Published by EH.NET (November 2000)
Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, The Logic of Charity: Amsterdam, 1800-1850.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. xv + 242 pp. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN:
0-312-22853-8.
Reviewed for EH.NET by George R. Boyer, Department of Labor Economics, School
of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University.
This book presents a detailed analysis of the role played by poor relief in
Amsterdam in the first half of the nineteenth century. Marco van Leeuwen
examines poor relief from the perspectives of both the local elite, who
administered the system, and the poor. He contends that Amsterdam’s system of
relief served an important function for both groups. It was a major part of a
cost-minimizing control strategy for the elite, and also part of a low-risk
survival strategy for the poor, who viewed relief as a right and made frequent
use of it.
In Chapter 1 van Leeuwen develops a model of the role played by poor relief in
pre-industrial Europe. He argues that the local elite had several reasons —
both economic and non-economic — for providing poor relief. Economically, the
payment of poor relief to underemployed low-skilled workers in seasonal or
casual labor markets was a low cost method for maintaining a reserve of labor.
Socially and politically, poor relief was a means of stabilizing the existing
social order and preventing unrest. The medical services associated with poor
relief — such as mandatory smallpox vaccinations — reduced the threat of
infectious diseases and epidemics, which often began in poor districts but
spread to middle and upper class neighborhoods. Finally, some of the elite
viewed assisting the poor as their religious duty, a “prerequisite of
spiritual salvation.” The poor viewed poor relief as one of several
complementary sources of income. They combined wage income, poor relief,
credit from local shopkeepers, the pawning of goods, assistance from friends
and relatives, and sometimes semi-legal activities, such as begging, in their
constant struggle to achieve a subsistence income. The elite offered poor
relief, and the poor accepted it, because both groups felt that it was in
their interests to do so.
Chapter 2 provides a broad outline of how the system of poor relief worked in
early nineteenth century Amsterdam. Poor relief largely was administered by
religious denominations. The major relief institutions were the Reformed
Charity, the Municipal Charity, the Catholic Charity, the Lutheran Charity,
and the Dutch-Israelite (Ashkenazi) Charity, corresponding to the major
religious denominations in the city. Small religious groups such as the
Mennonites also ran their own charities. The Municipal Charity was a public
institution, which offered assistance to poor Protestants who were not aided
by one of the religious charities. All of the charities except the Municipal
Charity, which was funded by taxes, were financed by voluntary donations.
Chapters 3 and 4 examine poor relief as a control strategy of the elite and as
a survival strategy of the poor, while Chapter 5 examines alternative control
and survival strategies. Each of the religious charities provided relief only
to people who had been church members for some specified number of years.
Those Protestants who did not qualify for relief could apply to the Municipal
Charity for assistance. The number of poor people assisted by Amsterdam
charities was enormous. From 1829 to 1854, approximately 25 percent of the
city’s population each year received “regular assistance, either throughout
the year or in the winter only.” Given van Leeuwen’s estimate that a third of
Amsterdam’s population lived at or below the poverty line, it would appear
that nearly four out of five poor persons received regular poor relief. The
vast majority of those assisted received outdoor relief; only about 10 percent
were relieved in orphanages, old-people’s homes, or workhouses. A quarter of
those on outdoor relief were assisted by the Municipal Charity, the rest were
assisted by the religious institutions. Those granted poor relief fell into
certain groups: the elderly, the sick and infirm, able-bodied workers with
large families, and widows with children.
To determine how poor relief was financed, van Leeuwen examined the account
books of the five largest charities for the period 1829-54. He found that 37
percent of the income of these charities came from collections (offertories,
alms boxes, door-to-door collections), donations, and bequests, 23 percent
came from the municipal subsidy, and 31 percent came from income from
properties owned by the charities, and the sale of property. Given that the
city obtained the majority of its revenue from taxes on food, van Leeuwen
concludes that the municipal subsidy largely represented payments by the poor
for their own relief. Even if we assume that all collections, donations, and
bequests came from the elite and the middle classes, they still paid less than
40 percent of the cost of relief.
Data on the occupations of adult able-bodied males granted relief shows that a
large share were unskilled casual laborers employed in port-related work. In
1830-54 51 percent of the men newly registered for relief with the Municipal
Charity were employed at the port; in 1859 the port provided work for 16
percent of the male labor force. The data support van Leeuwen’s labor reserve
theory. However, the amount of assistance given to each family was meager. It
was not possible to live on poor relief alone; relief benefits had to be
combined with other sources of income. While benefit levels were small, van
Leeuwen argues that they were large enough to keep most of the poor from
adopting undesirable (from the point of view of the elite) survival strategies
— from migrating elsewhere in search of work, turning to crime or begging,
deserting their children, or precipitating unrest. That is, the system of poor
relief enabled the elite to maintain a necessary labor reserve at a relatively
low cost. Alternative control strategies, such as wage increases, putting the
poor in workhouses or “pauper factories,” employing seasonal migrants, or
regulating the price of bread, were more expensive or less reliable.
Similarly, van Leeuwen contends that poor relief was “the key survival
strategy of the Amsterdam poor,” although it had to be combined with other
strategies such as obtaining credit from shopkeepers and landlords and
assistance from neighbors. The poor made frequent use of poor relief because,
compared to alternative survival strategies, it was relatively remunerative
and entailed no risks.
Overall, van Leeuwen’s arguments concerning the role of poor relief are
convincing. However, there are important issues that relate to the role of
poor relief as a control and survival strategy that are not discussed. In
particular, there is little if any discussion of how charities responded to
economic downturns. Most of the data on relief expenditures, numbers and types
of paupers relieved, and occupations of applicants for relief are reported
only for long periods of time. For example, Table 3.10 reports that on average
in 1829-54 the five largest Amsterdam charities spent 580,000 guilders per
year on relief, but does not report how much was spent each year from 1829 to
1854. Fluctuations in economic activity must have caused the demand for poor
relief to vary considerably from one year to the next. If the elite used poor
relief as a control strategy to maintain a labor reserve, then expenditures to
able-bodied workers should have increased during downturns. How did charities
cope with the additional demand for relief? A quarter of their funds came from
income generated by properties they owned. This income was presumably fixed,
or might even have declined during downturns. Did collections increase, or
were charities forced to sell some of their property to raise money to assist
the poor? Did the role of the Municipal Charity increase significantly during
downturns? Finally, it would be useful to know more about where the property
owned by the religious charities came from. The income generated by these
properties significantly reduced the cost to the elite of relieving the poor,
and must have been a key reason why poor relief was less expensive than other
control strategies.
In sum, while there remain issues to be addressed, The Logic of Charity
is an important book that significantly increases our knowledge of poor relief
in early nineteenth century Amsterdam, and provides a model of the role played
by poor relief that will be of use to scholars studying relief elsewhere in
pre-industrial Europe. Marco van Leeuwen has done a good job of laying out the
alternatives faced by both the upper and middle classes who paid for and
administered poor relief, and the poor who made use of it.
George R. Boyer is the author of An Economic History of the English Poor
Law, 1750-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1990), and of “The Historical
Background of the Communist Manifesto,” Journal of Economic
Perspectives, Vol. 12 (Fall 1998).