Tag: James Mohr

‘A Hard Problem to Handle’; Sewage in New York Harbor and the Fight Against the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission

Presenter: Zeph Schafer (History, Economics)

Mentor: James Mohr

Oral Presentation

Panel C: “Human Environments” Coquille/Metolius Rooms

Concurrent Session 2: 10:30-11:45am

Facilitator: Matt Nelson

From 1905 to 1921, the states of New York and New Jersey fought over New Jersey’s right to build a modern sewage treatment facility close to the border between the two states. In New York, concerned state officials claimed that New Jersey’s sewage would overwhelm the already polluted New York harbor, while New Jersey contended that its modern treatment technology would make its sewage disposal unnoticeable. This research used official state and city documents, court records and contemporary newspaper reports to investigate the legal fight between the states. In conclusion, the research reveals how the interstate fight did not defend the public health at stake. Instead, the battle ignored the need to relieve New Yorkers of the sewage from their own city and postponed the introduction of an effective sewage treatment project in New Jersey by almost twenty years.

War and the Benign State: The Second World War and the Growth of the British Welfare State

Presenter: Walter James (History)

Mentor: James Mohr

Oral Presentation

Panel C: “Technology and Government” Coquille/Metolius Rooms

Concurrent Session 1: 9:00-10:15am

Facilitator: Melina Pastos

Historians and social scientists of Britain have noted its rapid transition from the Second World War to its modern welfare state. The causal relation between World War II and the British welfare state had been a subject of scholarly debate since the 1950s. After tracing this scholarly discourse, this article shows how the “warfare state” acted as a catalyst in the formation of the postwar “welfare state.” It does this by examining several wartime factors. What were the effects of air raid evacuations and the military episodes in 1939 and 1940 on wartime social policy? How conducive was the war economy to the transition to peacetime welfare state? How did academic and public opinion develop before and during war, and what was the popular and political significance of the Beveridge Report? Answering these questions shows the war and the need to sustain public morale compelled the government to implement several social policies and to make promises of a postwar welfare reform, which in turn helped create a wide agreement among the public and academic circles on the need of a fundamental social reform after the war. The Second World War, in short, played a significant role in enabling the postwar Labour government to establish the British welfare state. The implication of this conclusion is that the first modern welfare state owes its birth in large part to the most destructive war in history.