Harrington

[Doug Henwood]

[Bounced bec of a lot of html gobbledygook. According to the official 
stats, there were 39.5 million poor in the U.S. in 1959. It rose a 
bit, then fell to 25 million by the late 1960s.]

From: LeoCasey at aol.com

I checked with Maurice Isserman regarding Kelley's inquiry. Here is his
response.

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Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 13:52:08 -0500
From: Maurice Isserman <misserma at hamilton.edu>

No, Mike never said that.  His use of numbers in The Other America
were, as Dwight Macdonald noted in his famous New Yorker review,
somewhat "impressionistic" -- his estimate of those living below the
poverty line was somewhere in the 40 to 60 million range -- quite an
elastic definition.  Others came up with estimates of about 25
million.  Mike was still more of a poet than a social scientist at
that point -- that he would probably admit to.  His point was that
there were a hell of a lot more poor people in America than most well
off Americans assumed -- and that was true whether the final
statistic stood at 60, 40, or even 25 million.