An Education in the Validity of Pluralism: The Meeting between Presbyterian Mission Teachers and Hispanic Catholics in New Mexico, 1870–1912

An examination of the Protestant women's home mission enterprise at the turn of this century offers an opportunity to chart the process by which women reformers came to redefine the responsibilities of civil government, a crucial first step in the fashioning of a welfare state. More importantly, it provides insight into the alteration of the existing social relations between different ethnic groups. The welfare state was not just the creation of one class, or one group, of social reformers. Like those who provided social services, those who received the services played a central role in their development. In her critique of the argument that welfare agencies were little more than instruments of social control, Linda Gordon has written that the “social control experience was not a simple two-sided tradeoff in which the client sacrificed autonomy and control in return for some material help. Rather, the clients helped shape the nature of the social control itself.” Gordon concludes that we err in thinking of the “welfare state” only as a “campaign spearheaded by elites,” and in so doing may overlook the “pressure” that clients or recipients exerted for these welfare reforms. The welfare state was not just a paternalistic agency of social control but was also a means by which oppressed groups could gain greater autonomy and empowerment.