The value of Bellows' study is twofold: first, it offers increased knowledge of the lives of the white lower classes, including their work and wage patterns and family structures; second, it provides insight into the attitudes of the urban elite who distributed public alms and sat on the boards of various charities. The form of poor relief in the South closely resembled that in the North, and indeed overseers of the poor in the South often evaluated their own efforts by comparing them with those of northern cities. Bellows finds, however, that the motivation for public benevolence differed greatly between the two regions. Unlike northern humanitarianism, which grew from a philosophical liberalism that moved northerners to scrutinize and then attempt to reform their society, the benevolence of the southern elite derived from the same set of paternalistic assumptions about the hierarchical rather than democratic nature of society that directed their treatment of slaves.
來源: Google Book