Chapter 4: The Battle of Newburgh

Hey, it's Chrissy, you're listening to the uncertain hour. We're going to pick back up right where last episode left off, with producer Peter Ballon on Rosen, and the story of an explosive battle over welfare in Newberg, New York, a battle that would eventually influence welfare across America. Here's Peter. On May 1, 1961, Newberg City officials tried a new tactic in weeding out welfare cheats. In the early morning, in front of police headquarters, this line started to form. First a few people, then some more. Eventually, a long line of Newbergers, white and black, mostly women, many with infants in their arms, all with one thing in common. They were all there to get welfare cheques. Many have described it as a pitiful scene because the people who are on welfare obviously, many of them had, you know, reasons why they had their disabilities or they were elderly or mothers with trying to wrangle children, you know, and keep them in line as they're waiting. Johanna Poryon, the historian for Orange County where Newberg's located, she took me to the spot. At the time of the 1960s, the police station was in the basement here of City Hall. A building on a lively corner with red and green siding. Some neatly trimmed bushes, a few concrete steps. For years, City officials had blamed welfare for attracting new poor people to town. They claimed would rather get a government check than work. Officials decided that as part of this idea of getting people to work, they needed to see the faces of the people that were on welfare and determine whether or not they were truly eligible. Usually cheques were mailed, but this month, City officials ordered people to pick them up here at the police station. People like these Newberg residents from a 1962 NBC News documentary. What the welfare gives me and the kids, every angle that I see that I can make this more than strict as is that what I do. You try to save pennies, which is completely impossible because you just can't stretch the money that far. At the police station that day, inside, there was a surprise interrogation waiting. Over the course of the day, police took 250 welfare recipients into a fingerprinting room and grilled them about their identity. Their sex lives, their drinking habits, and when they last worked. Folks to ill or old to leave home found police knocking on their doors with the same questions. At the center of all this was Newberg's new city manager, Joseph Mitchell, an ambitious chain-smoking man who drove flashy cars and never shied away from getting into the headlines. The man who came up with the idea for this police interrogation. A woman came into the police station to congratulate the city manager. The local paper quoted her saying, as a taxpayer, I resent and have long resented my tax money being used to support people who are capable of earning their own living. But when reporters actually talked to welfare recipients, they often had been capable of earning their own living. They just needed help now. I paid taxes when I worked. Now I'm getting something back, I could figure it that way, but I don't. I figured that people's being good to me. I was able to make a good living for myself, but through sickness, more than anything else, we just had to lose everything. As the day wore on, the line of the police station grew. The paper spoke to a white-haired woman who had waited in line for an hour and a half. She was 71. This event, this sneak attack, police interrogation of welfare recipients in Newberg, it has a name. The muster. I mean, that's not referred to. Why the muster, that's such a funky term. Because this is a revolutionary war city. We speak like that here. I think that... The muster. The muster. I mean, that's what you do when the mill... You think of it as a military muster. Which is technically a formal gathering of troops for inspection. And do they find any people who are fraudsters? Nothing that I've seen reported. You'd think something as drastic as a surprise police interrogation of welfare recipients would mean like half of them were scamming the city. But no. And they were able to find anybody who was truly a chisler, as they liked to call people who were taking advantage of the system. Chisler. That's a term you hear over and over during this era. Which opens the right of moral chislers and loafers to squat on the really throes forever. We're not looking for chislers as the average person understands it. Mr. Mitchell, part-trades. Public welfare as an open cash register. Into which thousands of free loaders, chislers, loafers and transients are free to dip their hands at the taxpayer's expense. Chislers. Chislers. The idea of a chisler is somebody who's, you know, chiseling rather than working. It's a term for some of these people that they believed were taking advantage of the system. I feel like it's such an evocative term, right? You can like see somebody kind of like cracking and carving away at this kind of big beautiful thing. At the city, right? Carving away at the assets of the city or something like that. But yeah, it was, it was a term that that Mitchell liked to use. Police grilled 336 people the day of the muster. They didn't find a single chisler. They didn't find a single person getting