ABSTRACT
The rise of industrial capitalism transformed poverty from a social into a political problem and threw the poor law system into crisis. Given the incompatibility between the colonial poor laws and the emerging economy, new means had to be found to assist families in distress while stemming rising relief costs, maintaining the labor supply, and enforcing the new family ethic. The key early nineteenth-century reforms – cutbacks in outdoor relief, the rise of institutional care, and the growth of private charities – accomplished these ends by mixing rehabilitation with deterrence and punishment. Both the coerciveness of the antebellum reforms and the hardship they imposed on the poor intensified as the nation entered still another period of rapid growth, change, and instability. Reflecting the need for labor discipline, a key explanation for poverty focused on the individual's lack of industry, poor initiative, and weak moral character.
