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Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, Volume 6, Number 2, pp. 131-160
© 1999 Oxford University Press

"I Only Ask You Kindly to Divide Some of Your Fortune with Me": Begging Letters and the Transformation of Charity in Late Nineteenth-Century America

RUTH CROCKER

This essay examines clients' strategies and self-representation in begging letters to two female philanthropists (Olivia [Mrs. Russell] Sage and Helen Miller Gould) at the turn of the century. The letters expose the contradictory relations of philanthropy in an age of corporate capitalism when charity was becoming more bureaucratic and more "scientific." I situate the appeals on behalf of voluntary, benevolent, and reform associations, as well as individuals, in the context of new technologies of benevolence such as casework. The late nineteenth century bureaucratization of charity made it ever harder for beggars to prove themselves deserving. Thus we find the emergence of what I call the "standard of living begging letter" that anticipates claims for recognition based on the material needs of consumers and a gendered concept of class.


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