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THE AMERICAN
WELFARE STATE
Through a practical introduction to the policies of the American welfare state—a

wide-ranging subject much discussed but seldom described—this concise volume
details the four main areas of social welfare policy: housing assistance, nutrition
assistance, income assistance, and medical assistance.
In plain, approachable language, author Brian J. Glenn explains, for exam-
ple, how Section 8 housing vouchers function, what the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program is, how Medicare has developed, and what Temporary Aid
for Needy Families does. Especially in the era of Covid-19 and a recession, there
is a need for citizens and students to understand the American social safety net.
The American Welfare State is written in a manner that allows a complete novice
to understand these programs in a brisk and comprehensive fashion that is both
short enough to read over a couple of nights in a course and yet detailed enough
for the programs to be understood at quite a nuanced level.
In this thoroughly updated second edition, author Brian J. Glenn outlines the
ways in which social welfare programs differ, sometimes dramatically, from local-
ity to locality. To help students understand how these policies function, Glenn
looks at the support households receive in five cities: Boston, Houston, Kansas
City, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. This approach provides not only a geo-
graphic spread but also an examination of the variability of support, giving the
reader a feel for the range of funding levels and also the variety of ways programs
can be implemented. In short, this book is a fully updated and handy teaching and
learning tool that fills a huge gap in the literature on a subject that many want to
teach but often lack the resources to do.
Brian J. Glenn writes about how Americans care for themselves and others in
times of need. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Hamilton College,
and Wesleyan University, among others. While teaching at Emerson College, his
Development of the American Welfare State class was named by the student
newspaper as one of the six courses every student should take before graduat-
ing. Brian’s work has received awards from the New England Political Science
Association, the Law and Society Association, and the American Risk and
Insurance Association.
THE AMERICAN
WELFARE STATE
A Practical Guide
Second Edition
Brian J. Glenn
Second edition published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Brian J. Glenn
The right of Brian J. Glenn to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-04276-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-04221-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19125-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003191254
Typeset in Sabon
by Newgen Publishing UK
TO M Y F O R M E R P RO F E S S O RS , W H O
C H A L L E N G E D M E T O U N D E R S TA N D T H AT
M U T U A L A S S I S TA N C E I S A R E F L E C T I O N
O F H OW T H O S E I N P OW E R T E L L S T O R I E S
A B O U T T H E N AT U R E O F R I S K A N D
R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y, A N D A B O U T T H O S E
T H E Y T H I N K A R E PA R T O F T H E U S A N D
T H O S E W H O F O R M T H E OT H E R .
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations viii

Preface to the Second Edition xi
Acknowledgments xii
List of Abbreviations xiv
1 Some Introductory Thoughts on the American

Welfare State 1
2 Income Assistance 14
3 Housing Assistance 46
4 Nutrition Assistance 61
5 Healthcare Assistance 80
6 Concluding Thoughts 110
Index 115
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Tables
1.1 2021 Federal Poverty Line by Household Size, for the
District of Columbia and All States (Except Alaska
and Hawaii) 3
2.1 Maximum AGI to Qualify for the EITC 18
2.2 Maximum CalWORKs Benefits 22
2.3 MBSAC Levels for Los Angeles 23
2.4 Maximum Benefits from TANF, by State and
Household Size 29
2.5 Monthly Income Limits for EAEDC, by Living
Arrangement and Household Size 36
2.6 50% Massachusetts Median Income, by Household Size 38
3.1 Maximum Allowable Household Incomes for Section 8
Vouchers, by Household Size 48
3.2 LIHEAP Income Thresholds for Kansas City, KS in 2020 51
3.3 Housing Authorities and Public Housing 55
3.4 Point Allocation for Public Housing, New Orleans 56
4.1 Maximum Gross and Net Income for SNAP Eligibility,
by Household Size, for the Lower 48 States 63
4.2 SNAP Food Stamp Program Maximum Monthly
Allotments 63
4.3 How to Calculate Gross Income for SNAP Eligibility 64
4.4 How to Calculate Net Income for SNAP Eligibility 65
4.5 Louisiana WIC Program Participants Qualifying Medical
Condition for Special Formula 68
4.6 Maximum Allowed Annual Income to Qualify for WIC 69
4.7 Average Monthly WIC Benefits per Person, by State, in 2020 69
5.1 Sample Commonwealth Choice Plans and Benefits:
Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans, Family with
One Adult and Two Children 82
viii
ix
L I S T O F I llustrations
5.2 Program Characteristics for MassHealth Standard 86

5.3 Children’s Medical Security Plan Premium Schedule 89
5.4 Medicare Parts B and D Premiums, by Income, for 2021 92
5.5 Prescription Advantage Plans 95
5.6 VA Health System Priority Groups 101
5.7 VA Health System Cost Structure for Services 103
Figure
6.1 Monthly Resources Available to a Family of Three 113
ix
PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION
I wrote the first edition of this book when I realized that if average citi-
zens wanted to learn about America’s social safety net programs, they
did not have a good, easy-to-use, and reliable source to do it. That was
it: I wanted a slim book, easily read over a night or two, where someone
could learn what TANF was, how a housing voucher worked, or what a
family could get for Food Stamps (now called “SNAP”).
My hope is that someone of any political leaning can turn to this book
and come out with a deep understanding of America’s social safety net, in
a manner that allows the reader to actively engage in discussion, research,
and policymaking from a fully informed position.
That’s it! That is what this book does. In four chapters, it explains the
nation’s anti-poverty programs. Because these programs differ from loca-
tion to location, I have selected five cities of various sizes, political lean-
ings, and locations, to show the scope of the US social safety net.
A word about emergency programs enacted in 2021. The changes made
are temporary—at least, for the moment—and this book is expected to
last longer than any of the one-year programs are. So, there will be points
where the book lists programs, and the programs discussed do not touch
on the temporary funding increases. The most notable is the child credit,
which provides funding to adult taxpayers with dependent children. The
child credit provides funds to individuals and families with incomes that
are far above the poverty line, and while the child credit is also a program
that assists the low income, it is not targeted at them as such. Mostly
because I do not expect these programs to survive till 2022, they are not
mentioned below.
xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The second edition of this book builds on the first edition, where the
true yeoman’s work was performed. The unsung heroes behind any pol-
icy analysis are the research librarians who help us track down those
facts and figures that we know are out there but which are initially hid-
den. Nicole Brown, then of Emerson College, and Erhard Konerding of
Wesleyan University (since retired) were fantastic. My “Development of
the American Welfare State” students at Emerson and Wesleyan served
as wonderful springboards, enthusiastically heading out into the Internet
and local assistance offices and, in one case, asking a parent who hap-
pened to be a high-level administrator, to find their own data. Their
enthusiasm kept me going through the challenge of taking a wide array
of programs across five cities and producing something that a non-expert
can comprehend. It is hard to explain how much students can touch our
lives, and I am grateful to all of those who have.
Two important individuals facilitated my students’ research. Peter
Hess, then of Emerson College, and Kevin Wiliarty, then of Wesleyan
University, were the academic support Information Technology Support
professionals who helped me set up some incredible websites and blogs
for my students. Research is a collaborative effort, and Peter and Kevin
made my students’ research much easier through the use of technology.
While I conducted my research prior to assigning it to my students, I can-
not deny that having scores of intelligent and enthusiastic students verify
what I had found was greatly appreciated, and I would be dishonest if
I failed to acknowledge they uncovered a policy or two that I had not
spotted.
Finally, I want to thank all the social workers and research staff in
various government agencies who helped me track down numbers that
were not publicly available or make sense of how certain elements were
implemented. As I mention at several points in this book, social workers
keep the system running, for many of the programs discussed below are
xii
xii
A cknowledgments
extremely hard to understand, even for a professional policy analyst and

for those in need of the assistance the programs provide; social workers
form the gateway to getting the needy into them. Until I began research-
ing this book, I had no idea just how important they are, and my respect
for what they do is now immense.
xiii
ABBREVIATIONS
ACA Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

(“Affordable Care Act”)
AFDC Aid to Families with Dependent Children
AGI Adjusted Gross Income
AMI Area Median Income
APTC Advance Premium Tax Credit
AU Applicant Unit
CACFP Child and Adult Care Food Program
CalWORKs California Work Opportunity and Responsibility
to Kids Program
CAP Combined Application Process
CAPI Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants
CARE California Alternative Rates for Energy
CCR&R Massachusetts Child Care Resource and
Referral agency
CEP Community Eligibility Provision of the National
School Lunch Program
CMSP Children’s Medical Security Plan
CSFP Commodity Supplemental Food Program
CTTP California Tribal TANF Program
D-SNAP Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
DTA Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance
EAEDC Massachusetts Emergency Aid to the Elderly,
Disabled and Children
EBT Electronic Benefit Transfer Card
EITC Earned Income Tax Credit
E&T SNAP Food Stamp Employment and Training Program
FDPIR Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations
FFVP Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program
FITAP Louisiana Family Independence Temporary
Assistance Program
xiv
newgenprepdf
xv
L I S T O F A bbreviations
FPHP Fishing Partnership Health Plan

FPL Federal Poverty Line
FS/WP SNAP Food Stamp Work Program
FSS Housing Choice Family Self-Sufficiency Program
GED General Education Development
GR Los Angeles County General Relief
HCVP Housing Choice Voucher Program
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
HOP California Home Ownership Program
HUD US Department of Housing and Urban Development
LA GAIN Los Angeles Greater Avenues for Independence
LaCAP Louisiana Combined Application Process
LIHEAP Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program
MA Plan Medicare Advantage Plan
MAGI Modified Adjusted Gross Income
MBSAC Minimum Basic Standards of Adequate Care
MSP Medicare Savings Program
NSBP National School Breakfast Program
NSLP National School Lunch Program
PHA Public Housing Authority
PRUCOL Permanently Residing Under Color of Law
PRWORA Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act of 1996
QDWI Qualified Disabled and Working Individuals Program
QI Qualifying Individual Program
QMB Qualified Medicare Beneficiary Program
SDI California’s State Disability Insurance program
SGA Substantial Gainful Activity
SLMB Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary Program
SNAP Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
SNAP-Ed SNAP-Education Program
SRO Single Room Occupancy Program
SSDI Social Security Disability Insurance
SSI Supplemental Security Income
SUA Standard Utility Allowance
TAA Trade Adjustment Assistance
TAFDC Massachusetts Transitional Aid to Families with
Dependent Children
TANF Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
TEFAP The Emergency Food Assistance Program
UI Unemployment Insurance
USDA United States Department of Agriculture
WIC Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for
Women, Infants, and Children
xv
1
1
SOME INTRODUCTORY
THOUGHTS ON THE AMERICAN
WELFARE STATE
Poverty is the state of lacking financial resources to meet basic human