welfare to evade work. Basically this muster, it was a buster. But to city manager Joseph Mitchell, the fact they couldn't find anyone, that was proof. Proof it would take even harsher tactics to find welfare cheats. Things really escalate. That's when national attention turns to Newberg. Welcome to the uncertain hour. I'm Chrissy Clark. This season we're looking at the welfare to work industrial complex. The mandatory work that our cash welfare system is based on today, how for profit companies make money off that system, and the forces that are now pushing to bring work requirements to even more government benefits. Even if there's not much evidence, those requirements help people climb out of poverty. On today's episode, we're going back in time to look at one of America's first welfare to work systems. And what that early attempt at putting work requirements into government benefits was designed to accomplish. It's the story of one man in a small city that started to change the way some Americans think about welfare. One moment in history, when the expectation that certain people needed to be forced to work really began gaining momentum in our system to help poor people. We spent last episode looking at how a rumor that new black people were moving to Newberg, New York, to live on welfare, riled up the city. And how across the country, suspicions grew about people getting welfare right as the number of black people turning to it was growing. On today's show, producer Peter Ballonon Rosen brings us back to Newberg and to the story of city manager Joseph Mitchell, a guy who wanted news reporters to pay attention to him, and to write about his bold plan to crack down on welfare cheats, a plan that would ricochet across America and help shape the laws that people getting government aid still contend with today. Here's Peter again. Chapter four, the Battle of Newberg. After the mustard, city manager Joseph Mitchell had a dilemma on his hands. Newbergers came out on either side of whether a surprise police interrogation was a good way to crack down on welfare fraud or plain harassment of the poor. State officials came to town to investigate whether Newberg had broken laws. Reports about everything became national news in the New York Times. Newberg's welfare crackdown made waves far outside of Newberg, even if the mustard itself was a flop. So the city found itself with two options. He's up on their scrutiny of welfare or double down. Despite not finding any chisellers, city manager Joseph Mitchell essentially declares war on welfare in Newberg. At the time, the average cash payments to people who weren't old disabled or blind ranged from $25 to $32 a month, so up to about $300 in today's dollars. Money for food, clothing, transportation. Welfare also covered rent and utilities. City manager Joseph Mitchell, he whips up this plan for people getting this money. City manager Mitchell began a vigorous attack on the city's public assistance program. Together with the city council came up with a 13 point plan for getting tough with welfare. These 13 strict new welfare rules. Do you hear this being called a 13 point plan? So very strictions on welfare eligibility and payments. Do you hear it being called the Mitchell plan? A plan that would become a blueprint for other cities. The 13 points in Newberg took existing welfare rules from across the country and pushed them even further. After the 13 points, the city could kick unmarried mothers off of welfare if they had more kids. The city could take children away from welfare recipients whose home lives were deemed unfit. And each year, the city would cut off welfare to all welfare recipients after three months, unless they were disabled or elderly. Mary McTamony, Newberg's official city historian, says the 13 points came with all these moral judgments baked in. We know best. We know who is a worthy human and who is not. And in 13 points, we are going to determine your worthiness. Out and about in the city, city manager Joseph Mitchell maintained the key issue was employment. He believed welfare recipients had failed to earn their own living. So they needed to be made responsible for finding work because of what he called quote, the irresponsibility and godlessness of man. At a noisy community meeting about the 13 points, city manager Joseph Mitchell set dressed in suit and thin black tie. He smirked as the crowd got riled up. A local pastor stood up. I wondered, sir, if you would be kind enough to publish in the newspapers, perhaps even nationwide, the fact that you have not found any chislers because what disturbs me, sir, is an air of suspicion. And I just like to wonder if you would be able to do this. Perhaps we're any back to this. We feel that there are a lot of technically qualified people on the roles who are not actually truly needy. So city manager Joseph Mitchell put this big idea into the 13 points. Make welfare recipients work. Read the city historian says in the 13 points, there's this early example of welfare work requirements. Point two, which had able-bodied men on relief of any kind. Are to be assigned to the chief of building maintenance for work assignments on a 40-hour work week. Men who collected cash payments for people in immediate need of housing, food