Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State - Paperbackby Elizabeth Garner Masarik (Author) With The Sentimental State, Elizabeth Garner Masarik shows how middle class women, both white and Black, harnessed the nineteenth century "culture of sentiment" to generate political action in the Progressive Era. While eighteenth century rationalism had relied upon the development of the analytic mind as the basis for acquiring truth, nineteenth century sentimentalism hinged upon human emotional responses and the