In the early twentieth century, an era characterized by unprecedented industrial strife and violence, thousands of employers across the United States pioneered a new policy of labor relations called welfare work. The results of the policy were paternalistic practices and forms of compensation designed not only to control workers, but also to advertise the humanity of corporate capitalism to thwart the advance of legislated reform. In a burgeoning literature on the development of the U.S. welfare state, Andrea Tone offers a new interpretation of the importance of welfare capitalism in shaping its development.

Andrea Tone's profile page

Andrea Tone is Assistant Professor of History in the School of History, Technology, and Society at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Fluent and well-researched... This impressive work locates itself neatly in the existing literature and makes its own contribution by offering a sense of the structures, nuances and forms of early welfare work.

Labor History Review

Tone's panoramic analysis of welfare capitalist programs across the industrial landscape of Progressive era America challenges all previous works even as she acknowleges her debt to them.... Tone has written a compelling history... and a first-rate study which goes a long way to helping us understand why the American welfare state is so weak and so easily eviscerated today.

Journal of Social History

Andrea Tone's refreshing new volume deftly combines business, labor, cultural, and gender history to resituate walfare capitalism in its contingent historical setting.... Tone's work is thought-provoking and adds complexity to the historiography of welfare capitalism.

Annals of Iowa

Tone's basic thesis is that 'welfare work' provided a means for firms to forestall government regulation of working conditions and to improve their public image and relations with workers.... A thorough and thoughtful survey of an important episode in the development of corporate labor policy.

Choice

By incorporating the perspective of gender, labor, business, social, and political history, Tone adds significantly to our understanding of the development of welfare capitalism.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

A splendid book.

American Historical Review