This chapter details the growth of disaster relief appropriations, both in number and in scale, over the course of the century leading up to the New Deal. This occurred during precisely the period now associated most closely with the dominance of laissez-faire ideology and the decided lack of any federal welfare state. Significantly, constitutional objections to disaster relief spending were infrequently raised in Congress, and were often quickly brushed aside as irrelevant in the face of the imperative to respond to blameless suffering.