needs. In order to grapple with the fact that there are people in America
living in poverty, localities, states, and the federal government have devel-
oped a series of policies we collectively refer to as the “American welfare
state.”
The American welfare state is a subject frequently discussed but rarely
described, and as a result, our images of the social safety net are often
wildly inaccurate. The goal of this book is to give the reader a fairly in-
depth and comprehensive understanding of what those programs are and
what they do.
Americans need to know how anti-poverty programs work if we want
to have a voice in shaping them. Moreover, we need to be able to discuss
the benefits in a manner that, wherever one stands on the political spec-
trum, we can agree that a household of a certain size will receive a given
set of benefits. In other words, we need to be able to see what the social
safety net looks like today if we want to come together to shape it mov-
ing forward.
Because of the federal nature of the American government, programs
may differ dramatically from state to state. To help the reader make
sense of not only the span of programs but also how they can differ, this
book is divided by chapters into the four traditional categories of hous-
ing, nutrition, income support, and medical assistance, as they exist in
five geographically distributed cities at the start of 2021, namely Boston,
Massachusetts; Houston, Texas; Kansas City, Kansas (and sometimes
also Missouri); Los Angeles, California; and New Orleans, Louisiana. As
we shall see, these five cites—some smaller, some huge, some endowed
with tremendous financial capacity, others less so—offer a wide range
of programs, some of which are innovative and thoughtful, while others
may feel outdated. Some programs are closed to new participants or have
waitlists that can extend for years, whereas others literally begin oper-
ating the moment an applicant applies. While keeping the descriptions
DOI: 10.4324/9781003191254-1 1
2
T houghts on the A merican W elfare S tate
brief, the goal of the book is to show the reader what governmentally
provided programs are available to poor households in America—that
is, “the welfare state.”1 Clearly, there are programs that fall outside of
the categories the book employs, such as after-school literacy programs
and many efforts to feed and clothe the needy through charity, for exam-
ple, and to cover all of these would require volumes. As much as I wish
I could, they are not included.
That being said, there are certain charities that are not directly con-
nected to the government but that are so central to the story that they
simply must be mentioned, if only to allow researchers a good starting
point for exploration beyond what is covered here. For the most part,
however, not-for-profits will only be mentioned if the author thinks they
are such an integral part of the welfare state that we would be leaving out
a key element if we did not discuss them.
Even at this early stage, we are starting to build a framework for under-
standing the American welfare state. First, there are clusters of programs
that make sense to discuss together: housing, nutrition, income assistance,
and medical. Second, under the federal system, the federal government
often provides the majority of the funding, but the programs themselves
are often implemented by the states. At times, states have a fair amount
of leeway to decide who receives a benefit and what that benefit entails,
and at others, programs are uniform across the nation. Third and finally,
we often see public–private partnerships, where the government (local,
state, or federal) provides the funds, and private entities—usually non-
profits—implement the policies.
Beyond presenting the programs, a key aim of this book is to make
them easily understandable. For each of the four categories of housing,
nutrition, income, and healthcare assistance, the various programs and
benefits available to poor households will be described as clearly as possi-
ble in the text. The goal is to cover all the major programs and all of their
major subcategories. The book frequently goes into greater detail about
specific programs in the tables, allowing for a deeper understanding of
eligibility requirements, for example, or the types of benefits available.
Thus, those who are merely looking for an overview of the American wel-
fare state can simply read the text while skipping the data in the tables.
Those seeking more detail will find it there, along with ample citations so
that you can go straight to the source.
With the few exceptions of a couple that are targeted at the elderly or
military veterans, almost all of the programs discussed in this book are
means tested, which is to say that to be eligible, an individual or house-
hold must fall below a certain income and/or asset level. The guideline
used is almost always in relationship with the Federal Poverty Line (FPL,
also called the Federal Poverty Level or Federal Poverty Guideline). Some
programs target those directly at or below the FPL, while other programs
2
3
will target those who fall a certain percentage above or below it. The
2021 FPL levels are found in Table 1.1. As can be seen from the sec-
ond column, the poverty line is $12,880 for an individual, $15,510 for a
household of two, and $19,530 for a household of three.
The idea behind the FPL was developed over 1963 to 1964 by a
Social Security Administration researcher named Mollie Orshansky. The
Department of Agriculture had developed four food plans that were
assumed to be adequate for households of different sizes, and Orshansky
developed her thresholds based on the economy food plan (now called
the Thrifty Food Plan), which was the cheapest of the four. From the
1955 Census, she figured that a household spent roughly one-third of its
budget on food, and thus started with the economy plan and then multi-
plied it by three.2 Since 1963, the poverty guidelines have been updated
by examining changes to the Consumer Price Index.3
In October 2013, the health insurance marketplaces created by the
Affordable Care Act (ACA) began taking applications, using a different
measure. Eligibility for medical assistance programs administered by
Health and Human Services (such as Medicaid, Children’s
Health Insurance Program [CHIP], and subsidies for the health insurance
exchanges, all of which will be discussed below) look not at gross
income, but rather Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI), which fac-
tors in both more expenses and more income sources than plain old gross
income does, allowing for a more accurate depiction of a household’s
income. Thus, most social safety net programs use income and assets
to determine whether an individual or family is poor enough to qualify.
Income qualifications are determined relative to the FPL.
Table 1.1 2021 Federal Poverty Line by Household Size, for the District of
Columbia and All States (Except Alaska and Hawaii)1
Size of 100% of 133% of 150% of 200% of 400% of

Family Poverty Poverty Poverty Poverty Poverty
Unit
1 $12,880 $17,130 $19,320 $25,760 $51,520
2 $17,420 $23,169 $26,130 $34,840 $69,680
3 $21,960 $29,207 $32,940 $43,920 $87,840
4 $26,500 $35,245 $39,750 $53,000 $106,000
5 $31,040 $41,283 $46,560 $62,080 $142,320
6 $35,580 $47,321 $53,370 $71,160 $160,480
7 $40,120 $53,360 $60,180 $80,240 $178,640
8 $44,660 $59,398 $66,990 $89,320 $196,800
1 https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines and https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/aspe-files/
107166/2021-percentage-poverty-tool.xlsx (Accessed January 2021).
3
4
The programs discussed in this book are constantly evolving. On the

one hand, this means that we constantly need to verify that the informa-
tion we use is accurate, which is why you will see so many footnotes in
the book, along with the dates they were last accessed. Income and asset
limits typically are only adjusted once a year, allowing recipients and
those who implement the programs some stability in the application pro-
cess. It is quite rare to see a new program emerge, and even rarer to see
one disbanded, but internally, programs evolve—especially after elections
where one party takes over from another. While this is daunting for the
researcher, since we must always fear that we missed something, it is also
rather exciting. States really do serve as “laboratories of democracy,” to
use Justice Brandeis’s phrase,4 allowing us to study what works and what
does not, or more accurately, what seems to work better and what seems
to be less effective, hopefully, over time, leading to programs that are bet-
ter able to achieve their stated goals.
Having just stated that new programs rarely emerge or disappear, we
need to note that we are currently watching perhaps the most impor-
tant policy development since the Great Society programs emerged in
the 1960s. This, of course, is the implementation of the Affordable Care
Act (also known colloquially as “Obamacare” or just the “ACA”), which
will be discussed in detail in the healthcare chapter. It is extremely rare
to see changes of such scope emerge in a policy realm, and putting aside
judgments about whether or not one agrees with it politically, from the
perspective of a policy analyst, this is as exciting as it gets. On a state-by-
state basis, the ACA is redefining the medical pillar of its social safety net,
and doing so in a profoundly American manner. As of January 1, 2014,
every legal resident of the nation was required to either have health insur-
ance or pay a tax that would get larger for each of the several follow-
ing years. That “individual mandate” ended in 2019, but an individual
or family can still purchase health insurance in every state on a health
insurance exchange. The government itself does not provide insurance;
private insurance companies do. Rather, the government facilitates the
insurance exchanges, and it requires minimum standards for the insur-
ance provided.
Hopefully, this book will help you get your hands around the welfare
state enough to understand what is available to poor households in the
five locations under examination. The larger goal is to empower you to
study the location of your own choosing and make sense of what you find
there. This last point is important. We, as a country, need to be able to
shape the social safety net that catches our weakest, and to do so, we need
not just a good understanding of what those programs do, but also an
understanding of what we want them to do. To that end, this book is less
about providing answers than helping conceptualize the questions you
might want to ask, along with arming you to answer them on your own.
4
5
Some Thoughts on Policymaking

The programs we will read about in the next four chapters feel disjointed.
That is, when we look at them collectively, they do not always fit together
as seamlessly as they could. Firstly, it would make sense if an applicant
could fill out one application and obtain all the various benefits he or she
is entitled to, but that is not the case. Also, different programs require
different income levels at times, although there does not seem to be any
good reason for that. Finally, some programs are obtained as a right,
that is, if one falls under the income and asset limits, one is enrolled. But
others, like housing, are limited and are granted only until the housing is
filled, and every else is out of luck. There are reasons for this.
Federal Policymaking Is Not Unitary

Even when Congress and the presidency are controlled by the same party,
policymaking in Congress is conducted by congressional committees. The
representatives and senators who sit on these committees face different
electoral incentives, based upon who lobbies them and how the benefi-
ciaries are seen by the larger public. A sobering truth is that many sena-
tors and members of Congress support programs in their committees less
because they are anti-poverty programs and more because those programs
assist other constituents. The most obvious example is that of nutrition
programs, overseen by the House and Senate Agriculture Committees.
While as policy researchers, we look at these programs for their effects
on feeding the needy, many members of the Agriculture Committees may
look at these same programs as mechanisms to support their farmers
back home. Other programs are overseen by the House Education and
Labor Committee (whose counterpart in the Senate is the Committee
on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions), and other programs by the
Health and Human Services Committees. Thus, part of the reason for
the patchwork nature of federal programs is simply that Congress is not
organized in a way that allows it to take a holistic approach to the matter.
Federalism
Federalism refers to the division of political power between different lev-
els of government. The challenges that county or municipal governments
face is that if they tax too high or provide benefits that are more support-
ive than their neighbors, the wealthier residents may move out and the
poorer may move in. The empirical evidence for this actually happening
is actually thin, largely because the poor are quite immobile. Poor people
rely on mutual assistance networks of friends and family for support in
ways that tie them to their local communities: “I watch your kids on
5
6
Mondays, you watch mine on Tuesdays, someone fixes cars when they
break down, another does people’s hair …” Many poor people survive
on remarkably small amounts of income because they have woven them-
selves into barter communities that allow them to receive and provide
services without money ever changing hands.5 To move elsewhere, even
for a higher-paying job, may still not benefit them if they have to start
paying for all those previously bartered services. Nonetheless, state and
local officials feel great pressure to keep spending on social services low
and to keep their taxes low as well. When they do feel pressured to spend,
it is often on areas that promote local industry, such as infrastructures
like roads and bridges, and if the poor benefit from these incentives at
all, it is typically through receiving training to meet the needs of local
businesses.
As a result, the federal government has historically spent more per cap-
ita on social safety net programs than state or local governments have.
What we will see repeatedly below is that the federal government pro-
vides the majority of spending on a program, often through a matching
formula with the states, while the states implement the programs, often
with a fair amount of leeway over who gets what benefits and what those
benefits look like.
The upshot of this is that someone in a program such as Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) can see their benefits change dra-
matically just by moving from one state to another, even if the cost of
living in those two states is essentially the same.
Cultural Factors Shaping the Social Safety Net

In addition to the institutional factors just discussed, the welfare state
also has a cultural inheritance, of which there are three elements. First, the
cultures that dominated American society in the colonial era bequeathed
an understanding of deservingness that was attached to work, and this
has been handed down across the centuries, up to the present day. The
second element has to do with race, the third with children.
The Culture of Work

It is difficult to tell a cultural story in any meaningful way in just a page
or two, but in short, the original colonies were dominated by three
cultures— each of which was far from monolithic but still generally
held the same beliefs about poverty.6 In the northeast, the majority of
Americans subscribed to the Puritan doctrine of predestination, which is
the belief that God had a plan for each individual and that the goal in life
was to live according to His will. A central element of doing so entailed
engaging in hard work. The Puritans took care of the needy in their local
6
7
communities, often with great concern and kindness, but this extended
only to those who could not help themselves.
The town would take in elderly widows, who would spend two weeks
in each family’s house, for example, while those who were injured in an
accident might have their farms looked after. Still, most of the focus of
towns was on taking care of orphans, who were usually apprenticed until
they reached adult age. Adults who were not able to care for themselves
were more often than not treated very humanely. But for people who
were considered lazy (“idle” was the term of the times), the story was
quite different. “For those who indulge themselves in idleness, the express
command of God unto us is, that we should let them starve,” wrote Rev.
Cotton Mather.7
Poor outsiders who wanted to move into towns were sometimes driven
to the border, while residents who did not appear to want to work could
be whipped or have their children taken from them. What is so interest-
ing is that for the Puritans, hard work did not lead to wealth, since they
believed in predestination. In other words, God willed that some would
be wealthy and others poor, and one’s place in life was not connected to
how hard one worked. Rather, one worked to please God, who still might
choose to keep one poor. In any event, the result of this form of thinking
was that everyone should work, and those who could not would be pro-
tected while those who could but did not were left to get by on their own.
The Southern Protestants did not believe in predestination but adopted
pretty much the same thinking about the nature of poverty. While often
not as wealthy as their northern counterparts, southern parishes taxed
themselves to care for the poor and needy among them. Often, the poor
were cared for by the local church leaders, who were tasked with distrib-
uting the community’s funds.
In between were states shaped by Quaker theology, which was also
communal, and, while lacking the harsher elements of the other two, also
espoused a strong work ethic.
The upshot is that, up and down the eastern seaboard, the social safety
net was built on the idea that help would go to “deserving” workers who
could not help themselves, while “undeserving” shirkers who were not
willing to support themselves would be excluded.
As America’s population grew, keeping people in their own homes
or the homes of their neighbors came to be replaced in the 1800s with
institutional forms of care: boarding schools for handicapped children
coupled with orphanages for children without parents who could care
for them. Massive “mental asylums” were built for those with psychiat-
ric problems, along with reform schools for children who had problems
with the law. While localities continued to provide some families (usually
those headed by widows) with small donations of cash to pay rent, or in-
kind services such as firewood or coal, the rest of the needy were forced
7
8
to rely on poorhouses. Poorhouses provided room and board but were

also meant to have a reform function for the able-bodied, since they were
informed by the belief that those who were able to work should always
be able to find employment, and those who did not, had a problem with
their work ethic.
By all accounts, poorhouses were simply terrible places, and they were
so by design since taxpayers resented having to fund them, and again,
they were intended to be so awful that the able-bodied would want to
avoid them. When researchers conducted censuses of poorhouse resi-
dents, the data showed something very different. Poorhouses had very
few able-bodied men in them and were populated by large numbers of
elderly who lacked children nearby who could care for them. They also
had large numbers of widows and abandoned wives, and many of these
women had children in orphanages. Policymakers and the staff of these
institutions began to ask why the taxpayers were paying for women to
stay in awful poorhouses and their children in equally dreadful orphan-
ages when, for roughly similar amounts of funding, these women and
children could stay together in their own homes. Similar arguments were
made about the elderly.
Thus, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Americans confronted
the time-old question of how to care for the “deserving” while keeping
the “undeserving” from the rolls.
The answers to those questions laid the foundations for today’s social
safety net programs. We now care for most of the low-income by pro-
viding them with financial support, sometimes with public housing or a
voucher that helps pay their rent, free or low-cost health insurance, free
or subsidized meals for their children in schools, plus funds to help them
buy food, and with training to help them become fully employed. But
these programs keep recipients below the poverty line, or at best, just
above it. The only programs that keep recipients above the poverty line
are the ones targeted at workers who are injured on the job, or who are
temporarily unemployed.
Race and Poverty

