organization of industry, the
working out of an industrial system. The third is the most
perplexing: the spiritual direction of human affairs. The
leader in the first of these tasks was the pioneer, the
frontiersman (Devine, 1906: 1-2).
• Economic efficiency in industry requires social effectiveness
 The pioneer nation…The employment of women and
children was universal during the years prior to the
establishment of the factory system in the United
States…their toil was limited to the home and to agriculture
and to domestic industry…The mechanical revolution
changed only the kind of work done (Chenery, 1922: 23)

US social context – 2: voluntarism & the state

The first world war
 When the war brought demands from a host of new and old organizations…a hot-house
development of the fundamental idea in federations was enforced. “War chests” were
set up…(Devine and Brandt, 1921: 35).
 No movement in American philanthropy was more profoundly influenced by the civilian
activities of the World War than the coöperative movement (Norton, 1927: 112) [for
coordination of services: also the demand for training and regulated standards of
practice].
 The first effect of the war on social work in American…was to strengthen and improve it.
Sympathy for the sufferings in Europe quickened sensitiveness to social problems at
home. The whole world became a laboratory of social work…When the United States
entered the war, in April 1917, social work leaped into unprecedented prominence…In
general, the effect of the war has been to confirm the principles of social work and to
commend them to a larger public…(Devine and Brandt, 2921: 44).
 Conspicuous among [events influencing social work’s development] are the World
War,…war service and subsequent peace time program[s], the succession of disasters
and the establishment of a disaster relief routine. Not least among these events is one
whose importance cannot yet be evaluate, namely the economic depression which set in
in 1929, and which may lead to far-reaching changes in the nature, auspices and
personnel of social work (Cannon and Klein, 1933: 4).
 At this time there are many men and women who have received a strong impression
from the war period, of their duty to work unselfishly for the community…(Attlee, 1920:
27)

Economics
 The myth of economic man …is the belief that a man will always act from
motives of material self-interest…[But] no one set of motives determines
behavior …a political, religious or family motive might at any time overturn the
customary economic behavior…
 Closely connected with the myth of the economic man is the myth of
individualism and the policy of non-interference by the government in any
business or trade. This we call laissez faire. It came with the industrial
revolution…John Maynard Keynes traced the life history of this myth…
 [T]he economists have renounced this enticingly simple and beautiful theory
that laissez faire is the path to universal welfare. This was because the tragic
effects of its operation were forced upon their attention. They observed the
complications which must be taken into account when we come to deal with
large units of production, when production is a prolonged process, and when a
monopoly disturbs the balance of bargaining power. (Hewes 1932: 90-3).
 …Ricardo said that labor was “the foundation of all value”…the relative value of
commodities was …determined by the relative quantity of labor which
produced them. [But] the desire or demand for goods is not necessarily related
to the labor which has been expended upon them…The labor theory of value
was swallowed up in another myth…the law of diminishing returns. (Hewes,
1932: 94-5)

Abundance
 Food is abundant, income grows, and machines do the old drudgeries.
That work is pleasant, the environment is good and human nature is a
group of ennobling qualities are now axioms that contrast the new
thought with the old philosophy of deficit so long taught and so
ardently defended. The depraved man is not the natural man; for in
him the natural is suppressed beneath a crushing load of misfortunes,
superstitions and ill-fitting social conventions. But in spite of the good
hope that follows, elation is replaced by dejection as soon as we
remember that poverty is scarcely mitigated by prosperity. The normal
qualities of human nature are modified so slowly and under such
complex conditions that the reformer often believes himself helpless to
make the improvement he longs for. (Patten, 1907[1968]:
 Economists supplemented these observations of the social workers and
confirmed their convictions by pointing to the material resources and
prosperity of America, and suggesting that there was no excuse for
want and misery. (Devine and Brandt, 1921: 18)
 We have the means of producing all the material necessities of a good
life…in abundance…The one thing necessary is the getting of the
human will to operate…(Attlee, 1920: 23)

