Charity Organization Society

Founders: Josephine Shaw Lowell, 1843-1905

Founding Year: 1877

Description: Founded in England in 1869, the Charity Organization Society movement began in the United States in New York the late 1870’s. Josephine Shaw Lowell, a prominent theoretician and organizer of the movement, sought to rationalize charitable support for poor families by consolidating charitable institutions and promoting scientific methods. Continuing antebellum "friendly visiting" by middle-class women volunteers, the COS was an early, punitive form of social work. During the catastrophic depression of 1893 Josephine Shaw Lowell resigned from the COS and began to work with the New York Consumers’ League to promote minimum wages for low-paid workers, believing that higher wages was the best cure for poverty. The growth of social work after 1900 made the COS a less prominent institution.

Organization Type: Association

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Elizabeth Glendower Evans and Progressive Reform: From Minimum Wage to Sacco and Vanzetti and the American Civil Liberties Union, 1907-1938

written by Jana Brubaker, fl. 2008 (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2009), 84 page(s),
Source: documents.alexanderstreet.com

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Elizabeth Glendower Evans and Progressive Reform: From Minimum Wage to Sacco and Vanzetti and the American Civil Liberties Union, 1907-1938

Elizabeth Glendower Evans and Progressive Reform: From Minimum Wage to Sacco and Vanzetti and the American Civil Liberties Union, 1907-1938