Poverty and race are intimately connected in America and have been
since the country’s origins. It is extremely hard to find any evidence of
black people receiving assistance from a local government in the nine-
teenth century or earlier. Where they had the resources, they set up their
own mutual assistance societies and banks, but usually lacked adequate
funds, since the legal system was so heavily stacked against them. Since
white people controlled the governments, the “deserving” always referred
only to white people, both in the north and the south, and looking at
discussions of the elderly, impoverished women, and the care of children,
8
9
one often finds frank references to “preserving the white race” and also
of Protestantism (since Catholics were the wrong kind of white). As the
various levels of government slowly pulled the elderly, mothers, and chil-
dren out of institutions and began giving them funds to pay for food and
rent instead, local charity boards and relief organizations carefully scru-
tinized applicants to ensure that they fell on the “right” side of the social
(and racial) cleavage.
The Social Security Act of 1935 embodied a profound shift in the rela-
tionship between the citizens and the state but was still informed by the
two themes of work and race. The Act was massive, with many elements,
but for our purposes, we can focus on just three: old-age insurance, Aid
to Dependent Children (ADC), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Although it was initially considered the least important element (since it
was not supposed to go into effect immediately), the element we typically
refer to today as “Social Security” is the retirement element, officially
known as the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.
Under the retirement element of the Act, workers and their employers
pay a certain percentage of their income from each paycheck into the
system (this is the “FICA” line on your paycheck). As long as someone
has worked at least 20 quarters over their lifetime, they are eligible for
a monthly payment once they retire, which is pegged to inflation. For
our purposes, it may be useful to conceptualize the old-age retirement
element as anti-poverty insurance, given that this has, in fact, done a
remarkably good job at lifting seniors on it out of poverty.
The retirement element was influenced by race, however. The origi-
nal Act exempted two groups from coverage: self-employed farmers and
domestic help. These two fields, of course, were precisely where very large
percentages of black Americans worked and was the price that southern
senators and congressmen exacted from President Roosevelt for their sup-
port. These exemptions ended under President Eisenhower, who saw the
expansion of Social Security as his greatest domestic policy achievement.
Finally, there was ADC, the precursor to today’s TANF. This program,
too, was racially structured. Partially funded by the federal government,
partially by the states, this program provided cash assistance to poor chil-
dren and their parents, but the qualifications for how much support and
who received it were left to the states. Most states, northern and south-
ern, required parents to be of “good character,” which unfortunately was
used as code to ensure that very few non-white recipients found their way
onto the rolls, until such discrimination was banned in the 1960s.
The one notable element that did not find its way into the Social
Security Act of 1935 was health insurance. Unions and many mutual
benefit societies opposed it because it was a benefit they offered to their
members, and they feared they would be weakened if one of their pri-
mary benefits was under-cut. Large employers also offered it to their
9
10
most valued skilled employees and saw it as a way to attract and retain
key workers. Physicians were worried about government intervention in
their finances. As a result, health insurance eventually became a benefit
offered by employers to their workers, a legacy that remains to this very
day despite many attempts to make it a federal benefit over the ensuing
decades.
But what of those who did not work? Those households paid out-of-
pocket for their medical expenses, and when Lyndon Baines Johnson rose
to the presidency, he added two major elements to the American social
safety net. The first was Medicare, which offered medical insurance to
the retired. Those who were eligible for Social Security, that is, those who
had worked and paid taxes during their younger years now qualify for
Medicare when they turn 65. Medicare has different components to it,
but, in essence, all on it have the option of receiving coverage for preven-
tative medicine, inpatient and outpatient care, and costs for medication.
The second program created by Johnson’s “Great Society” is Medicaid,
the medical program for the poor. This program is means-tested so that
to qualify for it, one must fall below certain income and asset limits. This
will be discussed in detail below. Medicaid also offers comprehensive
medical coverage but does not pay hospitals and physicians as much as
either Medicare or commercial health insurance plans do, and sometimes
recipients have difficulty finding a provider who will service them.
One final element needs to be mentioned. In 1939, Social Security
was altered to provide benefits to the dependent spouses and children
of deceased workers, until those children reached adulthood. That pro-
gram was called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), now
known as TANF. By design, TANF never lifts families out of poverty, but
Social Security’s benefits can. This means that if the family’s main bread-
winner had been earning above-poverty wages and had been working
before passing away, most likely, the dependents will be able to make a
claim through Social Security and remain above poverty, while those who
turned to TANF will not. This has a profound racial impact on the nature
of the recipients in each program. Due to the fact that white mothers
have historically been married to employed men who had earned above-
poverty wages, an extremely high percentage of white widows and chil-
dren who lose their husbands go into the Social Security system, while
the exact opposite happens to black women and children, who go into
TANF. Social Security, pegged to earnings, has remained incredibly popu-
lar among citizens and legislators throughout the decades, while TANF—
what many typically refer to as “welfare,”— has been under almost
constant attack as too generous and expensive, from its origins through
to the present day.
As an inheritance of what has gone before, we now have a social safety
net that is defined by work. If someone works full-time and receives
10
11
benefits, they can get their health insurance through their employer, along
with other benefits, such as sick time, vacations, and retirement plans.
If the main breadwinner passes away early, the spouse and underage
dependent children will receive benefits from Social Security that might
keep them above the poverty line. Workers and spouses who live to be 65
will get their health insurance through Medicare, and a retirement pen-
sion from Social Security. In contrast, those who are not working, or who
are not working in a job that pays them a wage that lifts them above pov-
erty, will instead have to turn to TANF, which will not give them benefits
that lift them above the poverty line. They will get their health insurance
through Medicaid if they fall before a certain income limit, or through
the new health insurance marketplaces, purchasing plans that are subsi-
dized through federal tax credits plus whatever assistance the given state
they reside in chooses to offer. If they do not contribute through work-
ing to Social Security while they are young, they will not receive benefits
when they are older, nor will they be able to go onto Medicare.
Children
As you read through this book, constantly have the image of the “deserv-
ing” versus the “undeserving” in mind. Children almost always fall in the
“deserving” category. Politicians of all stripes usually agree that children
need to be housed, fed, and provided with necessary medical care.
TANF is only available to households with children. Poor children get
free school lunches (and often breakfasts) through their schools, and we
will see that there are innovative programs to get food for children over
the weekends. Medicaid has a pretty thorough set of benefits available to
children and states frequently provide coverage, either through expanded
Medicaid or the CHIP for children who are in households just over the
traditional means-tested income cutoffs for Medicaid.
Public–Private Partnerships
The last element we need to discuss is that you will frequently see in the
following discussions the fact that while some level or another of the gov-
ernment funds a program, it is administered by a non-government entity,
be it a private health insurance company, or a not-for-profit organization.
Boys & Girls Clubs, for example, may provide free lunches for children
during the summer when the school cafeterias are closed, using funds
provided by the federal government. Large housing projects will often
have non-profits based inside of them to provide day care or provide
social workers who help residents apply for benefits, or even to serve
as the administrators. The Department of Agriculture funds non-profits
to teach Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients
11
12
about healthy eating and how to read food labels. Of course, SNAP cards
themselves are used to buy food at commercial food stores and farmer
markets.
Poverty
As you read this book, think about what you understand poverty to be.
The US government defines poverty in terms of income and asset limits.8
But that isn’t helpful in thinking about what it means to be poor.
As we noted at the start of this chapter, poverty is the condition of
lacking the means to meet one’s basic needs. Others will define poverty
as lacking a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material
possessions.9 In the first definition, the poverty line could be met by some-
one who owns one pair of clothes, lives in an open-walled shack, and is
fed enough to be kept barely alive. But this doesn’t seem quite right; it
doesn’t seem humane. The latter definition, while perhaps it didn’t ini-
tially appeal to you, may actually be more useful. Perhaps you think of
poverty as some state of living in a level of dignity that is above abject
misery and mere existence. In any event, I suspect you are now realizing
that determining what poverty is and where to draw the line is quite hard
to do, and also depends on one’s politics.
Regardless, hopefully, all agree that an individual or family resid-
ing at 100% FPL is poor. Very poor. If all this household has are its
income, assets, and social safety net benefits, the members will barely
make it through a year without falling into a crisis, and that is by design.
America’s policymakers, especially at the federal level (but certainly in
many states as well), have decided that families at 100% FPL will have to
rely on sources other than the welfare state for their existence.
Final Thoughts
As you read through the following chapters, it can be easy to get lost in
the numbers, and the minutia of who falls into what category and what
incomes qualify for what benefits. Rightfully so, since these programs
greatly impact people’s lives!
But try not to lose sight of the larger picture, which is that you are
trying to understand what a given program attempts to accomplish, and
whether you think it does. When you see what the income limits are, do
they seem in the right place to you? Some programs provide benefits as
a matter of right (such as Medicaid), while others are first-come-first-
served (like housing), and once the program is filled, anyone else who
applies is out of luck. Does that seem “right” to you, in either a policy or
a moral sense? Finally, do you feel like there is something missing, or on
the other hand, do you feel like a given program is trying to do too much,
12
13
or is too generous? Are you comfortable with the fact that in a poor fam-
ily, children may receive benefits the adults do not?
Notes
1 Even the term “household” is tricky. In a work like this, one must always go
to the source, but just so we can move forward, we will use the definition
employed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
HUD allows a “group of persons” to be connected by blood, marriage, or oper-
ation of law, or the group must provide evidence of a significant relationship
determined to be stable by the housing authority. wwwb.lacda.org/section-8/
for-section-8-applicants/am-i-eligible (Accessed January 2021).
2 https://aspe.hhs.gov/history-poverty-thresholds (Accessed January, 2021).
3 https://aspe.hhs.gov/frequently-asked-questions-related-poverty-guidelines-
and-poverty#developed (Accessed January, 2021).
4 This phrase comes from New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 US 262, 1932.
5 Cf. Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet: How Single
Mothers Survive Welfare and Low- Wage Work. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 1997.
6 Cf. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
7 Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare
in America. New York: Free Press, 1999, 23.
8 www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.
html (Accessed March 2021).
9 www.britannica.com/topic/poverty (Accessed March 2021).
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2
INCOME ASSISTANCE
The first category of American welfare state programs we will examine

seeks to help low-income recipients primarily through providing them
with financial resources that can be used at the recipient’s discretion,
as opposed, for example, to what many still call “food stamps,” which
can only be used for purchases of food. Two programs, Unemployment
Insurance (UI) and Workers’ Compensation, seek to replace a portion of
a worker’s wages during periods when they either cannot find a job or
cannot work due to getting injured on the job, respectively. These two
programs are not means-tested and instead are pegged to the individual’s
previous income. They both can provide recipients with above-poverty
levels of support, although for limited periods of time. With the exception
of Social Security survivor’s benefits, the other programs discussed in this
chapter are means-tested, that is, one can only receive them if one falls
below certain income and asset levels. These provide recipients with lev-
els of support that will not lift them out of poverty. This is done in order
to encourage recipients to find gainful employment.
The largest income support program by far is Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF), what is typically referred to as “welfare.”
As we shall see, many of the programs discussed in this chapter do much
more than simply provide income. Indeed, TANF is perhaps best under-
stood as a basket of goods, the most valuable, to be certain, being income
support, but there are also many other elements to it.
Unemployment Insurance1
UI is partially funded through the federal Department of Labor (under
the Federal Unemployment Tax Act) and is administered by the respective
states, which employ a range of different models for funding the programs,
although, from the perspective of the recipients, the funding mechanisms
are irrelevant. Workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their
own are eligible for up to 26 weeks of benefits, although there have been
extensions due to the severe recession the nation experienced during the
14 DOI: 10.4324/9781003191254-2
15
I ncome A ssistance
COVID-19 crisis. “No fault of one’s own,” of course, needs to be defined.

