Many of us grew up hearing our parents exclaim 'you are driving me to the poorhouse ' or remember the card in the 'Monopoly' game which says 'Go to the Poorhouse Lose a Turn ' Yet most Americans know little or nothing of this institution that existed under a variety of names for approximately three hundred years of American history. Surprisingly these institutions variously named poorhouses, poor farms, sometimes almshouses or workhouses, have received rather scant academic treatment, as well, though tens of millions of poor people were confined there, while often their neighbors talked in...

David Wagner explores the lives of poor people during the three decades after the Civil War, using a unique treasure of biographies of people who were (at one point in time) inmates in a large almshouse, combined with genealogical and other official records to follow their later lives. Ordinary People develops a more fluid picture of "poverty" as people's lives change over the course of time.

This book, based on in-depth interviews of radical social workers, who at one time were associated with the Catalyst collective, explores through oral history the social psychological effects of upward mobility on political ideology.