This book challenges all previous interpretations of Josephine Shaw Lowell as a "genteel" elitist reformer. Such was the massive and pitiless industrialization of the nation after the Civil War that Lowell sought a new way to approach poverty. She rationalized charity toward hapless families and children in ways that established social responsibility for the welfare of the poor. This introduction of "scientific" methods in social work bridged two great eras of social reform, and created a civic maternalism which gave women opportunities to enlarge their presence in the public life of the country.