Looking to Texas, reasons include “layoff, reduction in hours or wages
not related to misconduct, being fired for reasons other than misconduct,
or quitting with good cause related to work.” A worker quits with good
cause if the workplace becomes unsafe, there are significant changes in
the hiring agreement, the employer refuses to pay for work performed,
the employee has a medical reason or injury from outside the workplace
that prevents him or her from working, there has been a sexual assault,
or the worker moved with a military spouse.2
UI benefits are tied to the worker’s earnings, and the percentage of
income being replaced varies from state to state. In Texas, earnings are
calculated by averaging income according to a formula best described by
the Texas Workforce Commission:
To receive benefits, you must have a payable claim. A payable

claim means you earned a specific amount of wages during a recent
12-month period called the base period. The base period is the
first four of the last five completed calendar quarters before you
applied for benefits. (Calendar quarters are three-month periods
beginning the first day of January, April, July, or October.) This
means that when we calculate benefits, we cannot use wages in
the calendar quarter in which you filed your claim, or the quarter
just before that. We calculate your weekly benefit amount on the
highest quarter earnings in your base period. We divide that high
quarter’s total earnings by 25 to get your weekly benefit amount.
We may have to adjust this amount to be inside the allowed range
of benefit amounts in Texas. Your weekly benefit amount will be
between $61 and $426 depending upon the wages you earned.
Your maximum or total benefit amount is the lesser of 26 times
the weekly amount, or 27% of all your wages in the base period.3
In plain English, Texas will calculate an average wage for the four quar-
ters an individual worked (prior to the last two) and then provide roughly
one-quarter of those wages, but not less than $70 a week, nor more than
$535.4
Recipients in California may receive up to just over half of their previ-
ous wages, up to a limit of not more than $450 per week.5 Recipients can
still work part-time and receive benefits but will see their UI benefits cut
by a certain amount. If one earns more than $25 a week but less than
$100, any earnings over the first $25 will be matched by cuts equal to
that amount, so that if one earns $50 in a week, benefits will be cut by
$25. If one earns over $101 a week, the first 25% of income is ignored
and the rest is matched by cuts.6 Applicants must be able to work and
must actively seek work and are required to accept any full-time position
15
16
I ncome A ssistance
they are offered. Working full-time at any job at any wage renders one
ineligible for staying on UI.
Notably, on California’s UI website, there is also a link to help appli-
cants apply for CalFresh, which is California’s name for the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; formerly known as Food Stamps).
There are also links for workers who are not eligible for UI to inquire
whether they are eligible for Disability Insurance, Paid Family Leave, or
Nonindustrial Disability Insurance.7
To be eligible for UI in Texas, in addition to the eligibility requirements
discussed above, applicants must also document that they are applying
for work and register to search online at www.WorkInTexas.com or
www.MyTXCareer.com. As mentioned above, UI recipients must actively
look for work and are obligated to accept offers that are within their
previous salary range. That limit drops as time on UI goes by.8
Trade Adjustment Assistance

Some people lose their jobs because the position folds and is sent overseas,
where the cost of labor is cheaper. To deal with this situation, Congress
created a federal program, Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), to protect
workers harmed either by their firm going under due to cheaper imports,
or because their job was moved overseas.9 In Texas, the Texas Workforce
Commission handles applications.10
Participants enter into www.WorkInTexas.com and first apply for UI
benefits. The idea is that while receiving UI, they are looking for work.
If they are still unemployed after their UI benefits expire, they can then
apply for TAA. The program can do three things for them. First, it can
replace their income, just as UI did. Second, it can pay for them to take
job training classes, which can be part-time or full-time. The idea here is
that if a worker cannot find employment in their old field, they can train
for a new one. Finally, they can receive a Health Coverage Tax Credit,
which can cover up to 72.5% of the premiums they pay for insurance
other than Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE (all discussed later), or a pol-
icy purchased under a Health Insurance Marketplace.11
Workers’ Compensation12
Workers’ Comp, as Workers’ Compensation is usually called, is not an
anti-poverty program per se, but rather a system loosely overseen by the
Federal Department of Labor and administered by the states. The pro-
gram allows workers injured on the job to receive compensation while
they recover, without having to go to court. In most states, employers
pay into a form of insurance fund. The more a particular company’s
employees draw on the fund, the more that company has to pay in, giv-
ing employers an incentive to make their workplaces safer.
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In practice, Workers’ Comp is very much an anti-poverty program,

because those who draw upon it the most are people who perform
physical labor for a wage, and who would be dropped into poverty very
quickly if they were forced to go weeks to months without pay while they
recovered.13
We will look at how the Workers’ Compensation program functions
in Kansas. The central element of Workers’ Comp is that a worker must
have been injured on the job. If so, an injured worker is entitled to all
the medical treatments necessary to cure or relieve the effects of the
injury, although the employer has the right to choose the authorizing
physician.14 If an injured worker does not like the physician, he or she
can go elsewhere, but the employer is liable only for the first $500 in
expenses.
The injured worker will not be compensated for the loss of the first
week’s wages, but after that will get two-thirds of his or her gross weekly
wages, up to the maximum of $687.00 per week, and a total maximum
of $130,000.15 Temporary Total Disability benefits are paid when the
worker is completely unable to engage in gainful employment and are
paid for the duration of the illness. If a worker loses any combination of
both eyes, both hands or arms, or both feet or legs, they are automati-
cally considered permanently injured and can receive up to $155,000 in
total benefits. Other losses will be paid on a fee schedule for a number
of weeks based on the body part lost. If the worker is killed and has
dependents, they will receive survivors’ benefits of up to $458.00 a week,
in addition to $5,000 for funeral expenses.16
Benefits to Disabled Veterans

States also provide benefits, large and small, to disabled veterans.17 Most
states waive some percentage of tuition to their public colleges and uni-
versities and offer free or subsidized fishing and hunting licenses, motor
vehicle licenses, burials at state and federal veterans’ cemeteries (dis-
cussed in the healthcare chapter), various forms of vocational rehabilita-
tion, preferential hiring for state jobs, and free or subsidized residence
at state veterans’ homes to disabled veterans, especially veterans who
are 100% disabled. Here is just a sample of other benefits provided.
California provides exemptions for the first $100,000 of home valua-
tions for property taxes to totally disabled veterans.18 In Louisiana, vet-
erans with 100% disability are exempt from ad valorem tax on their
homes (i.e., “property taxes”), and the state administers a private-
funded pool of money that can provide one-off assistance up to $10,000
for financial emergencies.19 Kansas allows for up to $700 in property
taxes to be refunded for veterans with at least a 50% service-related dis-
ability and exempts military retirement pay from its state income tax.20
Texas has programs for purchasing residential property and land, along
17
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I ncome A ssistance
with property tax abatements.21 Massachusetts exempts disabled veter-

ans from property taxes, the motor vehicles tax, and the state sales tax
and provides a $2,000 annuity annually.22 Most of these programs are
not means-tested and are hard to categorize as being part of the social
safety net, but they all do strive to make life less expensive for those who
have lost their capacity to earn because of injuries sustained while serv-
ing their country.
Earned Income Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit

One way to encourage people in low-wage positions to work more is to
allow them to pay less in income taxes, and as they earn more, gradu-
ally begin to pay a higher percentage, until they reach the traditional tax
brackets.23 The federal government and many states, including Kansas,
Louisiana, and Massachusetts (but not California, and Texas does not
have a personal income tax) have programs woven into their income
tax systems, with the federal credit being called the Earned Income Tax
Credit (EITC) and the one from the states sometimes referred to as an
Earned Income Credit.24
To calculate one’s federal EITC (that is, how much one gets to deduct
from one’s taxes), the first step is to get the previous filing year’s Adjusted
Gross Income, or AGI. AGI is 8b of Form 1040.
Next, look at Table 2.1 to see if the taxpayer’s income falls below the
upper limit.
If the taxpayer’s AGI falls below these limits, and they have less than
$3,650 in investment income, then they qualify for an EITC:
• No qualifying children: $543

• One qualifying child: $3,618
• Two qualifying children: $59,890
• Three or more qualifying children: $6,728.
Table 2.1 Maximum AGI to Qualify for the EITC
Children or Relatives Maximum AGI (Filing Maximum AGI

Claimed as Single, Head of (Filing as Married or
Household, or Widowed) Filing Jointly)
0 $15,980 $21,920
1 $42,158 $48,108
2 $47,915 $53,865
3 or more $51,464 $57,414
www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit/earned-income-and-
earned-income-tax-credit-eitc-tables#EITC%20Tables (Accessed March 2021).
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Temporary Assistance for Needy Families25

On August 22, 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
(P.L.104-193), which goes under the acronym PRWORA. PRWORA went
into effect the following year on July 1, 1997, when the federal program
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was officially con-
verted to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, pronounced
“tan-iff”), a federal program that is partially funded with matching funds
by the federal government and partially funded and administered in the
respective states. When people speak of “welfare,” TANF is the program
to which they are typically referring. It is far and away the largest pro-
gram in income assistance both in terms of the number of recipients and
also in program costs.26 It is also, unquestionably, the most politically
contested program in the American social safety net.
AFDC was a means-tested entitlement program. There are two parts to
that sentence. “Means-tested” signifies that one can only receive benefits
if the applicant falls under certain income and asset levels. “Entitlement”
means that if an applicant meets those qualifications, they get the ben-
efits as a matter of right. Under AFDC, adults could be on the program
indefinitely, as long as they had qualifying children.
AFDC came under attack for three reasons. First, critics argued that the
policy created incentives for being on welfare as a lifestyle, and impressive
quantities of ink were spilled on both sides researching the validity of this
statement.27 Second, many governors and members of Congress (along
with President Clinton, who had served as the governor of Arkansas)
argued that AFDC was too inflexible, uniform, and unresponsive to local
needs and that if they were provided with some freedom to spend funds
in innovative ways, the states could create more effective programs to get
recipients into the labor market. A third argument was coupled to the
second and called for freedom to experiment as a good in itself, allowing
the states once again to serve as “laboratories of democracy.”
For some combination of these reasons, in 1996, AFDC was converted
to TANF with the support mostly of Republican members of Congress
and the Democratic President Bill Clinton, ending the entitlement aspect
of AFDC. Through waivers allowing them exemptions from various fed-
eral requirements, states also now have the latitude to experiment with
programs such as offering subsidized daycare or public transportation,
for example, or to try different versions of workforce development. As
with other federal programs they administer, states are also free to call
TANF by other names. In Massachusetts, TANF goes under the name
Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children (TAFDC).28 It is
called the Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program, “FITAP,”
in Louisiana,29 and the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility
19
20
I ncome A ssistance
to Kids program, “CalWORKs” in California.30 Texas did away with the