Abundance and the new theory of poverty
 …the distinctions between [people] on the two sides of the line of poverty are
frailer than we have been led to believe…Poverty is not rooted in a debased
heredity nor in a world-wide lack of work…the depletion of energy, induced
and aggravated by misfortunes is the crucial distinction between poverty and
normal [people]…
 But health, vigor and right conditions would soon change all this, and race
types would fade with the differences between environments and the
quantities of energy within them… [People in poverty] must be encouraged by
methods that stir positive people to deeds that seem to be heroic and
marvellous…
 [A vagrant who rescues a child from a burning building] was instantly
responsive and energetic in a sudden interesting situation. But the indirect
action, the round-about methods of the industrial world did not stimulate.
 Efficiency [productivity in industry] is indirect work; generosity [charity by the
rich] is indirect enjoyment….A rich man who never gives is as abnormal as the
poor man who never works.
 It therefore becomes the social worker’s first task to discover how faculties be
made active, how industry may be stimulated, and how [people] may be
surrounded – rich and poor alike – with conditions that shall renew energy and
after every expenditure of it bring it back greater than it went out.
(Patten, 1907: 206-211)

Traditional class talk
 The very existence of the degraded class was a standing
insult and injury to the genuine worker, who shared its
reputation for idleness and inefficiency and was deprived
by it of the succour which should have come to him in times
of misfortune (Bosanquet, 1914: 5)
 …class distinctions, springing as they do from inequality of
natural endowments, are essential to human society…That
such class distinction is necessary for progress and is
consistent with individual liberty, that it entails mutual
obligations between the classers who, united by a bond of
love, should help one another to attain their final end in
heaven and their material and moral well-being on earth.
(Gibbs, 1911: 14)

Class talk, 1930s-style
 With the winning of political ascendency, the middle class took over
responsibility for the affairs of the community and organized social
work…Oftentimes with a genuine desire to help there was a combined desire
to “keep the workers contented” and also a wish to win social distinction
through benevolence (Hewes, 1920: 17)
 The shift in social classes which was the result of post-war industrial and
political factors in Germany had the effect of changing…the work of the private
agencies and the personnel of their workers…Dr Alice S[a]lomon…tells us that
it was questioned whether there was any sphere for private social agencies in a
socialistic republic…all welfare work should be “socialized” or “municipalized.”
“From the people, for the people, not ‘From the upper classes for the
lower’.”…“[S]ocial workers should be taken from the ranks of the class…of the
people for whom the work is intended.” (Hewes, 1930: 19)
 The attitude of the middle class churches to…radical religious programs was
frequently inspired by a self-righteous feeling that poverty is due to vice and
laziness and that social comfort is the inevitable reward of virtue. This kind of
complacency may have been the natural attitude of middle class life with its
individualism, its lack of social imagination, its blindness to the more profound
social issues…But since it clothed itself…in the garments of religious piety…it
must be mentioned as a social attitude which religion sometimes produces or
justifies (Niebuhr, 1932: 31).

Aims and causes
 …the scientifically trained worker, who has been trained to look
beneath phenomena to their causes, to look beyond…the
pathological conditions of society and the sources of these – for
poverty, unemployment, intemperance, etc., may be regarded as
social diseases – …will be no more content to do ambulance work
than the scientifically trained physician is content to alleviate
symptoms…a permanent restoration to a condition of physical or
economic welfare is made possible (Chadwick, 1909: 13-14)
 …no mere giving of money can be a substitute for personal service.
Such an action is not a “social” act…(Chadwick, 1909: 15)
 Human welfare is that agar-agar in which grow the cultures of
about all the “isms” that [people] have ever invented…Your
statesman defines well-being as that state of perfection in which
the greatest good is accruing from national life to the greatest
number of those who make up the nation…the economist defines
[it]…to mean the maximum production of wealth…Your socialist
must see equality of outlook and privilege and, so far as possible,
an equality of goods, society being to this end highly organized to
protect the weak as well as the strong…(Kelso, 1928: 7)

