Set in early twentieth-century New York, the book tells the extraordinary story of what happened when a catastrophic fire in Greenwich Village threw Adolph Ochs, the ambitious new publisher of the New York Times, and Rose Schneiderman, a defiant young labor organizer, into a momentous struggle over who should organize the city’s response: a rising charity sector led by wealthy financiers and civic elites, or the reform-minded unions and activists of Lower Manhattan…. In the months after the fire, the Times and its philanthropic allies joined forces to popularize the idea that social crises should be managed not by immigrant reformers, labor advocates, or neighborhood coalitions, but by a select class of elite and supposedly “scientific” charitable institutions. In doing so, they elevated a new language of expertise around poverty and public welfare that would leave a lasting mark on American civic life.