words and just called it TANF.31 In Kansas, it is called the Successful
Families Program-TANF.32
While TANF is categorized here as an income support program, it comes
with significant other benefits, especially medical benefits, and, depending
on the state, such others as assistance for burial expenses, transportation
assistance, help with finding employment, subsidized childcare so parents
can go to work, and even a clothing allowance for uniforms of safety
gear. There are structural incentives in the way states are reimbursed by
the federal government to get recipients working as fast as possible, for
parents to get or remain married, and also to keep families from having
more children.
The changes in the program’s name from Aid to Families with Dependent
Children to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are telling, and
the word “families” in both is important. Households must have at least
one dependent child aged 18 or younger, or a female must be pregnant.
Moreover, the word “temporary” is also quite meaningful. Federal law pre-
vents an adult recipient from being on TANF for longer than two years at a
time (children can be on until they reach 20 in Massachusetts, 19 in Texas
and Louisiana), and not more than 5 years (60 months) over their lifetime.
States have reflexibility in their ability to exempt applicants from the
work requirement, although they cannot exempt more than 20% of their
recipients. Texas, for example, offers a wide range of exemptions. Children
under 18 do not have to work (although they have to be in school).
Caretakers of disabled children or family members on Supplemental
Security Income (SSI), those who suffer from a mental or physical disability
expected to last more than 180 days, applicants aged 60 or older, women
unable to work due to pregnancy complications, and single parents of chil-
dren under the age of one, among others, may apply for exemptions.33
Immigrants are also ineligible for the first five years they are in the
country from TANF benefits using federal funds, with the exceptions of
“refugees, asylees, an alien whose deportation is being withheld, Cuban/
Haitian entrants, Amerasians, and veterans, members of the military on
active duty, and their spouses and unmarried dependent children.” States,
however, are allowed to provide TANF benefits to immigrants in the first
five years using their own funds exclusively. As of 2021, of the five states
being studies here, only California uses state funds to extend applications
for “qualified” immigrants,34 PRUCOLs,35 victims of trafficking, U visa
relief applicants, and U visa holders.
States may face financial penalties if they fail to get at least 50% of
all TANF families with one work-eligible adult and 90% of two-parent
TANF families with two work-eligible adults to undertake some form
of work, or activities such as job search or community service, for 30
hours a week, on average, each month (single parents with children under
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I ncome A ssistance
a year old are exempted, along with those caring for a disabled family
member). These penalties can be reduced if the state lowers its TANF
caseload or increases its own spending.
In Massachusetts, all adults in a household on TAFDC must be working
or looking for work. If all children in the household are over nine years
old (six in Texas), all adults must either be working at least 30 hours per
week, be enrolled as students or in a training program or internship, or
be performing community service.36 All children must be enrolled and
attending school, and families with children who skip school may see
their benefits cut.
CalWORKs37
Since every state is slightly different, the easiest thing to do is walk through
one state in detail, and then afterward, we will see each of the five states
in comparison. For our example, we will look at the benefits available to
a poor household in Los Angeles. Once again, in California, TANF goes
by the name California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids,
or “CalWORKs,” and the programs are administered locally by the 58
county welfare departments. Benefits come at two levels depending on
the cost of living in the given county, and Los Angeles County is consid-
ered a high-cost county.
As all state TANF programs do, CalWORKs has four stated pur-
poses: first, assisting needy families so that children can be cared for in
their own homes; second, reducing the dependency of needy parents by
promoting job preparation, work, and marriage; third, preventing out-of-
wedlock pregnancies; and finally, CalWORKs must encourage the forma-
tion and maintenance of two-parent families.38 This articulation of the
mission of TANF makes it clear that while income support is the primary
purpose, it is not the sole mission, and this helps explain why the pro-
gram is so work oriented. Indeed, a key element of the program is that in
households that are receiving funds from CalWORKs, the adults in the
household must either be working or seeking work. A single parent must
engage in 30 hours per week of work, training, or job search activities
(20 if there is a child under 6 in the household). A two-parent household
must engage in 35 hours per week between the 2 adults. As mentioned
above, there are exemptions for pregnant women with complications that
prevent them from working, single parents with a child under the age of
one, adults who are disabled or who cannot work for medical reasons,
and parents who are aged 60 or over, plus those who are caretakers for
another household member who is ill or incapacitated. All children on
CalWORKs must be in school. Adults or children who do not comply
with the work rules (which fall under the Welfare to Work, or WTW,
program) will lose their portion of the funding.39
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Table 2.2 Maximum CalWORKs Benefits
CalWORKs Maximum Grant Amounts

Family Size Region 1 Region 2
Exempt Non-Exempt Exempt Non-Exempt
1 $606 $550 $576 $520
2 $778 $696 $739 $661
3 $983 $878 $934 $834
4 $1,181 $1,060 $1,122 $1,007
5 $1,385 $1,242 $1,316 $1,180
6 $1,589 $1,424 $1,510 $1,353
7 $1,792 $1,606 $1,702 $1,526
8 $1,998 $1,788 $1,898 $1,699
9 $2,199 $1,970 $2,089 $1,872
10 $2,406 $2,152 $2,286 $2,044
https://ca.db101.org/glossary.htm#_q6521 (Accessed February 2021).
To be eligible for CalWORKs, each individual applying must be a US

citizen or lawful immigrant, and a resident of California. The household
income must fall below the limits found in Table 2.2 below. Additionally,
the household cannot have more than $10,000 in liquid assets ($15,000
if the parents are 60 or over), and, as mentioned above, parents must
participate in the WTW activities. “Exempt” families are those in which
the parents do not need to work, “non-exempt” means there is an expec-
tation that they will work the required average weekly hours.
Children need to have received their immunization shots and must
attend school on a regular basis. Household vehicles must be valued at
$25,000 or less,40 homes are exempted from the asset limits, and fami-
lies may set aside up to $5,000 in restricted accounts to save up for a
down payment on a home, or to start a business or pay for educational
expenses. Finally, families in CalWORKs must have child support pay-
ments sent through the California Child Support Services Department,
which will keep the payments, passing on $50 to the family.41
Calculating Income
California determines when an applicant unit (AU)—that is, all the peo-
ple in a household—qualifies for CalWORKs based on Minimum Basic
Standards of Adequate Care (MBSAC). This is California’s version of
the poverty line. As we will see, the MBSAC is below the poverty line,
which seems odd, but as we will see in the Conclusion, when we add in
all the benefits an AU can receive, they are significantly higher than just
CalWORKs alone.
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Table 2.3 MBSAC Levels for Los Angeles
Family Size Maximum Income

1 $741
2 $1,216
3 $1,507
4 $1,788
5 $2,040
6 $2,295
7 $2,522
8 $2,744
9 $2,978
10 $3,232
More than 10 Add $29 for each extra person
The first step is to calculate the AU’s monthly earned income, such as
“salaries, wages, tips, professional fees, and other amounts you receive
as pay for physical or mental work you perform. This can include things
you get in exchange for work instead of wages, such as food, shelter, or
other items. Funds received from any other source”42 (such as SSI, loans
and grants, the EITC, or federal disaster benefits) are not counted.
Next, subtract $90 per month of income for each working family
member.
Add in any unearned income, such as Social Security Disability
Insurance (SSDI), investment income, or monthly income from other
sources.
This amount is the AU’s countable income used to determine eligibility.
Example 2.1
A family of two adults and two children apply for CalWORKs.
Both children are over the age of six. One parent is receiving an SSI
of $225 a month, and the other earned $1,200 a month in wages.
They have no assets and an old car.
The SSI income is not counted. Notably, nor is the parent for the
purposes of counting family members in the household. Only the
$1,200 in earned income is counted, and from that, we subtract $90
for a monthly income of $1,110. Looking at Table 2.3, we see that
the maximum income falls below the MBSAC for a family of three
in Los Angeles ($1,507), and thus, the AU (the family) qualifies for
CalWORKs.
23
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While the two children can receive benefits until they reach the
age of 18, the parents will be limited to 48 months, over their life-
times. Thus, if one parent had already been on CalWORKs for
five months earlier in their life, they can only receive benefits for
another 43.
Calculating Benefits
In California, applicants apply for CalWORKs to their local county
social services agency.43 Since we are now going to calculate benefits, we
can assume that at this point, an agency employee has determined:
1 Who counts as part of the AU under CalWORKs rules;

2 If the family is exempt or non-exempt (that is, do all the adults have
to work, in which case the family is exempt from the work require-
ment, or does at least one have to work, in which case the entire AU
is deemed non-exempt), and;
3 What the family’s income is.44
As we saw above, not everyone in the household is deemed to be part of

the AU, even though they may live with the family.
• People who are not US citizens or do not meet residency requirements

• Immigrants whose needs are met by a sponsor or agency
• Drug felons or fleeing felons (i.e., someone running from the law)
• People who have been sanctioned for not following CalWORKs’
rules
• Foster children receiving foster care payments
• Family members on SSI (discussed below).
Calculating Income for the Purposes of Determining Benefits45

Although we have already calculated income for the purposes of deter-
mining eligibility, we have to do it again in order to determine how much
the AU will get in benefits.
Step 1: Add up any monthly benefits family members get from disabil-
ity benefits such as Workers’ Compensation, SSDI, California’s State
Disability Insurance program (SDI), and private disability insurance.
(Remember that anyone receiving SSI is not counted at all.)
Step 2: Subtract $225 from that amount, if any exists.46
Step 3: Add the remaining amount to any monthly unearned income.
The total is the “countable unearned income.”
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I ncome A ssistance
Step 4: If anyone in the household had disability income from Step 1,

and the monthly amount was less than $225, the applicant gets to
subtract the remainder from their earned income instead.
Example: A family member receives $135 a month in SDI. ($225 −
$135 = $90). The applicant would be able to subtract $90 from their
earned income.
Step 5: Add the earned and unearned income to find the total count-
able income.
Step 6: Divide that number by two.
Step 7: Find the maximum monthly benefit from Table 2.2.
Step 8: Subtract the countable income from that amount, and the
remainder is what the CalWORKs benefit will be.
Example 2.2
Returning now to our AU from Example 2.1, we see how income
for calculating eligibility differs dramatically from income for the
purpose of calculating benefit levels.
Recall that one parent is receiving $225 a month in SSI, and the
other earned $1,200 a month in wages.
Step 1: We disregard the SSI income entirely.

Step 2: Since there is no countable disability income, we have noth-
ing to subtract.
Step 3: Our countable unearned income is $0.
Step 4: The earned monthly income is $1,200. Since we did not
subtract $225 from any income yet, we subtract it now, for an
earned countable income monthly level of $975.
Step 5: The sum of the family’s unearned and earned income is $975.
Step 6: Divided by two, the countable monthly income is $487.50.
Step 7: Now, we look to Table 2.2 to see the maximum CalWORKs
benefits available to households of various sizes.
The family is non-exempt, because one parent still has to work.

They have three children, so they are deemed to be a family size
of four (remember, family members on SSI are not counted!), and
since they live in Los Angeles, they are in Region 1. Their maximum
monthly CalWORKs benefit is $1,060.
Step 8: $1,060 − $487.50 = $572.50. The family’s monthly

CalWORKs benefit would be $572.50.
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California Welfare to Work47

As noted above, with some exceptions,48 all adult CalWORKs recipients
must work at least 30 hours per week if they are single, 20 hours per
week if they have a child under age six, or a combined 35 hours per
week for a couple, while they are receiving benefits. Those who are in
the WTW program and residing in Los Angeles will be able to partake
in the service of LA GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence), which
offers a wide range of courses to help program participants find fruitful
employment.49
LA GAIN also reaches out to employers and holds job fairs where
those looking for future employees can connect with CalWORKs recipi-
ents in order to make the hiring process more direct and easier. LA GAIN
works with LA LINK, which is another employment service through the
Los Angeles Department of Social Services that subsidizes the employee
search costs of businesses by providing free job posting services, free pre-
screening, and free computerized matching services and human staffing
specialists.
WTW divides potential activities into two categories: core and non-
core.50 Core activities are working, vocational training (for 12 months),
substance or other abuse services (within a limited time period), and
job search. Non-core activities are those such as completing a General
Education Development (GED) degree, adult basic education, job skills
training, and continuing counseling and treatment for dependencies
beyond a basic time period. The general idea is that California wants
its CalWORKs recipients to be looking for work, training for work, or
working, and as a result, the WTW program has funds to help recipients
with expenses such as childcare and transportation costs, both of which
can at times be so expensive that they cost more than what an unskilled
worker earns.
Cal-Learn51
Cal-Learn is a program for pregnant and parenting teenagers on
CalWORKs who have not yet completed high school, live with their
child, and are not themselves in foster care. Participants receive transpor-
tation and childcare support and work intensively with a social worker
to ensure that they graduate from high school, as doing so counts toward
their WTW requirement (and conversely, benefits can be cut if they fail to
attend). Students with a C grade or higher can receive an additional $100
once per quarter as a bonus, which will not be counted as earned income,
plus $500 upon graduation.
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California Tribal TANF Program52

