THE DESPISED POOR: Newburgh's War on Welfare

by Joseph P. Ritz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1966

If you recall watching Newburgh, New York's controversial City Manager tell the television cameras that the welfare roles of his fair city were infiltrated with chiselers, you will remember that this battle of the War on Poverty was fought with everything short of machine guns. Joseph Mitchell, a rightist thinker of sorts, ordered welfare recipients to pick up their checks at the police station, had them photographed like criminals, talked of the ""undesirable elements"" moving to Newburgh from the South--and not Dixiecrats, either--and issued his infamous ""Thirteen Points"" to correct the system which took from the rich to feed the poor. Later ruled illegal by the State, Mitchell's ""points"" and program were spears in the side of the city's Negroes, and at the same time the banner of an outraged business society which considered itself too long put upon by the weak and the poor. Ritz, as a reporter, covered most of the Mitchell regime. His portrait of the man and the city he ran is a clear record of the American mind socio-economic distemper, and it should be required reading for friends and foes of welfare.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Beacon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION