A new philosophy of social welfare is struggling for recognition in this country. Today's public welfare programs still embody much of the old theory that welfare is a form of charity and that dependency is to be blamed on the individual. A more modern school of thought considers dependency a condition beyond the control of any individual, and seeks to establish the status of welfare benefits as rights, based upon the notion that every individual, in whatever circumstances, is entitled to share in the commonwealth. The greatest obstacle to reforms in social welfare is the widely and stubbornly held belief that welfare is an anomaly in the American scene. This is a country where people are expected to take care of themselves, and the concept of social welfare, while generally accepted, is considered to be contrary to the natural order of things-to be discouraged if possible. The status of welfare as an anomaly is explicitly written into our laws. Welfare recipients are watched with suspicion; their use of welfare money is hedged by stringent limitations. These attitudes create a demand for frequent investigations to prevent "misuse" of benefits. In their zeal public agencies have claimed and exercised the privilege of entering recipients' homes at any hour of the day or night-the law literally pursues recipients into the bedroom. Supervision also appears in a prescriptive form: an insistence that the authorities have a right to concern themselves with recipients' family affairs and morality. Welfare law is full of special burdens for those subject to its jurisdiction. Relatives' responsibility is one illustration-an attempt to impose on relatives duties of support not accepted in the rest of society. Federal poverty programs under the Office of Economic Opportunity have a special loyalty oath requirement-for the poor alone. And welfare recipients are regularly prosecuted for a special kind of crime-misuse of welfare funds-while others who receive public funds are generally not prosecuted criminally. Such invidious laws, and the general pattern of bureaucratic supervision, investigation,