¹ Johnson's remarks were made at the signing ceremony for the Economic Opportunity Act on 20 Aug. 1964. See “Administrative History of the Office of Economic Opportunity,” 52Google Scholar, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.

² Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Hearings before the AdHoc Subcommittee on the War on Poverty of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 88th Congress, 2nd Session, 29.

³ Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A., Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage, 1971), Ch. 9.Google Scholar The quotations are from p. 272.

⁴ Matusow, Allen J., The Unraveling of America: American Liberalism During the 1960s (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 120.Google Scholar

⁵ Patterson, James T., America's Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1985 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1986), 136.Google Scholar Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a contributor to Sargent Shriver's anti-poverty task force, goes further, claiming that “an immense opportunity to institute more or less permanent social changes – a fixed full employment programme, a measure of income maintenance – was lost while energies were expended in ways that very probably hastened the end of the brief period when such options were open.” Moynihan, , Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York: Free Press, 1969), 193.Google Scholar

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⁷ Ira Katznelson takes a different view, believing that it was the failure of post-war liberalism to break with the individualist tradition that paved the way for the subsequent rise of the Right in America. He considers that Truman era liberals spurned an historic opportunity to build upon “the social democratic potential of the New Deal.” Rather than act to “organize markets and mitigate market outcomes,” government “changed the locus of political debate from questions of social organization and class relations to issues of technical economics and interest group politics.” The Great Society “embedded the trajectory of the 1940s,” its hostility to marketplace intervention facilitating “the election of President Reagan on an explicit pro-market, anti-state platform.” See Katznelson, , “Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?” in Eraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 186–7.Google Scholar To this author, it seems more plausible to argue that the disappointing results of opportunity-based Great Society programmes during a period of growing social instability did in fact cause the dominant strain of American liberalism to embrace, by 1970, fundamentally “unAmerican” notions of income entitlement. The growth of the Right owed more to the Democratic Party's new identification with unpopular social democratic notions of income redistribution than to the conservatism of President Johnson's War on Poverty.

⁸ For a useful introduction to the dynamics of welfare state formation in America see Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda, “Understanding American Social Politics,” in Orloff, Weir, and Skocpol, , eds., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 3–27.Google Scholar

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¹⁶ Ibid., Title I, Part A, 586.

¹⁷ Johnson, Lyndon B., Public Papers of the President, 1964, I, 377.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Congressional Record, 23 07 1964, 16780.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, sec. 201, and sec. 205(d), U.S. Code, 595, 598.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., sec. 121, 599.

²¹ Congressional Record, 23 07 1964, 16781, 16783.Google Scholar

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³¹ For the relationship between the War on Poverty and federal employment policy, see Margaret Weir, “The Federal Government and Unemployment: The Frustration of Policy Innovation from the New Deal to the Great Society,” in Weir, Orloff, and Skocpol, eds., Politics of Social Policy, 149–90.Google Scholar Weir demonstrates that, while concern about poverty was generated in part by the unemployment problem, the Economic Opportunity Act can not be regarded as part of “a comprehensive active labour market policy” (Weir, 150).

³² Myrdal, Gunnar, “War on Poverty,” The New Republic, 8 02 1964, 14.Google Scholar

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³⁴ Ibid., 22 July 1964, 16632.

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³⁶ Matusow, , The Unraveling of America, 103–104.Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ Ibid., 6 Aug. 1964, 18307.

⁵⁰ President Johnson's remarks, Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 signing ceremony, 20 Aug. 1964. Cited in “Administrative History of the Office of Economic Opportunity,” 52, Johnson Library.

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⁵³ In 1964, average monthly AFDC payments totalled $140 per family, or less than 25% of average family earnings. Because the Social Security Act allows individual states to set benefits at whatever level they desire, payments varied from $212 per month in Illinois to as little as $39.47 in Mississippi. U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1965, 309.Google Scholar For average family earnings see ibid., 40.

⁵⁴ Congressional Record, 22 07 1964, 16612.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ibid., 5 Aug. 1964, 18298.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 6 Aug. 1964, 18310.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 25 July 1964, 16761.

⁵⁸ Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, House Hearings, 189.Google Scholar

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⁶⁰ Ibid., 1.

⁶¹ Cited by Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Crisis of Confidence (New York: Bantam, 1969), vii.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ Rep. Charles Weltner (D-Ga.), in ibid., 28 Jan. 1964, 1263.

⁶⁷ Matusow, , Unraveling of America, 119.Google Scholar

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⁷⁰ Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Senate Hearings, 207.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Moynihan, , Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, 24.Google Scholar

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⁷³ Myrdal, , “The War on Poverty,” in The New Republic, 8 02 1964, 15.Google Scholar The same hostility to racial preference is evident from the debate surrounding Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which sought to outlaw discrimination in employment). Dismissing the “bugaboo” that the creation of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission indicated a commitment to racial quotas, Hubert Humphrey insisted that “Title VII is designed to encourage hiring on the basis of ability and qualifications, not race or religion.” Robert Kennedy's Justice Department told Senator Joseph P. Clark (D-Pa.) that “any deliberate attempt to maintain a given balance would almost certainly run afoul of Title VII.” Congressional Record, 30 03 1964, 6549Google Scholar; and 8 Apr. 1964. 7207–10.

⁷⁴ Congressional Record, 5 08 1964, 18198.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Reported to John W. Carley: Memorandum to Yarmolinsky, Adam and McCarthy, Wilson, 20 07 1964Google Scholar, Office files of Bill Moyers, Box 38, Johnson Library.

⁷⁶ Memorandum, McMillan, to Johnson, , 10 08 1964Google Scholar, “Legislative History of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964,” Box 2, Johnson Library.

⁷⁷ Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Johnson and the Myths of Democracy,” in The New Leader, 25 05 1964, 18.Google Scholar

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⁷⁹ Walinsky, Adam, “Keeping the Poor in their Place: Notes on the Importance of being One-Up,” in The New Republic, 4 07 1964, 15.Google Scholar

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⁸¹ Reagan, Michael D., “For a Guaranteed Income,” New York Times Magazine, 7 06 1964, 20.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Ibid., 287–88.

⁸⁶ “Report No. 4, Resolutions Committee, U.A.W. Constitutional Convention, March 20–27, 1964,” reprinted in Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, House Hearings, 453–63.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Harrington, Michael, The Other America (New York: Penguin, 1963), 120.Google Scholar

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⁸⁹ Myrdal, , Challenge to Affluence, 46.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Rep. Dave Martin (R-Neb.) asked Robert F. Wagner, the Democratic mayor of New York City, whether he would support the notion of a $3,000 guaranteed annual income, helpfully observing that “we have this kind of plan worked out in Communist nations.” Wagner demurred, remarking that all he wanted was “to give some people the opportunity to get some dignity.” Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Cal) characterized the Ad Hoc Committee as “a group of private people who got together to express a point of view.” To suggest that their views had any relevance to the Economic Opportunity Act did “not make any sense at all.” Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, House Hearings, 746–47, 770–71.

⁹¹ For good accounts see Matusow, , Unraveling of AmericaGoogle Scholar, and Marris, Peter and Rein, Martin, Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1972.)Google Scholar

⁹² Matusow, , 126.Google Scholar

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⁹⁴ Ibid., 82.