or clothing. Now in order to get that money, they'd have to work for the city, like cleaning streets or clearing land if they weren't working already. We're not going to really just boot them to the curb. We're going to give them the chance to earn that money we give them. Beyond that formal go-do work for the city if you're not working already requirement, point three would cut off welfare if someone turned down a job offer. Point five would deny welfare to anyone who quit their last job. Animals and regulations that seem on their face designed to weed out lazy people make sure they're working. Which could make sense if you believe people only turned a welfare if they're total lazy heads. But if you take a second and look at who was actually targeted by the proposed rules, Tamara Busack, the French scholar writing a book about Newberg, she says you can connect everything in this code back to the rumor going around the city. But Newberg has become a haven for welfare recipients and for African Americans who would rather get public assistance than work. And that signs and bus stations and train stations in the south were telling people move to Newberg to live for free on welfare. Newberg's demographics had changed rapidly in the 50s. New black people were moving to Newberg from the south, while many white residents moved out to suburbs. In a decade, the black population nearly tripled. City leaders had looked around and blamed welfare. Tamara says they used the 13 points to target the city's new black population. With the idea that if you force these people to work, it's going to rehabilitate them in a way it's going to make them more fit for life. And we see this interesting thing happen. Unlike places in the south, which at the time explicitly had laws about where black people could sit and drink and go to school, Newberg wasn't as blatant. They took a different approach. But how do you say black people in city policy without saying black people? You find a synonym, obviously. Johannes says that's where point eight of 13 comes in. It said newcomers to Newberg could only get welfare if they had proof a job offer originally brought them to town. When you talk about a newcomer who are you really talking about, it's not new faces, it's new faces of black men and women and children. City manager Joseph Mitchell didn't mince his words. We found that many of the folks who came in our city, they just had no plans. They were just vegetables in a sense. He said, for example, and I quote, they are attempting to destroy us racially and statistically. It's a very blunt, very straightforward racial accusation. You know that the white population in Newberg is being replaced by this newly arrived African-American population. But despite their rhetoric, when you look at the numbers in Newberg, it was not a place overrun by welfare recipients of any race. A surprisingly small number of people were actually getting any form of government assistance at all. The 900 or so people getting welfare, which included many children, made up 3% of the entire population in Newberg, actually just below the statewide average. Journalists sat down with City Manager Joseph Mitchell to push him on this rule that seemed targeted at the city's new black population. Mr. Mitchell, do you feel that a person ought to be permitted to move freely from one state to another in search of job options? Absolutely. All the American customers. Well, certainly is, but your residency restrictions that you required, a actual job contract for Africans receiving relief. Yes, so that's nothing different than the US Immigration Service requires. You try and get into this country and see the red tape you'll go through, you have to have a sponsor. But I'm not talking about coming from another country. The analogy is the same. Except that we're all Americans here. And it is fine to say that you believe in it, but do you really, if you set up standards that rigid? No, let me prove this way. Migration improvement opportunity is the American way. Of course. But not at the expense of the taxpayer. With these 13 points, Newberg united a national conversation about how the welfare roles might just be full of lazy free loaders and something needed to be done. Not beds and articles started appearing everywhere, talking about Newberg's revolutionary work first, welfare second plan. The New York Herald Tribune printed the entire 13 point code on their front page. Down in Florida, before Lauderdale News wrote, quote, we think it is in the great American tradition that all those who can do so work for their daily bread. Soon articles about the plan, some positive, some not, came out in papers in Chicago, North Carolina, San Francisco. Minneapolis, Johanna, the county historians says the 13 points were so popular. Literal fan mail came in. 15,000 letters come in from the public. 15,000. 15,000 letters in support of Mitchell's plan. Okay, that's, I mean, I guess it's not like dollars where we have to say in $1960. 