ABSTRACT
In this speech at the annual meeting of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber's national president, Archie Davis, blames “welfarism” for the nation's economic problems and urges business leaders to fight the Nixon administration's welfare reform plan. Davis insists that AFDC (rather than the nation's failure to aid two-parent families, or the “working poor”) is the nation's primary welfare “problem” and argues that Nixon's Family Assistance Plan would have a number of detrimental effects. Although Davis offers an alternative welfare reform model centered on training AFDC mothers for jobs, the Chamber consistently opposed increased federal funding for job training and child care.