Social work: continuities and changes

Example of progression from old
terminology and interactions of issues
 We, and the world with us, have passed from an age of
charity to an epoch of constructive social service, charitable
in a truer sense, reaching out toward justice. (8)
 Our vision of social solidarity has brought a new
fundamental into our treatment of the insane and the
mentally defective. (9)
 Industrial justice. Today we see that this battle between
capital and labor is like the campaign in Belgium…Leaders
on both sides of the issue see…now recognise four
elements of the question, namely, capital, labor, business
management, and the public; greatest of these is the public
(12).
Kelso, R. W. (1922) Changing fundamentals of social work. In Lowry
(Presidential Address, National Conference of Social Work 1922)

Social work aims
 “Doing good” was the old phrase for social service…We should
welcome…the evident desire of social workers to abandon
claims to respect based upon good intentions alone…A
majority of them are engaged in case work – in work, that is,
which has for its immediate aim the betterment of individuals
and families, one by one, as distinguished from their
betterment in the mass. Mass betterment and individual
betterment are interdependent, however, social work and
social case work of necessity progressing together (Richmond,
1917: 1).
 The instinct of [humanity] is toward generosity, mutual
dependence and mutual helpfulness…Social work…as it is
expressed today on a giant scale of organization…is a new and
vitalized way of expressing these old instincts…Destiny
determined that American society should be individualistic
from its beginning…the individualism of the [Pilgrim]
Fathers…(Norton, 1927: 1-3)

Richmond (1922): personality & environment
 Social case work consists of those processes which develop
personality through adjustments, consciously effected,
individual by individual between [people] and their social
environment (98-9)
 …the environment ceases to be environment in space
merely – it widens to the horizon of [human] thought, to the
boundaries of [our] capacity for maintaining relationships,
and it narrows to the exclusion of all those things which
have no real influence on [our] emotional, mental and
spiritual life (99)
 …it is our personality which relates us closely to our human
kind; not only to the socius our brother, but to all the
communities and institutions he has developed. There is no
conflict between the idea of individual differences…and this
complementary idea of relatedness (92).

 Oher professions have social concepts and social objectives, but…only social
work never has a purely individual objective…the most individualistic of social
case workers must think, as he treats his client, of the reaction of such
treatment upon the client’s family, his associates and the community. The
treatment is for the purpose of furthering his capacity to organize his own
normal social activities…The development of individual personality as such…is
more normally the aim of the teacher, psychiatrist, and priest than of the social
worker, whose concern is with the personality in interaction with the social
environment. (17-18)
 …social work has a common objective, namely, the capacity of communities
and individuals to organize their own social activities…(18)
 A principle inherent in this common method of social work is…participation.
The client or community takes active part in making and carrying out the plan
of social organization. (19)
 Inherent in the practice of social work is a philosophy of individual and social
responsibility (Cannon, 1928: 17-18, 18, 19, 21)
• Karpf’s (1931) study of family case work in New York in the 1920s found that most
work was individualistic and decisions were not based on coherent use of evidence
Individualism in social work

Social work includes compassion, focus on
individual and reform: van Waters (1930)
 We live in a social order based on the personality of [human beings]…The
social worker assumes the responsibility for integration, the process of making
whole, the various resources of well-being in the community. (45-6)
 …the social worker’s attitude does not spring primarily from compassion. He
sees the suffering individual as an integral part of the whole, not as a burden
but as a challenge. (47)
 Human personality has intrinsic value for the social worker, not because it can
be molded or rehabilitated, but because it is worthy of respect in its own right.
No rehabilitation is required to make a human being worthy of respect. (48)
 …social workers derive from trends of thought quite distinct from those that
produce reformers. Reformers have commonly a low opinion of
[humanity]…the reformer would like you to believe he knows, better than you
yourself know, what is best for you to do. (49)
 Social workers have been criticised for having no inclusive program of social
betterment…Social work has realized that a program cannot make [people]
moral, religious, or happy…The true springs of action are in the internal nature
of [human beings].. Hence the uselessness of programs, particularly those
dependent upon state action or force. (53)
van Waters, M. (1930) Philosophical trends
in modern social work. In Lowry, 38-53.

