The Poor: Who Cares? Dutch parliamentary debates about taking care of the poor in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

This thesis is about the changing view of the Dutch national parliament on state responsibility for taking care of the poor during the second half of the nineteenth century. The state, in this context, is understood as the national and local governments plus the public institutions. The thesis compares the debates about poor relief that took place in the Second Chamber, the Dutch lower house, in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Poor Laws that were passed in parliament after these debates, in 1854 and 1912, were based on a similar ‘subsidiarity’ principle, with ecclesiastical and private organizations playing the primary, and public organizations a subsidiary, role in the relief of the poor. These laws could give the impression that the national parliament, though it had become more interventionist in other areas, had not really changed its view on state responsibility for taking care of the poor during the second half of the nineteenth century. This thesis shows...Show moreThis thesis is about the changing view of the Dutch national parliament on state responsibility for taking care of the poor during the second half of the nineteenth century. The state, in this context, is understood as the national and local governments plus the public institutions. The thesis compares the debates about poor relief that took place in the Second Chamber, the Dutch lower house, in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Poor Laws that were passed in parliament after these debates, in 1854 and 1912, were based on a similar ‘subsidiarity’ principle, with ecclesiastical and private organizations playing the primary, and public organizations a subsidiary, role in the relief of the poor. These laws could give the impression that the national parliament, though it had become more interventionist in other areas, had not really changed its view on state responsibility for taking care of the poor during the second half of the nineteenth century. This thesis shows that this impression is not correct. Though the actual laws did not differ that much, the debates in the parliament certainly did. The central question that this thesis answers is: how did the Dutch national parliament’s view on taking care of the poor change during the second half of the nineteenth century? The historiography about the poor and social policies in the nineteenth-century Netherlands shows that this thesis, by specifically focusing on the debates in the Dutch national parliament in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, will produce new knowledge on how the parliamentary view on state responsibility for taking care of the poor changed during the second half of the nineteenth century. Also, by comparing the two debates, the thesis gives an example of how nineteenth-century developments can be linked to the emergence of social policies in the twentieth century. Furthermore, the topic of this thesis can be of interest for those who are interested in the current debate about welfare state reform and retrenchment. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter demonstrates how debate about a growing role of the state in the poor relief started already towards the end of the eighteenth century and explains what the Dutch nineteenth-century poor relief looked like. The second chapter gives a description of the mid-nineteenth-century debate. It first explains the political situation in the national parliament in which liberals and anti-revolutionaries were the important groups. Then it describes the different opinions in the debate. It shows that the debate did not focus on the question of whether relief should be given or not but on the question what the desirable role of the state was in the provision of poor relief. The majority in parliament followed Minister Van Reenen in his view that supporting the poor was in essence not a task of the state but a moral and religious duty and thus should preferably be left to society. For the moment, however, state interference had become indispensible and had to be taken into account in the law. In the Poor Law that was passed after the debate in 1854, the primary responsibility for poor relief was left to religious and private organizations. The state, however, had obtained the legal right to receive information about who these organizations were supporting. The third chapter explains how the Dutch government reformed the Poor Law in 1870 with regard to which municipality had to pay for public poor relief for people who had migrated. In an attempt to reverse the growth in public poor relief, the government decided that the municipality where people lived, rather than the municipality where people came from, had to cover the costs of public support given to migrants. Chapter 3 also addresses the changing political landscape, with the start of party politics and the emergence of the pillarized society, during the second half of the nineteenth century. New groups became politically active and became directly represented in the national parliament by members of newly founded mass political parties. The fourth chapter covers the Poor Law debate of the early twentieth century. The chapter explains that all the different speakers in the debate were in favour of a new Poor Law. However, while liberals and socialists were in favour of a more prominent role for the public poor relief organizations and hinted at financial support from the national state, the confessional parties remained faithful to the principle of confining public poor relief organizations to a subsidiary role. Also the confessional members, however, agreed on the necessity of having public poor relief organizations working alongside the religious and private ones. The fifth chapter compares the two Dutch debates and has a brief look at the poor relief situation in other countries. The international comparison supports the idea that the Dutch poor relief situation was quite unique. The comparison between the Dutch debates brings to the fore that the parliament’s view on poor relief had certainly changed during the second half of the nineteenth century. The continuing existence of public poor relief had been accepted, the national parliament had become the logical place to debate poor relief and there had even been talk about financial contribution from the national level.Show less

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The Poor: Who Cares? Dutch parliamentary debates about taking care of the poor in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries