Social Insurance and Public Assistance

POOR RELIEF Series Bf 34–149 727
TABLE Bf 34–149 Paupers enumerated in almshouses, by region and state: 1880–1923 Continued
East South Central
Paupers enumerated per 100,000 population
West South Central
Total Kentucky Tennessee Alabama Mississippi Total Arkansas Louisiana Oklahoma Texas
Bf128 Bf129 Bf130 Bf131 Bf132 Bf133 Bf134 Bf135 Bf136 Bf137
Year Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000
1880 60.2 82.9 73.7 40.7 30.5 9.4 13.1 — — 13.2
1890 66.0 84.9 87.4 41.2 88.3 17.8 19.8 10.9 — 20.8
1904 60.7 76.3 87.1 39.2 31.5 23.0 40.9 10.0 4.7 27.2
1910 50.7 66.5 71.8 34.6 24.3 18.6 33.9 11.3 2.9 22.1
1923 45.4 59.5 62.1 32.0 22.1 19.5 32.1 9.5 11.8 22.1
Note appears at end of table
(continued)
Paupers enumerated per 100,000 population
Mountain
Total Montana Idaho Wyoming Colorado Arizona Utah Nevada Total Washington Oregon California
Bf138 Bf139 Bf140 Bf141 Bf142 Bf143 Bf144 Bf145 Bf146 Bf147 Bf148 Bf149
Year Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000 Per 100,000
1880 23.3 — 21.5 — 23.7 9.9 — 152.6 148.6 14.6 29.2 184.3
1890 31.7 99.9 23.7 — 21.1 38.6 29.8 94.0 148.0 20.3 31.6 215.2
1904 63.4 107.7 31.6 — 62.8 95.8 59.0 301.7 153.6 41.1 50.6 228.9
1910 62.7 110.4 29.8 13 63.8 132.6 48.5 194.2 132.7 49.4 52.3 195.4
1923 50.6 54.6 42.0 30 68.4 56.0 40.1 178.3 109.3 54.5 71.4 138.5
Pacific
1 Enumeration date June 1 through 1890; January 1 thereafter.
Source
Paupers in Almshouses: 1923 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1926), Table
4, p. 7. Notes for Table 4 appear in the report on pp. 1–5, 7.
Documentation
The data report the number of paupers in public almshouses only. The data
do not report the number of paupers receiving relief in their own homes–
those receiving “outdoor relief” – and they do not include the number of
paupers residing in privately financed almshouses or asylums. Therefore, the
data cannot be used as the only indicator of the extent of pauperism.
Agreat store of statistical data on indoor institutions – almshouses, poorhouses,
workhouses, insane asylums, and houses of refuge – can be found
in the annual reports of the (variously named) State Boards of Charities and
Corrections, and in the county-level reports that comprise them. One may
also find state and national information on the laws and practices of public
assistance in the annual Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections.
Although the word “pauper” slid away from American vocabularies for
most of the twentieth century, the Bureau of the Census used the term during
the first quarter of the twentieth century to categorize anyone who received
public assistance. Prior to 1923, the Bureau of the Census took seven different
censuses relating to paupers. A census of paupers was taken as a part of
each decennial census from 1850 to 1880, while for 1904, 1910, and again
for 1923, a special census of paupers in public almshouses was taken. The
Bureau defined a public almshouse as an institution supported or controlled
by town, municipal, county, or state authorities and used for the shelter of
persons who are without means of self-support and who have no relatives
able and willing or legally bound to aid them. The censuses of 1904, 1910,
and 1923 included all public almshouses in the United States. The enumerations
were made chiefly by officials of the institutions and covered not only
the paupers who were inmates of almshouses on a given date but also those
admitted in the course of one year and those who were discharged or transferred,
or who died during one year.
No almshouse was maintained in New Mexico in the years covered by
this table.
For a quantitative analysis of these pauper census data, see Stephen T.
Ziliak, “By Foot, by Ford, by Horse, by Hearse: In and Out of America’s
Almshouses, 1880–1923” (unpublished paper, Department of Economics,
Bowling Green State University). A quantitative analysis of poorhouses in
New York State may be found in Joan Underhill Hannon, “Shutting Down
Welfare: Two Cases From America’s Past,” Quarterly Review of Economics and
Finance 37 (2) (1997): 419–38; Joan Underhill Hannon, “Poor Relief Policy
in Antebellum New York State: The Rise and Decline of the Poorhouse,” Explorations
in Economic History 22 (1985): 233–56; and Joan Underhill Hannon,
“Poverty and the Antebellum Northeast: The View from New York State’s
Poor Relief Rolls,” Journal of Economic History 44 (4) (1984): 1007–32. For a
general introduction to the history of the almshouse, see David J. Rothman,
The Discovery of the Asylum (Little, Brown, 1971), and Michael B. Katz, In the
Shadow of the Poorhouse (Basic Books, 1986).