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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 9. Economic Inequality - 3. The Value Premises
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212 An American Dilemma
induce Southern farmers and sharecroppers to have year-round gardens.
Public health programs were expanded, and the nation is even gradually
facing the task of organizing the care of the sick in a more socially protec-
tive way than hitherto.
Behind this great movement there is an unmistakable trend in social
outlook and political vaulations. As articulate opinion is gradually taking
form that there is a minimum standard of living below which no group of
people in the country should be permitted to fall. This idea, of course, is
not new in America; it is a development of the spirit of Christian neigh-
borliness which has been present in the American Creed from its beginning.®
But the emphasis is new. Now it is not only a question of humanitarianism;
it is a question of national social and economic welfare. Neither the polit-
ical conflicts raging around the proper means of providing help by public
measures nor the widespread uncertainty and disagreement concerning the
actual height of the minimum standard to be protected by those measures
should conceal the important fact that the American Creed is changing to
include a decent living standard and a measure of economic security among
the liberties and rights which are given this highest moral sanction.
As usual in America, the ideals are running far ahead of the accomplish-
ments. The new belief that the health, happiness, and efficiency of the
people can be raised greatly by improved living conditions is already just as
much in the forefront of public attention in America as in most progressive
countries in Europe and the British Dominions. Nowhere are so many
housing investigations carried out to demonstrate the correlation between
bad housing conditions and juvenile delinquency, tuberculosis, and syphilis
as in America.
Contrary to laissez-faire principles, various industries have long been
given government protection in the United States—most often by means
of the tariff. The recent development has shifted the motivation from
‘‘assistance-to-business” terms to ‘^social welfare” terms. This change in
motivation is not always carried out in the measures actually taken. The
agricultural policy may be pointed to as an example. If we except the work
of the Farm Security Administration, there are only weak attempts to
administer the public assistance given the farmers in accordance with their
individual needs; those farmers who have the highest incomes most often
also get the highest relief benefits from the A.A.A. If the trend does not
change its course, however, all economic policy is bound to come under the
orbit of social welfare policy.
At the same time, social welfare policy proper—^by an increasing stress
upon the preventive instead of the merely curative aspects—^is becoming
integrated with economic policy. Social welfare folicy is bound to become
looked ufon in terms of the economic criterion of national investment}
® See Chapter i, Section 5.
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