About the Book

"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a major transformation was occurring in many spheres of society: people with every sort of disability were increasingly being marginalized, excluded, and incarcerated. Disabled but still productive factory workers were being fired, and developmentally disabled individuals who had previously contributed domestic or agricultural labor in homes or on farms were being sent to institutions and poorhouses. [The author] pinpoints the origins and ramifications of this sea-change in American society, exploring the ways that public policy removed the disabled from the category of "deserving" recipients of public assistance, transforming them into a group requiring rehabilitation in order to achieve "self-care" and "self-support." By tracing the experiences of advocates, program innovators, and disabled people caught up in this epochal transition, Rose ... integrates disability history and labor history to show how disabled people and their families were relegated to poverty and second-class economic and social citizenship, with vast consequences for debates about disability, poverty, and welfare in the century to come"--

Book Synopsis

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans with all sorts of disabilities came to be labeled as "unproductive citizens." Before that, disabled people had contributed as they were able in homes, on farms, and in the wage labor market, reflecting the fact that Americans had long viewed productivity as a spectrum that varied by age, gender, and ability. But as Sarah F. Rose explains in No Right to Be Idle, a perfect storm of public policies, shifting family structures, and economic changes effectively barred workers with disabilities from mainstream workplaces and simultaneously cast disabled people as morally questionable dependents in need of permanent rehabilitation to achieve "self-care" and "self-support."

By tracing the experiences of policymakers, employers, reformers, and disabled people caught up in this epochal transition, Rose masterfully integrates disability history and labor history. She shows how people with disabilities lost access to paid work and the status of "worker" -- a shift that relegated them and their families to poverty and second-class economic and social citizenship. This has vast consequences for debates about disability, work, poverty, and welfare in the century to come.

Review Quotes

"No Right to Be Idle is a pathbreaking work that rests on prodigious research and penetrating insights. Sarah Rose has produced the first fully historical and vastly important study we have on the social welfare origins of disability as a category for law, policy, and the organization of work." --Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara

"Accessible writing and evocative case studies across seven chronologically and thematically arranged chapters reveal the well-intentioned but paternalistic operation of early disability services. Highly recommended."--CHOICE

"An important contribution to the fields of labor history and disability history."--Journal of American History

"Has much to offer historians of labor, disability, poverty, and public policy. By revealing historical construction of disabled people's exclusion from the paid labor force, Rose encourages scholars to think complexly about the meanings of work, the limits of the status of 'worker, ' and the connections between market-based labor, social standing, and citizenship in American history."--LABOR Review

"Integrates disability history and labor history to examine how, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, people with disabilities lost access to paid work and acquired the status of morally questionable dependents in need of permanent rehabilitation."--Law & Social Inquiry

"Rich in historical context, rigorously researched, and powerfully argued, Sarah Rose's book is a superb social history of disability from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s. Through a series of exquisitely and painstakingly rendered case studies, No Right to Be Idle is an excellent illustration of the many complex relationships among disability, work, productivity, and citizenship."--Michael Rembis, University at Buffalo

"Rose's scholarship in this book is exemplary. The clarity and breadth of her arguments are built on a solid foundation of primary-source material and secondary literature. Will stand as an important milestone in the maturation of disability history as a field and will open up promising new areas for further inquiry."--American Historical Review

"Well worth reading. . . . Rose's prodigious research . . .[and] her reminder of how people with disabilities were integrated into early-nineteenth-century America can perhaps help families, employers, and American society reimagine disability and productive citizenship for the future."--Australasian Journal of American History