Lo, the Poor Volunteer: An Essay on the Relation between History and Myth

The role of the volunteer in American social welfare has a significant history that extends back into the nineteenth century. The replacement of the volunteer by the professional in the twentieth century has been a dramatic transformation, not only for social service but for the meaning of volunteerism itself. Recent efforts to revive volunteerism thus raise serious questions involving historic continuities and our use of the term as a means of defining service values and providing practical services.