On July 8, 2003, California established the California Tribal TANF
Program (CTTP), which is now associated with 20 Native American tribes
in the state. Households with children who are members of any of the
participating tribes can receive the same services as any other California
resident seeking CalWORKs benefits; only they can participate in pro-
grams that are based locally (often on tribal lands) and administered
through CTTP, allowing them to remain within their own culture and to
be served by those who are respectful of it. As with teenagers elsewhere,
young recipients are eligible for a wide range of programs focusing on
pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, communication and sexual
decision making, negotiation skills, individual and group counseling ses-
sions, and also programs such as one entitled “Learning from Our Tribal
Elders,” and another on refusal skills to help avoid teen pregnancy.
General Relief53
Before we move on from California’s version of TANF, we need to talk
about one more program, which is administered on the county level.
California allows its counties to provide assistance to the needy as they
deem fit. All counties offer a version of the program, although some
call it General Assistance. In Los Angeles County, it is called General
Relief (GR). GR is aimed at helping indigent adults who live alone and
have little to no income or financial resources, and are not eligible for
CalWORKs.
To be eligible for GR, the applicant must reside in Los Angeles and be
at least 18 years old. The applicants may have a vehicle valued at $4,500
or less, unless they live in it, in which case it may be worth up to $11,500.
Vehicle aside, the household can have a house valued at no more than
$34,000 and personal property valued at no more than $2,000, and they
can have no more than $100 in cash per person. If there is just one person
in the household, net monthly income (that is, earned income, SDI, and
Veteran’s benefits, if any, after deductions) can be no higher than $221,
$375 if there are two people in the household.
Applicants can receive benefits for only 9 months out of every 12-month
period and must wait 6 months after the first round of benefits, and 12
after the second. After two sets of benefits, they cannot apply again.
GR is a basket of goods, targeted especially toward the indigent or
those who are on the verge. It consists of Emergency Aid, Special Needs,
Health Care, and the provision of a mailing address, if needed, and, of
course, financial Grants.
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1 Emergency Aid: Emergency Aid is for people who are in immedi-

ate financial need while their GR application is being processed. GR
may provide payments to landlords to prevent eviction, or to utility
companies to prevent or restore services. It may also include meal
vouchers and a personal wash kit of soap, shampoo, a razor, and a
toothbrush, although all these benefits will be deducted later on.
2 Special Needs: GR can also provide things such as transportation
costs, transportation for doctor’s visits, added benefits if a doctor
wants the applicant on a special diet, or uniforms or tools the appli-
cant must provide for a new job.
3 Health Care: GR social workers can help applicants apply for
Medicaid. GR will also place people with a dependency problem into
a county-approved recovery program.
4 Mailing Address: One problem the indigent have is that they lack a
mailing address. If so, they can use their local district GR office as an
address to receive documents.
5 Grants: GR will provide a monthly cash grant of up to $221 for one
person or $375 for two. If the applicants find employment, the amount
will gradually decrease until the earned income reaches $621/mo.
In short, GR is the final safety net for those who do not qualify for TANF.
TANF in Other States

Because of the flexibility afforded to states under PRWORA, TANF will
vary from state to state. Without going through each state’s programs
in-depth as we did for California, it does still help to give a flavor of how
some of the other states differ.
Table 2.4 shows the maximum amount available to a household in
each of the five cities.
TANF in Texas
Looking at Table 2.4, we see that the benefit levels in Houston differ
significantly from those the same sized household could receive in Los
Angeles, which, under TANF, is allowed. States also have leeway in the
programs they pursue using TANF funds. In Texas, funds have been
deployed to develop an extensive public–private partnership through the
Texas Workforce Commission’s Skills Development Fund.54
Under the Skills Development Fund, an employer or a labor union that
has a need for workers with specific skills can find an educational institu-
tion, such as a community college or the Texas Engineering Extension
Service, and the two will develop a training program. They apply for
grant money from the Fund, and in return, the employer agrees to hire
28
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‘Not much. It’s so ugly and vulgar.’
‘It is. And the students are such very jolly girls.’
‘Yes. And I’m frightened of them. I don’t know a soul. I’ve never in my
life been with a lot of people and I don’t feel I shall ever get used even to
the smell of them. It’s different for you. You’ve heaps of friends already.’
‘Nonsense. There’s no one. I’ve been screeching like a parrot all the
evening, pretending to be awfully jolly too; but it strikes me as pretty
grim....’ She brooded and whistled. ‘More than a little grim....’ She
drooped, flickered out completely.
‘We’d—we’d better stick it out together,’ said Judith with a blush,
fearful lest her suggestion should condemn her to Jennifer—for Mabel had
said it and she had felt sick.
‘I should say we will. A thing’s much less bloody if you can talk about
its bloodiness to someone else. Do you mind the word bloody? I noticed
you flinched. It’s all a question of habit.’ She revived—‘Christ! To think
only a few days ago I was stalking in Scotland with my angel cousins! It’s a
very broadening thing for a young girl to have boy-cousins of her own age.
I’m indebted to them for a lot of useful information—about sex and one
thing and another. One of them gave me a bottle of champagne as a parting
present. We’ve been drinking it—out of tooth glasses. Ugh! I dare say I’m a
little tight. Don’t you think so? One’s got to do something.... I’d offer you
some, but I’m afraid the swine finished it. The bottle’s in the cupboard.’
She climbed over a trunk, opened the cupboard door and looked in. ‘As I
thought. Not a drop....’
There was a silence. She lit a cigarette, formed her full and vivid lips
into an O and struggled painstakingly with smoke-rings.
The suddenness, thought Judith—the sureness, the excitement!...
glorious, glorious creature of warmth and colour! Her blue eyes had a wild
brilliance between their thick lashes: they flew and paused, stared, flew
again.... Oh, Jennifer!...
‘Isn’t it awful,’ said Jennifer, ‘to have enlightened parents? They never
ask you whether you care to be enlightened too, but offer you up from the
age of ten onwards as a living sacrifice to examiners. And then they expect
you to be grateful. Hmm!’ She glowered at the photographs of a pleasant-
looking couple on the mantelpiece. ‘God! I’m tired. Give me a hand out of
this trunk, and I’ll get to bed.’
She struggled up, slipped off her dressing gown and stood revealed in
striped silk pyjamas.
‘Too late for my exercises to-night,’ she said. ‘Are you keen on muscle?
It’s more womanly not to be. I’ve over-developed mine. I can lend you a
book called “How to Keep Fit” with pictures of young men in loin-cloths.
You look wiry. Can you run?’
‘Yes—and climb——’ said Judith excitedly.
‘Oh!... I can’t imagine you doing anything except wander about looking
innocent and bewildered. We might have some tests to-morrow!’
She went to the window, opened it wide and leaned out. Judith came and
stood beside her. The night was still, dark and starry.
‘The grounds are beautiful,’ murmured Judith.
‘Yes—great trees——’ she murmured softly back. ‘And nightingales, I
believe, in spring.’
‘Nightingales....’
‘Oh, there’s lots of things to look forward to,’ said Jennifer, turning
round and smiling full at Judith. Their eyes sparkled and flashed: sympathy
flowed like an electric current between them. She went on:
‘Oh Lord! Look at my bedroom. I’ll just clear a space and sleep among
the wreckage. Won’t my gyp be pleased? It’s best to begin as I shall
certainly go on, so I’ll leave it to her. She’ll like it as soon as I’ve won her
heart.... Good night, Judith. I must tell you most people call me Jane.’
‘I shall call you Jennifer. It’s delicious,—different from anyone else. It’s
like you.’
From the pillow Jennifer’s face broke into shy smiles, like a gratified
child’s.
Judith busied herself quietly in the sitting-room, tidying the cups and
knives,—enjoying the novel sensation of rendering service. After a few
moments she called:
‘You wouldn’t suppose from their conversation that these girls are
intellectual—would you?’
There was no reply. After a few more minutes she peeped into the
bedroom. Jennifer’s peaceful flushed countenance and regular breathing
greeted her astonished senses.
She was sleeping the sleep of the slightly intoxicated just.
2
The Indian summer stretched out through October that year. The closing
harmonies were so complete that the gardens of the earth seemed but to
repeat and enrich the gardens of the sky; and a day like a sunflower
broadened to a sunset full of dahlias and late roses; with clouds above them
massed, burnished and edged with bloom like the foliage of the trees of
earth. Slowly at night the chill mists, bitter-sweet in smell, luminous
beneath the moon, crept over and blotted all out.
The weeks drifted on. College became a pleasant habit. Lecturers ceased
to be oracles. Work ceased to be important. Young men stared in lecture
rooms and streets. There grew the consciousness of fundamental masculine
apartness: of the other sex mysteriously calling to and avoiding it across an
impassable gulf. Bookshops became places in which to wander and browse
whole mornings. Towards the town, back from the town, the long road
stretched out daily between the flat ploughed fields: the immense and
crushing arc of the sky was swept forever with rich changes.
And the buildings,—the fall of sunlight and shadow on grey stone, red
stone, the unblurred design of roofs and walls at dusk,—the buildings lifted
their bulk, unfolded their pattern, glowed upon the mind by day and by
night, breaking in upon essays, disturbing time-papers.
Jennifer’s shining head, curved cheek, lifted white throat lay against the
blue curtain, just beyond the lamplight. Very late she sat there and said
nothing, did nothing; made you lift eyes from the page, watch her, dream,
wait for her smile to answer yours.
The garden, the river, the children next door were far away. Sometimes
when you listened, there was nothing to be heard, not even Roddy;
sometimes the bird-calls, the wet green scatters of buds, the flowering
cherry-tree; sometimes the sunny mown lawn in stripes, the red rambler
clouds heavy on the hot wall; sometimes the mists, the bloom on the clouds,
the fallen yellow leaves in the dew; sometimes the rooks rocking in the
blown treetops, the strong dark bewildering pattern of bare branches
swirling across the sky, the tragic light crying out for a moment at sunset,
haggard through torn clouds, then drowned again: sometimes these moved
in their seasons through the garden so faintly behind your shut eyes they
stirred no pang. Sometimes the silent group waiting in the darkness by the
river had vanished as if they had been childish things put away.
Time flowed imperceptibly, casting up trifles here and there upon its
banks.
3
King’s Chapel at Evensong. The coloured windows faded gradually out:
only a twilight blue was left beneath the roof: and that died too. Then, only
the double rows of candle-flames gave light, pointing and floating above
the immemorial shadows of the floor and the shadows of benches and the
shadowed faces of old men and youths. Hushed prayer echoed; and the long
rolling organ-waves rose and fell, half-drowning the singing and setting it
free again. All was muffled, flickering, submerged deep under cloudy water.
Jennifer sat there motionless, wistful-eyed and unconscious, neither
kneeling nor standing with others, but leaning rigidly back with eyes fixed
and brilliant.
And afterwards came the emerging into a strange town swallowed up in
mist. White surprising faces glimmered and vanished under the lamps. The
buildings loomed formlessly in the dense sky, picked out by dimly-lit
windows, and forlorn lanterns in the gateways. The life of Cambridge was
thickly enshrouded; but under the folds you felt it stir more buoyantly than
ever, with sudden laughter and talk dropping from the windows, weighing
oddly in the air: as if the town were encouraging her children to sleep by
drawing the curtain; while they, very lively at bedtime, went on playing
behind it.
4
The lecture room window-pane was full of treetops—a whirl and sweep
of black twigs on the sky. The room swam and shone in a faint translucent
flood; and a bird called on three wild enquiring notes. These skies of
February twilights had primroses in them, and floods; and with the
primroses, a thought of green.
The small creakings, breathings and shufflings of the lecture room went
on. The men: rows of heads of young looking hair; bored restless shoulders
hunched beneath their gowns; sprawling grey flannel legs. The women:
attentive rather anxious faces under their injudicious hats; well-behaved
backs; hands writing, writing. Clods, all of them, stones, worse than
senseless things.
The lecturer thought smoothly aloud, not caring who besides himself
listened to him.
It was a situation meet for one of those paragraphic poems beginning
“The solemn greybeard lecturer drones on;”
and after a few more lines of subtly satirical description some dots and a
fresh start:
“Sudden a blackbird calls.... Ah sweet! Who heeds?”
No one heeds. Attention to greybeards has made everyone insensible to

blackbirds. The conclusion would develop neatly along those lines.
A year or two ago, how fervently you would have written, how
complacently desired to publish that sort of thing! No regret could be quite
so sickly as that with which one wished out of existence the published
record of last year’s errors of taste.
‘My dear, he’s the sort of person who’d make arrangements to have his
juvenilia published after his death.’
That was the sort of condemnatory label Tony and his friends would
attach, spreading their hands, leaving it at that.
‘Oh, Roddy, where are you? Why do you never come?’
He flashed into mind,—leaning idly against the mantelpiece, listening
with an obscure smile to Tony’s conversation.
It was the sort of evening on which anything might happen. Excitement
took her suddenly by the throat and made her feeble and tingling to her
finger-tips.
The last of the light fell lingeringly on the grey stone window-frame. If
the gold bloom lasted till you counted fifty, it would be a good omen. One,
two, three, four and so on to twenty, thirty, forty ... crushing the temptation
to count faster than her own heartbeats ... forty-five ... fifty.
It was still there, vanishing softly, but with a margin of at least another
twenty to spare.
The ecstasy grew, making her stomach feel drained and helpless and
beating in odd pulses all over her.
She bent over the desk, pretending to write, and making shaky pencil
marks.
Somebody got up and switched on the light; and all at once darkness had
fallen outside, and the window-pane was a purple-blue blank.
Roddy was in Tony’s room, leaning against the mantelpiece, quite near.
She would pass Tony’s staircase on her way out: it was the one in the
corner, facing the Chapel. She had seen his name every time she went by.
Once she had met him coming out of the doorway, and he had looked
through her; and once as she passed, someone in the court had shouted
‘Tony’! and he had leaned from his high window to reply.
Oh, this intolerable lecture!
Suddenly it was over. She came out and saw the bulk of King’s Chapel
in the deep twilight with its row of buttresses rising up pale, like giant
ghosts.
‘Oh, I’ve left my essay behind in the lecture room. I must go back. Don’t
wait for me.’
She went back a few steps until the gloom had swallowed them, and
waited alone in the dark court. There was a light in Tony’s window.
Lingeringly she crept towards it and paused beneath it, stroking the wall.
She lifted her head and cried speechlessly: ‘Oh come! Come!’
Nobody came and looked out through the uncurtained pane. Nobody
came running down the stairs.
And if she did not go on quickly the bus would start without her.
Let it start and then walk up and knock on Tony’s door and say quite
simply:
“I’ve missed my bus, so I’ve come to see Roddy.” Roddy would spring
forward to greet her. All would be made right with Tony.
For a moment that seemed the clear, delightful inevitable solution.
But what would their faces hide from her or betray? What unbearable
amusement, suspicion, astonishment, contempt?
And what was there to do on such a night save to say to Roddy: “I love
you,” and then go away again? To dare everything, run to him and cry:
I am Lazarus come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I will tell you all.
But what if he should answer with that disastrous answer:
That is not what I meant at all,

