The Fundamental Institution: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms by Megan Birk (review)

Reviewed by: The Fundamental Institution: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms by Megan Birk Gabriel Loiacono The Fundamental Institution: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms By Megan Birk (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2022. Pp. 296. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $110.00; paperbound, $30.00; e-book, $19.95.) What do you picture when you think of a "poor farm"? It is probably a largely negative image, or one flavored by poor farms marketed as "haunted," like the Randolph County Infirmary of Indiana. But the poor farm was not all bad or scary. Social control interpretations of poor farms do not tell the whole story and neither do haunted tours. Megan Birk's The Fundamental Institution: Poverty, Social Welfare, and Agriculture in American Poor Farms fills out the story in important ways, focusing on poor farms' roles as communities, employers, public health facilities, and working farms. For decades after the Civil War, poor farms all over the United States were backbones of rural public health and public housing— centerpieces of local governance. The Fundamental Institution is richly grounded in archival sources from all over the continental United States, especially the Midwest (including Indiana) and northern California. The author seamlessly adds printed primary sources and an array of secondary sources to describe convincingly what poor farms were like, and how they changed between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Where classic studies, such as David J. Rothman's [End Page 163] The Discovery of the Asylum (1971) and Michael B. Katz's In the Shadow of the Poorhouse (1986), have emphasized the controlling aspects and failures of these institutions, Birk finds them also to be havens for many inmates, even as they require significant work from inmates and significant investment from local government. Although she cites numerous examples of abuse and poor conditions, it is also striking how often inmates communicated their comfort and satisfaction at these institutions. Birk highlights the voices of inmates, along with those of poor farm employees and their children. The chapters are arranged thematically, focusing on farmwork and farm management, women, mental health, old age, and physical health care. The demographic composition of poor farm inmates changed across eras with older men becoming a growing majority in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Inmates deemed insane were often the most capable agricultural workers in institutions. As inmates were separated into institutions for the insane and the general population, farmwork became less and less central. For many inmates, the changing nature of agricultural work, health crises, and/or a lack of family with resources made poor farms the best possible home. By the time the Great Depression began, however, poor farms started being closed in favor of direct relief. This, despite the reality that direct relief could not replace the role of poor farms in providing health-care, structure, and community. As Birk concludes, many of the critiques leveled at poor farms are still leveled at successor institutions like nursing facilities. "That these institutions be remembered for the services they provided," Birk argues, "is important in a nation where each generation is said to rediscover poverty" (p. 217). In light of this last quotation, one of the book's missed opportunities is to compare poor farms with their predecessor institutions in the previous century. For example, Tim Hitchcock's Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London (2004) examines urban workhouses that are strikingly similar to the poor farms in this book. Hitchcock describes "extensive, expensive, and remarkably comprehensive" institutions with a variety of important community services provided (p. 132). But The Fundamental Institution does so much so well, this is a very small critique. Birk very capably performs an important task here: bringing to our attention a stunning historical example of public investment in housing, healthcare, and work for those in need. [End Page 164] Gabriel Loiacono University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Copyright © 2024 Trustees of Indiana University