The Joint Distribution Committee cooperated with other American organizations to feed Jewish children after the armistice, more successfully than what was achieved in public health. But Jews were always concerned about the Jewish future, and these worries manifested in heated Eastern European Jewish debates over the right way to bring up Jewish children in the postwar economy. Jewish organizations could only achieve so much in terms of exporting Progressive child welfare schemes to Poland. Their vision of child welfare and self-help depended on an improving economy and the related ability of local Jews to absorb the initiatives begun by American Jews. When such improvements failed to materialize outside Palestine, the JDC felt morally obliged to continue its work, constructing a collective welfare system that in many ways aspired to that of a social welfare state.