The problem of poverty: the Elberfeld System and transatlantic social reform.

This work investigates the transnational history of poverty and social reform by examining the ways in which German, British, and American reformers looked to a local form of German poor relief, called the Elberfeld System, as a model for solving the Social Question. In tracing the emergence and application of the Elberfeld System in its origin city, this work explains how the system was instrumental in defining what it meant to be poor, what responsibilities a community had towards those in need, and the ways individuals sought to rid society of the problem of poverty. Additionally, the transnational allure of the Elberfeld System had a direct impact over the ways reformers in Great Britain and the USA sought to mitigate poverty's effects in their own locations and reveals that state and national frameworks for tacking poverty were actually the result of a sustained transnational dialogue between the leading industrial nations of the late nineteenth century. This work addresses how members of the middle classes believed that their socio-economic position engendered a responsibility in overseeing those in need. By establishing a personal relationship between themselves and the poor, the middle class guided the behaviour of the impoverished in more favourable directions. Rather than allowing the poor to define for themselves their needs and the causes behind it, poverty was defined within the hands of those in positions of authority. The transnational attraction of the Elberfeld System and its relationship to civic responsibility made its solutions to solving the Social Question not a unique German phenomenon but something worth emulating by British and American reformers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]