Social Contracts Were Created for Human Beings to Reach Their Potential According to Leiby

History of Social Work and Social Welfare in the United States             While Chapter 9 of the book (Leiby, 1978) deals mainly with the changing mindset regarding charity, it touches on the development of the idea of human rights, political economy and the social environment. For James Leiby, all charitable ideas began with the religious motivation, and a belief that the “affluent had a moral responsibility or duty to help the unfortunate” (1978, p. 137). With the advent of industrialization, came the realization that there was a large section of society who were not benefitting from the increasing incomes. Soon, a way of measuring poverty and the degree of “suffering” in society was born. Leiby showed that charity and philanthropy evolved  from a mere duty to God, to a conscious striving to provide the human being with a “degree of self-respect and spiritual culture” (1978, p. 147). By tracing emergence of worker’s rights, women and children’s rig...