Social work and case work
 The other forms of social work, all of which interplay with casework are three – group
work. Social reform, and social research. (Richmond, 1922: 223)
 Most modern civilised states have assumed certain humanitarian tasks…[T]hey have
come to be almost universally recognised as appropriate subjects of state action, and
provision for them is assumed to be a function of state agencies. ..To many observers it is
becoming clear that…this work must be based on an adequate knowledge of the need to
the individual to whom the service is rendered, on the basis of “social diagnosis,”
followed by an adequate treatment of the special pathological conditions revealed in his
situation. That is the principles of social service and the technique of “case work” are
commanding wider acceptance in the public welfare field (Breckinridge, 1927: 2)
 [Grace Marcus reviews criticisms of social case work]…case work is a sop to the
underprivileged, obscures the issues of social justice, imposes on the individual the cruel
burden of adapting himself to a psychotic society, and, in so far as it succeeds,
constitutes a brake on social action. (124)
 Mary Richmond…collected and sifted the results of years of empirical work…In its firm
stress on the deductive method her work established the individualizing principle of
study and treatment as basic in the theory and practice of case work. After Mary
Richmond came the psychiatric deluge. (125-6)
 The boundaries of case work are narrow...So far as social work is concerned, its
utilization of case work data and case work experience has too frequently respected
neither their meaning nor their value. No branch of social work and no specialized
activity within social work is released from the common obligation to understand the
individual in relation to the problems of living (Marcus, 1935: 134-5).

Lee’s ‘cause and function’
 ‘A function…implies an organized effort incorporated into the machinery
of community life in the discharge of which the acquiescence, at least,
and ultimately the support of the entire community is assumed’. (23)
 ‘As a cause, a movement secures solidarity and force from its inherently
dramatic appeal…The motives which lead [people] to support a function
as an obligation of citizenship are in no sense lower or less worthy than
those which lead [people] to enlist in a cause.’ (25)
 ‘The abolition of poverty, the prevention of crime, the elimination of
preventable disease, the reduction of industrial handicaps to workers are
causes. They need no justification save their inherent appeal to the
justice and enlightened social consciences of [people].
 'The functional development of social work I interpret as the effort of our
civilization to give corporate life to the ideas which have inspired the
world’s great causes in behalf of suffering, underprivileged humanity.
Civilization, however, is dead unless it retains the capacity to develop new
ideas as well as to insure the permanence and efficacy of those to which
it has given corporate life…Efficient social work everywhere means the
constant discovery of new evils, of ancient evils in new forms…Good
social work creates the necessity for more social work.’
Lee, Porter R. (1929) Social work: cause and function. In Lowry 22-37

Prevention
 Social workers chafe at the futility of their efforts at repair,
and long for a campaign of prevention. They soon realize,
however, that the task of prevention is more complex and
involved than medical-social treatment (Cannon, 1913:
204)
 One of the ideas which became dominant among social
workers early in the present century was that “prevention
is better than relief”. (Devine and Brandt, 1921: 18)
 All these new activities, in turn, had a reflex influence on
older forms of social work. As the idea of prevention took
hold, and as the significance of [many serious] social
problems, came to be realized, those who were engaged in
the relief of the poor…found their task growing more and
more complex. (Devine and Brandt, 1921: 25)