That is not it, at all.
If he were to stare and coldly reply, with real speech:

‘Are you mad?’
Oh, but it should be risked!...
She stood still, hesitating, her hand pressing the wall, power and
intoxication dying out of her. She felt the night cold and damp, and heard
approaching footsteps, a torn fragment of laughter, a male voice raised for a
moment in the distance.
She looked up once more at Tony’s window and saw that the curtains
had been drawn; and she sprang away from the wall and ran towards the
street in urgent flight from her wound, from the deliberate-seeming insult,
the cruelty of drawn curtains.
The college bus was packed with girls. Heads were craning out in search
of her.
‘Oh, Judy! There you are! We’ve been keeping the bus and keeping it.
What on earth happened to you?’
‘I couldn’t get in. The room was locked. And then—Oh dear, I’ve run
so! Is there room for me?’
‘Yes, here. Come on, Judy. Here. Come and sit down. You’re all out of
breath. Come in.’
They welcomed her. Their little voices and gestures seemed to stroke
and pat. They were so glad she had come in time, so considerate and kindly,
so safe.
The bus rolled through the streets, past where the solemn lamps and the
buildings ended, out on to the road where was only the enveloping night
wind. The bus swayed and the rows of bodies swayed and the faces smiled
faintly across at each other, amused at their own shaking and jerking; but all
half-dreaming, half-hypnotized by the noise and the motion; all warm,
languid, silent.
The noise and the motion and the swaying faces seemed eternal. Nothing
else had ever been, would ever be. Of course Roddy had not been there: he
had never been there at all.
5
Martin was a great athlete. He was always rowing, always training; but
once or twice he borrowed a motor-bicycle and came out to tea, when
Judith and Jennifer gave combined tea-parties to young men. On these
occasions his face was very red and he looked too big for the room. He was
quite silent and stared with concentration at Judith and Jennifer alternately;
and seemed not to take to his fellow guests. He was undoubtedly a heavy
young man to have at a tea-party—a bad mixer. Jennifer’s jokes, oaths and
sallies brought no gleam to his countenance, and Jennifer was bored with
him. Impossible to convince her that Martin was not a dull young man.
Martin dull?...
God-like in form he dived from the raft and swam over the river, swiftly,
with laughter, water and sun upon his face. He sat among them all and
smoked his pipe, looking kindly and comforting. You could depend on his
eyes solicitously watching, his smile inviting you to come in, when all the
others, neither kindly nor comforting, had shut the door and gone away. He
was the one to whom Mariella chattered at her ease and made little childish
jokes, calling him ‘darlin’,’ looking at him with candour and affection,
sometimes even with a glint of mischief, as if she were a girl like any other
girl; as if that something never fell across her clear face and obscured it. He
shared a bedroom with Roddy; had a little screen at home, so he said, which
Roddy had decorated, and given to him; he came walking up garden-paths
with Roddy laughing and talking at his side.
In the darkness under the cherry-tree he bent his head and tried to speak,
twisting his scrap of cherry, trembling with enchantment. He had been a
thing to fly from, surprised, with beating heart.
But when Jennifer said he was a dull young man, it was very difficult to
argue with her; for it seemed almost as if, transplanted alone to this new
world, he were indeed quite dull, rather ordinary.
He came to tea three times. The last time Judith went with him down the
stairs—his deliberate, assured masculine tread sounding significant, almost
alarming in that house of flustered uneven foolish-sounding steps—and said
good-night to him at the front door.
Fumbling with the lamps of his motor-bicycle he said:
‘Why can’t one ever see you alone?’
‘It’s not allowed, Martin. I can’t ask you to tea alone. And I can’t come
to your rooms without a chaperon.’
‘Oh, damn the chaperon. I shan’t ask you to tea at all. Can’t you break a
footling rule for anybody you know as well as me?’
She said deprecatingly that it was impossible.
‘You mean you won’t.’
That was what she meant. It was not worth while to break rules for dull
Martin.
‘Who’s that Jennifer person you’re always with?’
‘A person I’m very fond of——’ She flared at his tone.
‘Never see you anywhere without her,’ he muttered.
‘Well you needn’t come to tea with me.’
‘Oh, I shan’t come again.’
‘I shan’t ask you.’
Silence fell. She looked up at the dark and starless sky; then at him still
adjusting lamps, his head averted.
What were they about, parting in anger? How far indeed they were from
the other world to mistrust and misunderstand so obstinately they had to
quarrel!
Her heart misgave her suddenly at sight of the great building looming
above her: there was no security in it, no kindness. Supposing when she
went back Jennifer’s room were empty, and Jennifer, utterly weary of her,
had taken the chance to escape, and were even now knocking at strangers’
doors, sure of her welcome?... How quickly without that form, that voice,
all would crumble and dissolve and be but a lightless confusion! She should
never have left the places where Martin stood by her side, listening,
watching, waiting everywhere to wrap her in safety.
She said softly:
‘Martin, when’s Roddy coming to see you?’
‘He was here,’ said Martin, ‘a week or two ago. Staying with Tony
Baring,’ he added. And then again: ‘Only for a night or two.’
Then finally trying in great embarrassment to soothe the pain which,
even to his ears, cried out terribly in the silence and could not find words to
cover it:
‘I scarcely saw him myself. He was very busy—so many people to see.
He’ll be up again soon, I expect and then we must have a party.’
‘Oh yes, Martin.... You know, it’s very naughty of him. He said he’d
come and see me.’
Her voice was thin and cheerful.
‘He’s very forgetful,’ said Martin helplessly.
‘I suppose,’ she suggested lightly, ‘he forgot even to ask after me.’
‘Oh no, he asked after you. I’m sure he did.’
She laughed.
‘Well I must go in.... Tell him when you write to him.... No, don’t tell
him anything. But, Martin, you must come and see me sometimes, please,
please,—in this hateful place. I feel I shall lose you all again. You know
mother’s going to live abroad for a year or two? So I shan’t be there in the
summer, next door. It’s awful. She let the house without telling me. What
shall I do without it? Please come and see me. Or listen, I tell you what: it
doesn’t seem to work somehow, your coming here. I can’t talk to you and I
feel I don’t know you; but when the days get longer we’ll go for a long
walk together, miles and miles. Shall we? Remember!’
‘Rather!’
He was happy again.
She called after him:
‘And, Martin, I’m sorry I was cross.’
‘My fault,’ came his ringing cheerful voice; and his engine started and
he departed with a roar and a rush.
Alone in the dark she stood still and contemplated the appalling image of
Roddy risen up again, mockingly asserting that only he was real; that his
power to give himself or withhold himself was as the power of life and
death.
It was urgent, now, to find Jennifer quickly. She was in her room, lying
on the floor, staring at the flicker of firelight over her yellow velvet frock.
‘Oh, Jennifer!’
Judith sank down beside her, burying her face in her lap.
‘Darling.’
‘I’m not very happy to-night. It’s a mood. I think I don’t feel very well.
And the night seems so sad and uneasy, with this wind. Don’t you feel it?’
Jennifer put out her hands and clasped them round Judith’s face, gazing
at her sombrely.
‘What has he said to you?’ she whispered.
‘Who?’
‘That Martin.’
‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?’
‘I love nobody.’
Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....
‘You mustn’t love anybody,’ said Jennifer. ‘I should want to kill him. I
should be jealous.’ Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith’s lifted face. ‘I
love you.’
And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer
blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power.
When the longer days came and Martin wrote to ask her to come for a
walk one Sunday, she had another engagement and regretfully refused; and
after that he wrote to tell her to bring a friend to a river picnic with him and
another young man. She brought Jennifer; and Jennifer flirted broadly with
the other young man; and the picnic was not a success.
After that the year closed without sight or sign of him; and she forgot to
care.
6
Gradually Judith and Jennifer drew around them an outer circle of about
half a dozen; and these gathered for conversation in Jennifer’s room every
evening. That untidy luxuriant room, flickering with firelight, smelling of
oranges and chrysanthemums, was always tacitly chosen as a meeting-
place; for something of the magnetism of its owner seemed to be diffused in
it, spreading a glow, drawing tired heads and bodies there to be refreshed.
Late into the night they sat about or lay on the floor, smoked, drank
cocoa, ate buns, discussed—earnestly, muddle-headedly—sex, philosophy,
religion, sociology, people and politics; then people and sex again. Judith
sat in a corner and watched the firelight caress and beautify their peaceful
serious faces; talked a great deal suddenly now and then, and then was
silent again, dreaming and wondering.
Even the most placid and commonplace faces looked tragic, staring into
the fire, lit by its light alone. They were all unconscious; and she herself
could never be unconscious. Around her were these faces, far away and lost
from themselves, brooding on nothing; and there was she, as usual,
spectator and commentator, watching them over-curiously, ready to pounce
on a passing light, a flitting shade of expression, to ponder and compare and
surmise; whispering to herself: ‘Here am I watching, listening. Here are
faces, forms, rooms with their own life, noise of wind and footsteps, light
and shadow. What is this mystery?...’ And even in her futile thoughts never
quite stepping over the edge and staring mindlessly and being wholly
unaware.
They broke up at last with sighs and yawns, lingered, drifted away little
by little. Judith was left alone with Jennifer.
‘One more cigarette,’ she suggested.
‘Well, just one.’
Jennifer let down her hair and brushed it out, holding it along her arm,
watching it shimmer in the fire-light with an engrossed stare, as if she never
could believe it was part of her.
Always Jennifer. It was impossible to drink up enough of her; and a day