15,000 is 15,000. That is a lot. Yeah, there was, there was widespread support. Newberg City Hall had to hire an extra secretary to deal with the letters. But not everyone was on board with the city manager and his 13 points. Critics in the press said, this seems pretty mean and stingy. Groups like the NAACP came out to say, this seems pretty racist. And state officials said, yeah, this might also be pretty illegal. And what would happen next would make those three points of pushback, pretty stingy, pretty racist, pretty illegal, really come to light. Here is like the New York Times wrote editorials calling the 13 points cruel and unusual punishment for the crime of being poor. A local labor leader compared city manager Joseph Mitchell to detective Javier, the villain and laym is who dedicated his life to tracking down a man who stole a loaf of bread. But Johannes says city manager Joseph Mitchell was like, uh-uh, his 13 points were really about this larger idea. You can't be a fully functioning person in this world without having a deep work ethic. And he sees the welfare system as a blockade, you know, to that self development that's necessary. So he spins this not just into something political, but also into something moral and personal that in order to be a whole person, you need to know the value of work. But plenty of those people that city manager Joseph Mitchell insisted needed to know about the value of work, they knew how to work just fine already. And they decided to fight back against his new welfare rules. That's after a break. When Newberg's 13 points became city policy, there was one group that heard the racial dog whistles that city manager Joseph Mitchell was blowing with his welfare plan loud and clear. To the local NAACP, the 13 points were clearly aimed at black people. One of Newberg's local NAACP leaders, the Reverend William D. Burton, he'd announced the plan. Denounced the welfare plan as a policy of containment to stop migrations from the south. This is Ramona Burton, reading Reverend Burton's words. Reverend William D. Burton is my father. I was considered his baby and I was very close with my father. Ramona, big smile, lover of houseplants, says her father Reverend Burton was a kind man, who often gave sermons focused on civil rights. Sitting on her couch, she tells me he was a type of guy to keep his kids home from school on MLK Day, even before it was a national holiday. He was past her at the region's largest black Baptist church. Everywhere we went, I mean, it was always somebody speaking to him. I mean, our telephone, oh my gosh, our telephone, always, I mean, it rang day and night. Ramona was three years old when this welfare controversy happened. Her dad, Reverend Burton, who had moved to Newberg from North Carolina, he pushed back against the welfare plan. I had to read a quote from her father in a book about Newberg's war on welfare. The city should realize that when a person is hungry, he migrates looking for food. He doesn't have to have a job offer. Any place is better than where he is. The people who come here know nothing of the welfare system. They come looking for a job. Ramona says people she grew up next to in Newberg did not migrate to the city looking for welfare. That doesn't even make sense. People are just coming for opportunities. I don't think people came here saying, oh, I'm going to go to Newberg and become, you know, subjugated to racism so I can get welfare money. I mean, really? She says it's one of those clear examples of when the government cracks down on black people and bars them from helper opportunities. Then the system turns around and says, yeah, but they did it to themselves. The national black press to note of how changes to welfare policy could be used to target a city's black population. The New York Amsterdam news, one of the country's largest and oldest black newspapers, denounced the 13 points as illegal black codes. So Reverend Burton and the NAACP, they started raising alarm bells that these welfare rules, supposedly all about work, were actually all about race. They write to the governor of New York. They write to, you know, the senators of New York and the representatives in the House of Representatives and, you know, saying, be careful, this is what's happening in Newberg and this has to be stopped. So our governor at the time in New York was Nelson Rockefeller, who is against the idea of implementing harsh rules on individuals who are in need. Governor Nelson Rockefeller was not a fan of the 13 points. The state is concerned with the legality of all this. Local, state and federal governments chipped in for welfare costs. State officials said, yeah, you might not be able to do these 13 points with our money without getting sign off from us. Federal officials said any local welfare program that instituted work requirements couldn't use federal funding. In fact, more than half of the $983,000 Newberg annually spent on welfare was fully reimbursed. City manager Joseph Mitchell's new rules put that funding at risk. Does that stop Mitchell? No, in fact, I think the opposite. It makes them say, well, now we've got to make a stand. And on July 17, 1961, what's happening in Newberg is national news. It's the first Monday, the 13 points take effect. The reporters came out in droves to be present and see how the plan is implemented. The first thing that they do is they try to show that they're putting people to work. And just like the muster that round up a welfare recipients at the police station, the ever flashy