12 / CHRONICLESnVIEWSnCHARITY BEGINS AT HOMEnby Allan CarlsonnAlice Roosevelt Longworth, when she was asked hernopinion of her cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt, describednhim as “One third mush and two thirds Eleanor.” The samencould be said of FDR’s creation, the welfare state: one thirdnmush; two thirds Eleanor. The New Deal was revolutionarynin its scope, and like every social revolution of modern times,nit began as an effort to restore some form of precapitalistncommunity. The architects of the welfare state saw theirnhandiwork as an attempt to diminish anomie, to restore thengrounds for community under modern conditions. As onenadvocate put it, the welfare state was a “manifestation ofnsociety’s will to survive as an organic whole,” in a worldnwhere natural communities of sharing and caring no longernfunctioned.nThe family is among those communities said to be failingnin their altruistic tasks. In its approach to the family, thenWestern welfare state has taken two forms. In the first phase,nthe welfare state applied the communitarian model, seekingnto shore up a traditional family order. In the second phase,nthe more advanced welfare state has fallen back on anAllan Carlson is president of The Rockford Institute. Anversion of this article was delivered at the 1988 meetingnof The Philadelphia Society on April 23.nnnpeculiar form of individualism which aims at a post-familynorder. In tracing this evolution of the welfare state, keynquestions become: Are these two phases historically independent,nand the progression from the first to the second butnan accident of change? Or did the second phase follownnecessarily from the first? This discussion may also thrownlight on the prospects for a conservative welfare state.nThe modern welfare state is more than an ad hocncollection of services and programs. It is also a set of ideasnabout the shape of the social order, about the family, andnabout the roles of men and women. The first welfare state,nthe communitarian state, had its origins in the 19th centurynand had certain “social conservative” impulses. The bestknownnof these sources was the conservative paternalism ofnOtto von Bismarck, who in the late 1880’s linked thenprovision of social insurance, health care, and state old-agenpensions to the promulgation of Germany’s anti-Socialistnlaws.nThere were other sources: for example, the desire of labornleaders and reformers to protect family life from the logic ofnthe marketplace. A primary cause of poverty, they reasoned,nwas the poor fit of employment income to family size. Laborncalled for a family wage for men, to be constructed throughnminimum wage laws, the tight regulation of female andnchild labor, and state benefits.nA third, related source lay in the religious sphere,nparticularly Roman Catholicism. In Rerum Novarum, PopenLeo XIII described in moving terms the pressures placed onnworkers by the industrial system and the need for governmentalnresponse.nA fourth and more progressive source with conservativenroots was the “child saving” movement. Inspired by thenideas of the Victorian home, these early social intervenorsnused the power of the state to reform immigrants and thenurban poor, to shape them in a normative social image.nChildren — said to be neglected, poorly supervised, ornabused—were their point of entry into the home.nA fifth, still more remotely conservative source for thencommunitarian welfare state was social feminism. Unlikentheir sisters, the liberal feminists, social feminists celebratednthe differences between men and women. Women, theynsaid, were intended by nature as nurturers, and the task ofnmotherhood should be protected by the state. Throughnfigures such as Jane Addams, Barbara Armstrong, andnFrances Perkins, social feminism was a particularly strongnforce behind the American New Deal.nThe sixth and final source was nationalism, particularly ofnthe pro-natalist sort. By the early decades of this century.n