Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Out of Luck: Poor Australians and social welfare 1788-1988 (Australian experience)

0/5 ( ratings)

'The distribution of wealth is far more equal. To begin with, there is no poor class in the colonies. Comfortable incomes are in the majority, millionaires few and far between.'

This opinion, voiced a century ago by a British journalist on a tour of the colonies, sums up the widely-held and long-lived view that Australia was a working man's paradise, an egalitarian society free of the poverty afflicting other countries.

Such a view could only persist if the poor were ignored or treated as objects of charity, targets of condemnation, or merely useful allies in political campaigns. For the realities of Australia's social structure as it developed were always very different from the claims of the proponents of the 'Australian way of life'.

Out of Luck uncovers the history of the many who have always had to struggle hard to survive in this 'lucky' country and who have seldom shared in the rewards of a well endowed society. In telling the story of the poor, Stephen Garton draws on the findings of social history, welfare history and women's history and the writings of many others to present a lively account of an important feature of Australia's history - and present, and future.

Language: English

Pages: 226

Format: Kindle Edition

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Release: April 01, 1990

Out of Luck: Poor Australians and social welfare 1788-1988 (Australian experience)

0/5 ( ratings)

'The distribution of wealth is far more equal. To begin with, there is no poor class in the colonies. Comfortable incomes are in the majority, millionaires few and far between.'

This opinion, voiced a century ago by a British journalist on a tour of the colonies, sums up the widely-held and long-lived view that Australia was a working man's paradise, an egalitarian society free of the poverty afflicting other countries.

Such a view could only persist if the poor were ignored or treated as objects of charity, targets of condemnation, or merely useful allies in political campaigns. For the realities of Australia's social structure as it developed were always very different from the claims of the proponents of the 'Australian way of life'.

Out of Luck uncovers the history of the many who have always had to struggle hard to survive in this 'lucky' country and who have seldom shared in the rewards of a well endowed society. In telling the story of the poor, Stephen Garton draws on the findings of social history, welfare history and women's history and the writings of many others to present a lively account of an important feature of Australia's history - and present, and future.

Language: English

Pages: 226

Format: Kindle Edition

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Release: April 01, 1990

More books from Stephen Garton

Histories of Sexuality: Antiquity to Sexual Revolution

3.4/5 ( ratings)

Playing the Numbers

3.8/5 ( ratings)

New South Wales and the Great War

The Cost of War

Preserving the Past: The University of Sydney and the Unified National System of Higher Education, 1987–96

História da Sexualidade: Da Antiguidade à Revolução Sexual

The Cambridge History of Australia (vol. ii): The Commonwealth of Australia

Rate this book!

Write a review?