city manager Joseph Mitchell, drums up a spectacle. This time, he sends welfare officials scrambling to find groups of men to put to work in front of reporters. But when they go looking, officials can only find three people who qualified for the work requirements. It's an unemployed, able-bodied men need to work on city projects. One man who on closer inspection is already working, just getting welfare to help make ends meet, so not subject to work requirements. Officials bring the other two men to city hall, where they discover one man's disabled, so also not subject to work requirements. And the third and final guy is an iron worker with one eye who's not working because his wife is in the hospital and he needs to watch their five kids. City officials send them both home. But despite this failure, this total inability to find chiseler's who could be working, but were getting welfare instead, city manager Joseph Mitchell turns to the reporters and claims victory. He declares, without proof, his publicity about the plan must have scared fraudsters off the roles, and that's why they couldn't find anyone. Just like the muster, he comes up totally empty handed, and just like the muster, he says it's proof we're on the right track. Mary the city historian says to her, the 13 points had little effect on the welfare roles. I think all his 13 points did was rile up lots of, you know, shallow, bad feeling. If you look at the numbers, the years before and after the publicity over the 13 points, the average number of people getting welfare in Newberg fell by three people total. Not exactly boatloads of chiseler's frightened away. One month after that media fiasco first day, the New York Attorney General and the courts bar Newberg from legally enforcing 12 of the 13 points, saying the city didn't have authority to carry out these rules. The only point that was legal required welfare recipients to have monthly conferences about their case. What are the reactions to that? People are unhappy. They feel that the state has overstepped their role. So a lot of people locally who were on Mitchell's side are not ready to just quit at this point. Johanna the county historian says city manager Joseph Mitchell thought, if the 13 points were illegal under existing law, those laws need to be changed. But actually, that's exactly what happened. The Newberg controversy caused so much national buzz. You can find written correspondence from 1961 between President John F. Kennedy and other federal officials, eyeing Newberg for their own federal cash welfare reform, saying welfare had become, quote, an explosive issue. So they had to make sure their own reform focused on work. Under JFK's welfare reform the next year, the federal government allowed local governments to institute work requirements in exchange for welfare. A move one congressional representative said was, quote, our recognition of the problem that became no nationwide as the Newberg case. The Newberg story has struck a responsive chord nationally. Other cities across the country started eyeing Newberg for their own welfare reform. And wide polls from the time showed 84% of Americans specifically liked work requirements for welfare. And city manager Joseph Mitchell's star kept rising. Today, Newberg city manager is a national figure, carrying his war against welfare far beyond the tiny bomb rays of his city. He traveled to Washington, DC where conservative lawmakers embraced him, papers like the Wall Street Journal continued to sing his praises. The city manager leaned into his status as a minor celebrity. He booked national speaking tours. In roughly six months, he made nearly 50 out of town speeches all over the country. He'd book appearances at colleges, political groups, and on talk shows where he'd rage against lazy people clogging up welfare roles, call for stricter welfare policies and beat the drum that Newberg, like the rest of America, needed more work requirements for people getting welfare. He was radical. And radical people make good press. Mary, the city historian says all that press gave Newberg a national reputation. A big bully, Newberg kicking dirt in the face of a poor needy population. So I mean, it just made us look like mean bullies. But even as the city manager was out making a name for himself all over the country, trouble back home would do them in. He was a national spotlight that made him feel invincible. Maybe it was something else. In 1962, the sky with a reputation for cracking down on welfare chislers gets accused of some major chiseling himself. He is accused of taking a $20,000 bribe, and that's what drives him out of office, not welfare. So Mr. Antifraud gets caught up in fraud of his own? He gets caught up in charges of fraud, yes. The city manager never got convicted, but it's enough for him to read the writing on the wall to see a support in Newberg waning. City manager Joseph Mitchell eventually resigns. As far as his claim that black newcomers were coming to Newberg just for welfare, that's false. It was false from the get go. Looking at the numbers, the year before the 13 point code was created, the city spent exactly $205 on relief for new people in town. And those $205 in welfare dollars at the very most could have covered nine people total