Cabot (1919) on social therapeutics
 Social treatment is giving and constructing…We make elaborate social plans, but we
know that many of them are going to fail…but they will not be flat failures if along the
way we have tried to treat people, not as they deserve, but a great deal better….We
want to try to build in and with the person some capacity to get that pleasure for
himself after we have gone out of his life…I have to go back to the parallelism of money
and morphine. A person comes to us with pain and begs of money or its equivalent –
direct immediate relief...[We can give money] without doing any harm when it is not
going to lead to the repetition of the same demand…[t]he safest form of giving, that
which is surest to perpetuate itself, to be planted like a seed and go on without our
having to stand by it, is giving information…one of the most precious kinds of
information is information on how to secure more information,…Education is what
social workers try to give most often, most consciously, over the longest time and
sometimes with the greatest results…
 Gratitude seems to me ultimately the motive of social work…We are painfully aware of
what has been given to us…We are eager therefore to pass that on in any such form as
it can be received…I have dwelt already on the great lack of beauty and of art in social
work, on its ugliness and drabness, and on the care-worn look in the social worker’s
face. But no one who is vividly conscious of the gifts of beauty which have come into his
life can continue to make his attempts at social work as unbeautiful as they haver been
hitherto. If we have any sense of gratitude to the people that have cared for us, we
want to pass on that affection…We ought to give and build, because the effects of any
giving that is not also building will not last…We ought to give and take…We can give
only what we have taken…[Social workers] are often led into giving without providing
for any adequate source of renewal. They are not taking in enough to have anything to
give out. They give until they are drained dry, squeezed out (Cabot, 1919: 179-81).

Reform - 1
 …group action for the relief of distress and the increase of efficiency is both
possible and essential…(Devine, 1906: 26)
 The knowledge of [the community] is of special importance to one who works
among needy families, since he must use them constantly in the rehabilitation
of individual families. Conversely, he should learn from the study of dependency
in these families what reforms are most needed, and be able to focus the
efforts of all agencies with a social program in order to secure the reforms thus
made real to him. (Ryington: 1912: 5)
 …the “organized social movements”…a technique strikingly similar to that used
by the early abolitionists, temperance reformers and advocates of women’s
rights…[they]are the result of fresh consideration of particular evils. In the past
twenty years one destructive social force after another has been singled out for
special study…Conspicuous among them…are the movements for the
prevention of tuberculosis, cardiac disease, blindness, venereal disease, infant
mortality, for the control of cancer, to abolish extortionate charges for loans…to
promote wholesome recreation, to diminish child labor, to improve the health
of children, to further industrial education, to advance the interests of the
Negro, to reform the criminal law…to prevent insanity and promote mental
health, to improve housing conditions, to improve and standardize labor
legislation. (Devine and Brandt, 1921: 20).

Reform - 2
 Too often the social worker, from a want of wide
knowledge of the structure, the processes, and the
laws governing the welfare of society as a whole
deals with each case, as he will sometimes boast
“individually.”…A “Vision of the whole” would teach
him that his energies might be more usefully
expended in trying to remove these causes than in
being content to assuage the sufferings of case after
case which they were producing…One reason for the
increased number of social workers is that
undoubtedly, and entirely for the good, the public
conscience is becoming far more sensitive to the
existence of social evils and to the inevitable results
of these (Chadwick, 1909: 23-4).

Advocacy
 One of the simple and yet honestly useful things
that we can do in social work is to give a man a
hearing ...But this implies unusual powers of
listening on the social worker's part…...the power
of the creative listener to enlarge and to remake
a personality is not capable of limit...Just to state
our difficulties clearly to another person who will
listen not merely sympathetically but creatively,
and with resistance as well as furtherance, is of
value (Cabot, 1919: 170-2).

