The American Scene

THE growth of a complex commercial and industrial society revolutionized the British scene during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the eighteenth century the bonds that had unified British society during the major part of the mercantilist era were loosened, and the new social, political, and economic ideologies replaced earlier systems of thought and provided the rationale for a contract society. The poor law reform of 1834 symbolized the triumph of the new era. In America, too, assistance policy showed striking parallels with the formula of the English Poor Law Commission. The series of state reports in the 1820s in