ABSTRACT
The rise of business and businessmen to central importance in Western society had significant consequences for social welfare. As is apparent, the rise of a wealthy merchant class was accompanied by certain strains in society. The distribution of a dole of money or food at a merchant's funeral became one of the widely accepted and expected means of providing charity to the poor. In pre-Reformation times, philanthropy and charity focused not only on almshouses, hospitals, doles, and other types of donations to the poor, but also on the construction and repair of church buildings and chantries. The colonists brought to the American colonies the philanthropic ideas they had known at home. The colonizing efforts in themselves combined philanthropic motives with political motives. During the thirty-five-year period between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution, various social welfare organizations were financed jointly by private charity and philanthropy and by public tax funds.