Commentary in the 1930s: Reynolds
 [S]ocial work concerns itself with human beings where there is anything that hinders or
thwarts their growth, their expanding consciousness, their increasing coöperation.
Social case work is that form of social work which assist the individual while he struggles
to relate himself to his family, his natural groups, his community
 …we shall use no methods that in themselves hamper the growth of the human spirit.
We cannot take people by the throat and say, “Do as I say and you shall grow.” We
cannot help them to live coöperatively with others if we ourselves are not willing to
submit to the self-discipline necessary for coöperation with the laws of growth.
 …what possible place has [social work] in a world that seems bent upon destruction of
human life? “Life is for growth” sounds like a grim joke in a world kindling into the
flames of war…We know better now than to glorify war…, yet we spend millions in
preparation for it and then say that a nation cannot afford milk, for its babies and the
conditions of healthy growth and opportunities for adequate education for all its
children.
 Obsessed with the idea that [people are] degraded by receiving anything for which
[they] do not work, this topsy-turvy world of ours does not bend its energies to solving
the problems of the creation of opportunities for real work at real wages. It rather
safeguards first profits and dividends which are awarded without reference to work
performed, and then provides meagerly for the vistims of its econom,ic mistakers under
conditions of receiving the necessities of life as degrading to self-respect as could well
be. (Reynolds, 1935: 136-7

Commentary in the 1930s: Lurie
 The social problems of industry are highly complicated and refractory. Failure to solve
them is chiefly responsible for the continued mass f economically maladjusted
individuals for whom social agencies exist. This failure and the remedial and palliative
nature of social case work re are now recognizing…We face a large increase in the
standing army of the unemployed augmented from time to time by further
technological changes an increased difficulty in absorbing into gainful employment the
less effective and partially handicapped members of our population, the vanishing of
opportunities for low wage satisfactory vocational adjustment of the young, and a
further possibility of low wage standards in many occupations, and a further shrinkage
of the potential working life of the average individual with a more rapid displacement of
the middle-aged.
 Accompanying our program for improving social welfare through individual case
adjustments we have developed overintensive service for those individuals or families
that presented either particularly difficult personal problems or the need for long-term
relief. This was perhaps a logical, though largely ineffective substitute for adequate
social provisions……No longer can we overlook the fact that much of the maladjustment
and distress with which case work deals is rooted in inadequate or faulty economic and
social organization.
 The conclusion to be drawn…is that the future of social work lies more in the
organization of social forces than in methods of case work. The program of the social
agency needs to be redefined with a clearer recognition of the obstacles which hinder
service and with more attention to organizing effective social remedies.
Lurie, H. L. (1933) Case work in a changing social order in Lowry, 755-63.

Public and private
 …both public and private auspices will
continue to be necessary…The public agency
must be able to assure some degree of
continuity of policy, free from political party
control…[c]ertain forms of case work may well
make greater advances and certainly serve a
larger clientele under public management
than under private. (Richmond, 1922: 248)

Service and social service
 …movements [for social change] are fundamentally based on a belief in our
moral responsibility for one another. “Prevention” and “efficiency” are their
watchwords, and the spirit of social service is their impelling motive...
(Cannon, 1913: 200).
 A lasting contribution of hospital social service to the institution in which it is
conducted can be made only when that service becomes an expression of
forces within the institution…Those in control of hospital activities – the
officers; physicians, and nurses – must have a social interest before their
institution can become socially efficient in any measure approximating the
ideal (Cannon, 1913, 201).
 It is then to the spirit of social service…that we must look for the new motive
to replace, or at least reinforce, that of self-interest…Thus, the more we can
get the idea of social service as the main motive for all our work, the more
likely are we to find a peaceable solution to our present discontents (26)…the
maker of machinery or boots must regard his work from the standpoint of its
satisfying certain wants of the community as well as supplying him with a
living (Attlee, 1920: 26-7).
 [social workers]…are illumined by conviction that the spirit of service is an
expression of the highest development of the human personality. The
pioneers are marked by serenity and gladness: no one ever heard of a
disillusioned pessimistic veteran social worker. (van Waters, 1930, 52)