without her was a day with the light gone.
Jennifer coming into a room and pausing on the threshold, head up, eyes
wide open, darting round, dissatisfied until they found you. That was an
ever fresh spring of secret happiness. Jennifer lifting you in her arms and
carrying you upstairs, because she said you looked tired and were such a
baby and too lovely anyway to walk upstairs like other people.
Jennifer basking in popularity, drawing them all to her with a smile and a
turn of the head, doing no work, breaking every rule, threatened with
disgrace, plunged in despair; emerging the next moment new-bathed in
radiance, oblivious of storm and stress.
Jennifer dispensing her hospitality with prodigal and careless ease,
recklessly generous in public and in secret, flashing the glow of her
magnetism suddenly into unlit and neglected lives, allowing them to get
warm for a little, and then light-heartedly forgetting them. But never
forgetting Judith—or not for long; and coming back always to sit with her
alone, and drop all masks and love her silently, watchfully with her eyes.
Jennifer singing Neapolitan folk-songs to a be-ribboned guitar. Where
she had picked up the airs, the language, the grace and fascination of her
manner, no one knew. But when she sat by the window with bright
streamers falling over her lap, singing low to her soft accompaniment, then,
each time, everyone fell madly in love with her.
Jennifer chattering most when she was tired, or depressed, her words
tripping over each other, her absurd wit sparkling, her laugh frequent and
excited: so silent, so still when she was happy that she seemed hypnotized,
her whole consciousness suspended to allow the happiness to flow in.
Jennifer looking shattered, tortured after a few hours spent by mistake
over coachings and time-papers in stuffy rooms; starting up in the end with
a muttered: “O God, this place!...” wrenching open the door and rushing
downstairs, oblivious of all but the urgency of her mood. From the window
you could see her in the grounds, running, running. Soon the trees hid her.
She was tramping over the ploughed fields, her cheeks glowing, her hair
like a light against the dark hedges. She was going, alone, tensely, over the
long fields. What was she thinking of? She had her evasions. No good to
ask her: her eyes would fly off, hiding from you. She would not let herself
be known entirely.
By Judith’s shadowy side ran the hurrying flame of Jennifer; and from
all that might give her pause, or cloud her for a moment Jennifer fled as if
she were afraid.
The lonely midnight clouded her. Jennifer was afraid of the dark.
Was it that people had the day and the night in them, mixed in varying
quantities? Jennifer had the strength of day, and you the strength of night.
By day, your little glow was merged in her radiance; but the night was
stronger, and overcame her. You were stronger than Jennifer in spite of the
burning life in her. The light hid the things for which you searched, but the
darkness and the silence revealed them. All your significant experiences
had been of the night. And there, it was suddenly clear, was the secret of the
bond with Roddy. He too had more shadow in him than sun. “Chevalier de
la lune” that was he—“Que la lumiere importune”—ah! yes! “Qui cherche
le coin noir”—yes, yes—“Qui cherche le coin noir.” Some time—it did not
matter when, for it was bound to happen—he would say in the dark “I love
you.”
Meanwhile there was Jennifer to be loved with a bitter maternal love,
because she was afraid. And because, some day, she might be gone. For
Jennifer said “I love you” and fled away. You cried “Come back!” and she
heard and returned in anguish, clasping you close but dreading your
dependence. One day when you most needed her, she might run away out of
earshot, and never come back.
But there was value in impermanence, in insecurity; it meant an ache and
quickening, a perpetual birth; it meant you could never drift into
complacence and acceptance and grow old.
There was Mabel, drifting into Judith’s life when conscience pricked and
being joyfully dismissed again when the exigencies of duty seemed
satisfied. There were little notes from Mabel found, with a sinking feeling,
among her letters.
Dear J.,
Would you care to come to church with me on Sunday? I shall be ready
at 10.15. I do hope you will come this week.
Yrs.
M.F.
Dear Judith,
I thought you did not look quite yourself at lunch to-day. If there is
anything worrying you, perhaps I might help you? Or if you are tired, come
and rest in my armchair. I shall be working and will not disturb you.
Yours Mabel.
P.S. It’s all this rushing about that wears you out and makes you unfit for
work.
M.F.
Mabel wrote her advice now, more often than she dared speak it.
Mabel, always pathetic, so that you could never entirely disregard her;
always grotesque and untouched by charm so that it was impossible to think
of her or look at her without revulsion; so that the whole thing was a tedious
and barren self-discipline.
Mabel little by little relinquishing the effort to draw Judith into her life
and desperately endeavoring to fit herself into Judith’s: chattering to other
girls, trying to be amused by their jokes, to share their enthusiasms and
illusions; pretending to have a gay home-life, full of interesting friends and
fun; pretending to laugh at the thought of work and to treat lightly that
nightmare of the Tripos which crushed her to the earth.
Once or twice Judith tried to draw her into the evening circle, explaining
her loneliness, appealing beforehand for her pathos.... But it was no good.
She was of another order of beings,—dreary and unadaptable. And Jennifer,
with a wicked light in her eye, spoke loudly and with malicious irreverence
of dons, the clergy and the Bible; and mentioned the body with light-
hearted frankness; and Judith felt ashamed of herself for thinking Jennifer
funny.
Mabel striving doggedly to believe that Jennifer was in the nature of an
illness from which Judith would recover by careful treatment, then striving
to ignore the importance of the relationship—staking out an exclusive claim
in Judith by references suggestive of a protective intimacy.
‘Now, now! Pale cheeks! What will your mother say, I’d like to know, if
I let you go home looking like this? I shall have to come and put you to bed
myself.’
And there followed the flush and the hungry gleam while awkwardly she
touched Judith’s cheek.
Mabel at long last voluntarily dropping out of all the places into which
she had tried to force herself, going back without a word to her solitary
room and her doughnuts. There were no more little notes rearing
unwelcome heads in the letter-box. She asked nothing.
From the window late at night Judith could see her lamp staring with a
tense wan hopeless eye across the court. In the midst of talk and laughter
with Jennifer, she saw it suddenly and knew that Mabel was sitting alone,
hunched over note-books and dictionaries, breathing stertorously through
her nose hour after hour, dimly hoping that her uncurtained window might
attract Judith’s attention, persuade her to look in and say good-night.
‘Oh, Jennifer, I won’t be five minutes. I must just go and see Mabel. It’s
awful. You don’t know. She expects me; and she’ll sit up all night working
if I don’t go.’
‘Tell her about the young lady of Bute with my love and a kiss,’ said
Jennifer in the loud voice edged with brutality which she reserved for
Mabel. ‘And say the mistress is very disappointed in her because she’s
discovered she doesn’t wear corsets. She’s going to speak about it publicly
to-morrow night because it’s very immoral. And ask her what will her
mother say if you let her go home with all those spots on her face.’
Judith escaped, laughing, ran down the dark stairs to Mabel’s room and
tapped.
‘Come in.’
It was clear from her voice she had been alert at the sound of the known
footsteps. She raised a pallid face that tried for a moment to begrudge its
gladness and preserve a stiffness.
‘Now, Mabel, I’m come to put you to bed. I like all your talk of looking
after me. It’s you who need it. What do you suppose you’ll feel like to-
morrow if you work any more? Come on now.’
That was the way she loved to be talked to. Judith filled her hot-water
bottle and made cocoa, while with laborious modesty she donned her
flannel nightdress with its feather-stitched collar; and pouted coyly and
happily, like any other girl, because Judith was such a dragon.
Then she leaned back in her chair with the work-lines in her face
smoothing out, and yawned contentedly and talked of little intimate things,
giving them to Judith without reserve, as Judith gave hers to Jennifer—
suddenly, pitifully like any other girl.
These were her happy compensating moments: they made her think for a
while that the friendship was rare and firm.
How easy it was, thought Judith, to permit her to enjoy your incongruous
presence; to step right into her world and close the gates on your own so
fast that no chill air from it might breathe against her security! Alone with
her like this, no lapse of taste on her part ruffled the nerves. You accepted
her and let her reveal herself; and she was, after all, interesting, human,
gentle, and simple. There was nothing—this time you must remember—
nothing grotesque or ridiculous to report to Jennifer afterwards, hatefully
betraying and mocking....
She spoke of her life in the narrow church-bound village home; her
future: she would teach, and so have her own little independent place in the
world. She didn’t think she was the marrying sort; but you never knew.
Independence was what she craved: to support herself and be beholden to
no one. Only she must pass well: (and her eyes would wander haggardly to
the books)—It all depended on her health—she’d never enjoyed very good
health. She always thought if she felt better she wouldn’t forget so. It made
work very hard. Freda had always been the strong one. Everything came
easy to Freda. Everyone admired and petted her: she was getting so spoilt,
and extravagant too. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she and Freda had
much in common, but you couldn’t help but love her in spite of all her
naughtiness. And the quick way she had of answering back! She recited
some of Freda’s quick answers, giggling like any other girl.
There was a curate who had coached her in Greek and Latin. He was a
wonderful man, a real saint: not like any one else at all, young, a beautiful
face and such eyes. Once he had come to tea with her, and they had had a
wonderful talk, just the two of them. Freda had been out. It really seemed as
if he looked on her as a friend. She hoped so.... He had helped her.
Judith listened, asked questions, sympathized, cheered her with offers of
notes and essays; tucked her into bed with an effort at motherliness; and
flew with a light heart back to Jennifer.
The curate ... at all costs, she must not tell Jennifer about the curate.
7
The long days of May stretched out before Judith and Jennifer. Each day
was a fresh adventure in the open air, and work an unimportant and
neglected nuisance. For weeks the weather remained flawless. Life
narrowed to a wandering in a green canoe up small river-channels far from
the town, with Jennifer paddling in wild bursts between long periods of
inaction. To all Judith’s offers of help she answered firmly that a woman
should never depart from her type.
They landed finally and made ready to bathe.
‘Off, off, you lendings!’ cried Jennifer. ‘Do you know, darling, that
comes home to me more than anything else in all Shakespeare? I swear,
Judith, it seems much more natural to me to wear no clothes.’
She stood up, stretching white arms above her head. Her cloud of hair
was vivid in the blue air. Her back was slender and strong and faultlessly
moulded.
‘Glorious, glorious Pagan that I adore!’ whispered the voice in Judith
that could never speak out.
Beside Jennifer she felt herself too slim, too flexible, almost attenuated.
‘You are so utterly lovely,’ Jennifer said, watching her.
They swam in cool water in a deep circular pool swept round with
willows, and dried themselves in the sun.
They spent the afternoon in the shade of a blossoming may bush. All
round them the new green of the fields was matted over with a rich and
solid layer of buttercup yellow. Jennifer lay flat on her back with the utter
relaxed immobility of an animal, replenishing her vitality through every
nerve.
Slowly they opened books, dreamed through a page, forgot it at once,
laid books aside; turned to smile at each other, to talk as if there could never
be enough of talking; with excitement, with anxiety, as if to-morrow might
part them and leave them for ever burdened with the weight of all they had
had to tell each other.
Judith crept closer, warming every sense at her, silent and utterly
peaceful. She was the part of you which you never had been able to untie
and set free, the part that wanted to dance and run and sing, taking strong
draughts of wind and sunlight; and was, instead, done up in intricate knots
and overcast with shadows; the part that longed to look outward and laugh,
accepting life as an easy exciting thing; and yet was checked by a voice that
said doubtfully that there were dark ideas behind it all, tangling the web;
and turned you inward to grope among the roots of thought and feeling for
the threads.
You could not do without Jennifer now.
The sun sank, and the level light flooded the fields and the river. Now
the landscape lost its bright pure definitions of outline, its look as of a
picture embroidered in brilliant silks, and veiled its colours with a uniform
pearl-like glow. A chill fell and the scent of May grew troubling in the
stillness. They turned the canoe towards home.
Nearer the town, boats became more frequent. Gramophones clamoured
from the bowels of most of them; and they were heavily charged with grey-
flannelled youth. Jennifer, observing them with frank interest, pointed out
the good-looking ones in a loud whisper; and all of them stared, stared as
they passed.
Above the quiet secretly-stirring town, roofs, towers and spires floated in
a pale gold wash of light. What was the mystery of Cambridge in the
evening? Footfalls struck with a pang on the heart, faces startled with
strange beauty, and every far appearing or disappearing form seemed
significant.
And when they got back to College, even that solid red-brick barrack
was touched with mystery. The corridors were long patterns of unreal light
and shadow. Girls’ voices sounded remote as in a dream, with a murmuring
rise and fall and light laughter behind closed doors. The thrilling smell of
cowslips and wall-flowers was everywhere, like a cloud of enchantment.
In Jennifer’s room, someone had let down the sun-blind, and all was in
throbbing shadow. Her great copper bowl was piled, as usual, with fruit,
and they ate of it idly, without hunger.
‘Now a little work,’ said Judith firmly. ‘Think! only three weeks till
Mays....’
But it was impossible to feel moved.
Jennifer, looking childish and despondent, sat down silently by the
window with a book.
Judith wrote on a sheet of paper:
Tall oaks branch-charmèd by the earnest stars; and studied it. That was
a starry night: the sound of the syllables made stars prick out in dark
treetops.
Under it she wrote:
... the foam

Of perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn.
What a lot there were for the sea and the seashore!... The page became
fuller.
Upon the desolate verge of light

Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.
The unplumbed salt estranging sea.
From the lone sheiling of the misty island

Mountains divide us and a world of seas:
But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland;
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Ah, that said it all....

The lines came flocking at random.
But the majestic river floated on,

Out of the mist and hum of that low land
Into the frosty starlight, and there flowed
Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian waste
Under the solitary moon....
Ah sunflower weary of time

That countest the steps of the sun....
Ah sunflower!... Where were they—the old gardens of the sun where my

sunflower wished to go? They half unfolded themselves at the words ...
Nous n’irons plux aux bois
Les lauriers sont coupés.
O mors quam amara est memoria tua homini pacem habenti in

substantiis suis....

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