How Can We Help the Poor?
Americans who sought to uplift the poor offered various solutions. Some supported workhouses; others provided clothes and medicine to the “deserving” poor; and still others established employment agencies for single women and widows. The sources below capture the views of two affluent northern reformers. Matthew Carey, a prominent publisher and civic leader in Philadelphia, challenged reformers to address the dire plight of working women. Emily G. Kempshall, a longtime officer of the Rochester Female Charitable Society, lost faith in the ability of female benevolence to improve the situation of impoverished families and resigned in 1838.
Matthew Carey | Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land, 1833
Let us now turn to the appalling case of seamstresses, . . . [who are] Beset . . . by poverty and wretchedness, with scanty and poor fare, miserable lodgings, clothing inferior in quality . . . , without the most distant hope of amelioration of condition, by a course of unrelenting and unremitting industry. . . .
IT is frequently asked—what remedy can be found for the enormous and cruel oppression experienced by females employed as seamstresses . . . ? . . . [A] complete remedy for the evil is . . . impracticable. I venture, to suggest a few palliatives.
Public opinion, a powerful instrument, ought to be brought to bear on the subject. All honourable members of society, male and female, ought to unite in denouncing those who “grind the faces of the poor.” . . .
Let the employments of females be multiplied as much as possible . . . especially in shop-keeping in retail stores. . . .
Let the Provident Societies, intended to furnish employment for women in winter, be munificently supported; and let those Societies give fair and liberal wages. . . .
Let schools be opened for instructing poor women in cooking. Good cooks are always scarce. . . .
Ladies who can afford it, ought to give out their sewing and washing, and pay fair prices. . . .
In the towns in the interior of the state, and in those in western states, there is generally a want of females as domestics, seamstresses, etc. . . . [The rich should] provide for sending some of the superabundant poor females of our cities to those places.
Source: Matthew Carey, Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land, Ladies as well as Gentlemen (Philadelphia: L. Johnson, 1833), 13, 15, 33–34.
Emily G. Kempshall | Letter to the Rochester Female Charitable Society, 1838
[T]he Board . . . have asked my reasons for withdrawing my . . . members[hip]. . . . I reply . . . that I look upon the funds of your society, however judiciously distributed, among the destitute sick of our city, as being wholly inadequate to meet their necessities. . . . I dare not draw a single Dollar, to relieve one poor family, lest in doing this I rob another poorer family, perhaps of what they must have. . . . I know [also] . . . that whole Districts are appointed to females as visitors of the S[ociety] where no decent female should go, to look after and try to assist, their vile and degraded inhabitants. . . .
And now were I addressing the . . . Common Council of this City I would say, “Give the ladies power to point, in their visits of mercy, to a work House, where idle drunken fathers and mothers must go and work.” . . . [T]his being granted, the idle Drunken inhabitants . . . Being safely . . . out of the way of the sick members of their own families . . . the objection to becoming a visitor . . . will be lessened at once. . . .
[H]as not the day gone by, when your Flag of Charity may wave over its Lake, River, Canal, and Rail Road, inviting the outcasts of every city in the Union, . . . to seek . . . their subsistence from your bounty. . . . And so while your Banner, whose merciful insignia on the one side is Relief for the destitute sick, has been held up as a beacon of hope, it is painful to tell them to read the other side where want of funds has written Despair of further Relief.
Source: Emily G. Kempshall to President of the Female Charitable Society of Rochester, January 30, 1838, Rochester Female Charitable Society Papers, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.
Interpret the Evidence
How are poor women and families portrayed by Matthew Carey and Emily Kempshall, both leaders in benevolent reform in their cities? Who would Kempshall send to a workhouse if one existed in Rochester?
How might Carey and Kempshall respond to each other’s assessments of aiding the poor?
Put It in Context
What do these documents suggest about class tensions and conflicts in northern cities? How might the panic of 1837 have affected such conflicts?
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