Themes: prevention
 Social workers chafe at the futility of their efforts at
repair and long for a campaign of prevention. They
soon realize, however, that the task of prevention is
more complex and involved than medical-social
treatment. Campaigns of education…must be preceded
by careful analysis of the varying contributory causes,
and of the possibilities for effecting a change…The
thoroughly trained hospital social worker as agent of
the socially-conscious hospital, reflecting the scientific
attitude of the medical profession and bringing to
medical conditions the special knowledge of the social
worker, has opportunities for research which have not
yet ben fully appreciated. (Cannon, 1913: 206-7)

Progress: social Darwinism,
progressivist and idealist movements
 Progress in thought is obtained by a change from conventional standards to ideal
standards…Activities are either self-centred or social. We can have a selfish programme
or we can have a social programme, but we cannot have an ideal programme; for
programmes relate to activities and not to thought…To be effective ideal constructive
thought must be transferred into practical social work, and hence the need of the
contrast between ideal ends and the indirect means by which they are reached…(Patten,
1907: 215-6)
 The idea of individual happiness is basic in our human concept of progress…the great
aim of life [But] [T]here is thus far no truly satisfactory definition of human progress;
hence there can be no final assurance as to what constitutes human welfare (Kelso,
1928: 8).
• Kelso’s thinking is social Darwinist: ‘human society vs the natural cosmos’
 One of the older attacks on the position of the social worker emanated from the
teachings of Darwin…Darwin refused to carry the doctrine of natural selection to its
logical conclusion, that we should refrain from aiding those who cannot aid
themselves…[T]hese writers do not appreciate the significance of the social
environment…[N]atural selection is never neutral under social conditions. Society
determines [a person’s] life from…birth, from even before …birth…It is this fact which
distinguishes [humanity] most definitely from the lower animals, and the further a
civilisation advances the remoter become the conditions udner which natural selection
can freely operate (MacIver, 1931: 24)

Limitation of social order roles
 Persons who may be suspicious or resentful of
our approach if we appear primarily as
investigators, or primarily as persons concerned
with economic or moral control, will welcome the
visitor if she appears as the arm…of the medical
institution where they have already found
welcome and relief …Because disease is the
common enemy of [humanity], all sorts and
conditions of [people] are instinctively drawn
together when it becomes necessary to resist the
attacks of disease as the enemy of the human
family (Cabot, 1919: 4).

Complexity
 …where we find increasing complexity of conditions we find also an
increasing tendency towards specialisation which constantly grows
narrower and more intense. Social differentiation follows social
integration. (Chadwick, 1909: 21)
 Modern means of production and communication have created a
society in which millions of [people] are brought into terms of
economic interdependence without having any necessary organic
relationship or sense of moral and spiritual fellowship. The modern
factory units thousands of workers in a common enterprise…If they
achieve some kind of moral unity through their own organizations
and unions, it must frequently be done in defiance of the factory
ownership. The “production belt”, which tyrannically synchronizes
the labor of hundreds, creates no spiritual bond between them. The
modern city is as impersonal and mechanical as the factory
(Niebuhr, 1932: 76).

Social progress
 ...the lessening of disease is important not only for
health and comfort, but for economic welfare and
social progress (Cannon, 1913: 2).
 …people sometimes fear that as social work becomes
controlled by science, its emotional inspiration will be
lost. But the antithesis here suggested is a false one.
Science has nothing to say about the ends of life but
only about the relation between means and ends…The
social worker has a progressive task if he is not to
become or remain a mere technician and empiric
(MacIver, 1931: 5,9).

Women: first-wave feminism
 Numerous demands voiced by the women’s movement are linked to this goal.
There is the call for more intensive education and particularly the call for
greater emphasis on socially oriented education for young women; then, too,
the demands for admission to public office and the granting of civil rights, for
better vocational training, the creation of women’s organizations, protection
for female workers, and motherhood insurance. All this points on the one hand
toward one group of women taking on new responsibilities and another group
whose members are oppressed, having its burdens lightened. One sort of
woman should leave her household so as, at least to a modest extent, to enable
another sort to return to hers.
 Inasmuch as the education and care-oriented functions that women formerly
fulfilled with the family have now migrated into the areas of state and local
government, women must similarly make the leap from the family into the area
of public life. They must emerge from the familial and private sphere,
performing their activities in public institutions if their influence is not to be lost
for the purpose of cultural development. For this reason, the women’s
movement must demand the vote. This demand emerges organically from all
other strivings by women, because without full recognition as a citizen in the
state and in the municipality, a woman is hindered in her efforts to become
socially effective. (Salomon, 1912: 234-5)

Social justice?

