Amidst the current debates on the future of welfare, one voice has been conspicuously absent: that of the unemployed and underprivileged. The result of almost a half-century of research, America Before Welfare traces the leadership and activities of the unemployed from industrialization to the outbreak of World War II. It is at once a profound work of history and an anecdotal window onto America's past, in the days before FDR's New Deal.