Lecture 04: Poverty and its Fatal Diagnosis

Yesterday we introduced the topic of poverty in the late nineteenth century and looked at its dimensions and diagnosis. We saw that the poor were blamed for their own poverty, an insensitivity that only made problems worse. Because the battery failed on my microphone and the lecture was not recorded, I made this special podcast providing a condensed (in fourteen minutes) overview of the lecture. Next time we will look at a case study of tenement house reform and the discovery of poverty in the 1890s to round out our look at the topic of poverty. it was a problem that would have to await the progressive reformers after the turn of the century to be seriously addressed.

The Dimensions and Diagnoses of Poverty in the Age of Excess (video iPod format)