for a single month. Up to nine black migrants that city manager Joseph Mitchell was so up in arms about. And it just became a hook. After leaving Newberg, his next move was to work for a white supremacist organization. I can't get over the fact that he left us and went to the white citizens council. I mean, you wouldn't make that move unless your mind was way over there in a very, you know, racially divisive aspect. Joseph Mitchell gets hired on as a field director for the citizens councils, aka the white citizens councils, a network of white supremacist organizations formed specifically to oppose school integration and stop voter registration in the south. This is citizens council forum. America's number one public affairs program. He'd continue giving talk show appearances like on this TV program specifically designed to drum up public opinion against integration. It's a real pleasure to have us our guest on the program today. Mr. Joseph Mitchell. Same here Dick and it's nice seeing you again. Since you were Newberg experience brought you to national prominence, I know you've had a chance to talk with Americans in almost every part of our nation. Do you feel the majority of the nation is with us, is with the principles of the citizens councils on this racial issue? Oh, yes. No question about it. It's an necessity to the preservation of our social order. There is strong feeling about racial integrity. They know what is right. Joe three years ago back in 1961, you were the city manager of Newberg, New York. At that time you received national attention when you proposed a revision of your town's welfare policies. I believe that it's fair to say that the action that you started in Newberg has precipitated a new look at some of the welfare policies prevalent in this nation. That's right, Dick. Of course, when the question came up in Newberg, we had no idea that we'd take such a beating. But nevertheless, I think I'd do it again only a little better this time. Talking to people in Newberg about all this, at times I got a feeling I was dredging up history they didn't want to go back to. The past was the past. Maybe it should stay that way. So I asked Joe Hannah the county historian, what's going on there? I think this community was really wounded by this. This was a big wound to have the national eye on Newberg in such a negative light. So I think people don't want to bring it up because they don't want to be defined by what happened here in 1961. Which I get, no one wants to be defined by the skeletons in their closet. But even though city manager Joseph Mitchell fell out of favor in Newberg, certain welfare ideas he championed only grew nationally in the decades after. We challenge the right of preloaders to make more on relief than when working. And we challenge the right of people to quit jobs and will and go on relief like spoiled children. We need a program which will provide incentives for people to get off of welfare and to get to work. It's now common knowledge that our welfare system has itself become a poverty track. A creator and reinforcer of dependence. So now on, our nation's answer to this great social challenge will no longer be an ever ending cycle of welfare. It will be the dignity, the power, and the ethic of work. I am proposing that every state be required within five years to have 70% of welfare recipients working. Work. It's a pretty simple concept. It's time for all Americans to get off of welfare and get back to work. You're going to love it. Get a job and stay off of welfare. And that's what this whole reform program is all about in Wisconsin. Next week, we head back to Wisconsin to see how politicians are still using welfare as a campaign issue today, with work requirements right on the ballot. And we go deep into exactly how for-profit welfare companies are making money off the modern welfare to work system. If you think about what's being called welfare reform 2.0 and the movement to add work requirements, it's a competency that no other company in the market has like maximum. Government is one of your customers. Businesses are another, what about the welfare recipient? Are they? I think of the more as the product of our company. There are inventory. This next week in the next chapter of this season of the uncertain hour. This episode was written and reported by Peter Ballonon-Rosen. It was produced by Grace Rubin, Peter Ballonon-Rosen, and me, Chrissy Clark, editing from Michael May and Catherine Winter. In researching this episode, the book The Dispised Poor by Joseph Ritz was crucial to our understanding of Newberg's 1961 war on welfare. So was the NBC white paper documentary The Battle of Newberg, where much of the archival tape in this episode came from. Check both those out if you'd like to learn more. Research and production assistance from Marquet Green and Tiffany Bowie, Betsy Towner Levine provided fact check support, scoring and sound design by Chris Juleen, Jake Cherry, mixed our episode. Kaitlyn Esch is our senior producer, Bridget Bodner is director of podcasts at Marketplace. And Cheska Levy is the executive director of digital, Neil Scarborough is Marketplaces VP and General Manager. Special thanks to Nancy Fargali, Donna Tam, Curtis Gilbert, Rima Crase, and Camila Kerwin.