Trollinger analyzes the impact of unemployment in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s and the reaction to it by affected workers, social reformers, and government. During the 1920s, most unemployment was viewed as “voluntary” since work was always available; to encourage the search for work, charitable assistance was kept to a minimum. However, mass unemployment during the Great Depression made the voluntary-unemployment model unsustainable. Trollinger shows how groups of workers agitated for government-funded unemployment relief as well as for the provision of social insurance. Chicago’s extensive network of settlement workers supported these aims, and the New Deal legislation recognized that the unemployed, in distress through no fault of their own, were “entitled” to taxpayer-funded assistance. The fight to achieve worker-entitlement status is the central thesis of this clearly written monograph.
New Deal policies went part but not all the way to securing entitlement. The key work-relief agencies—the Federal Emergency Relief...