Examples of social justice talk
 The Social Service movement of modern times…has arisen out of a deep discontent with
society as at present constituted…It is…the expression of the desire for social justice, for
freedom and beauty, and for the better apportionment of all the things that make up a good
life. It is the constructive side of the criticism passed by the reformer and the revolutionary on
the failure of our industrialised society to provide a fit environment where a good life should
be possible for all. (Attlee, 1920: 2-3)
 In philosophy and program social work…has been concerned with
• (1) provision of a material basis for life, health and decency for those in need;
• (2) adjustment of individuals to their own capacities, limitations, and environment; and
• (3) an economic and social order which will produce a fair balance between effort and reward – in other
words, social justice. (57-8)
 ….the emerging purpose of social work be grouped as follows:
• …3. Social justice through fair and ordered relationships between groups, with adequate opportunities for all
groups…(49-50)
 Social justice has been thwarted not only by economic exploitation, but also by unreasoning
race prejudice, misunderstanding of persons of alien origin and discrimination against them,
and political favoritism. (59)
 To the presupposition of freedom we are now adding the presupposition of collective
responsibility for individual welfare, involving an ordered economy with final acceptance by
government of social responsibility. The contribution which social work makes to the general
acceptance of the objective of social security and the development of effective instruments for
collective action will determine in part our success in uniting economic security with cultural
freedom and spiritual achievement based on widely varied interests and associations. (59)
Lenroot, K. F. (1935) Social work and the social order. In Lowry, 54-66.

Injustice and industrial/economic power
 Among the great body of workers who are agitating for an improvement
in their condition perhaps a growing sense of injustice is the strongest of
all the forces which is impelling them to act thus…Various attempts have
been made…to adjust the wages to the profits of an industry; we can
see, however, that under the present methods of the organisation of
industry this is very difficult. (Chadwick, 1909: 31)
 All essential power in our modern society is economic power, the power
of ownership. Economic power is always able to bend political power to
its own uses. Economic power has always been extremely formidable,
but in modern society it has risen to greater heights and become the
source of more injustice than any other, because the private ownership
of the productive processes and the increased centralization of the
resultant power in the hands of a few, make inevitably for irresponsibility
(Niebuhr, 2932: 77)

Conclusions
 In the period 1890-1930…
 …early social work literature shifts from an individualist, economically
liberal ideology…
 …towards the ‘new economic theory of poverty’, including…
 …direct analysis of social justice and a social change/equality
perspective
• Analysis of poverty, women’s rights, race, class
• Even in the classics of case work literature, social change (often seen as
reform) is documented as integral to the role of social work
• There is commentary on the social conservatism of economic liberalism
and religion as roots of social work
• Social work is seen as part of the reaction against evils deriving from
industrialisation, urbanisation, liberal economic laisser faire assumptions
underlying policy…
• …moving towards social idealism, coherent state social provision
 BUT practice methods analysis remained individualistic in this context
 Very much like today?

Recent books
First publication: Chicago, Lyceum
European publication:
Social Work in End-of-life and Palliative Care (with Margaret Reith). Bristol Policy Press.
(2009)
Humanistic Social Work: Core Principles in Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (2011)
Citizenship Social Work with Older People. Bristol: Policy Press. (2011)
First publication: Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, Chicago, Lyceum.
Modern Social Work Theory (4th edition) (2014)

Was social work always committed to social justice?

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to Was social work always committed to social justice?

Similar to Was social work always committed to social justice? (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Was social work always committed to social justice?