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And on the merit rating: "Well, if you don't produce any unemployment, why should you pay a tax into the system?"

Of course, we lost on merit rating, and I've always regretted it. I think that some time, in the wisdom of this country and some President who's interested in the matter, we'll wipe out merit rating. You don't have to administer it, so you don't know what a headache it is. But this is what causes the problems in the administration of unemployment insurance today in the various States and under the various State laws.

The public interest in old-age insurance became very great. Earlier, I had conceived it as New York State Commissioner of Labor to establish some kind of old-age and unemployment insurance in the State of New York. Where did the idea come from? I don't know. I must have picked it up in the general reading that one does; in the general conversation of other socially minded people; in the discussions that went on between intelligent and educated people about the English system and how they managed things; in the conversations with people who had just been to England and thought it was such a nice idea that Lady Jones' maid had a little book, and when Lady Jones paid her, she wrote in the maid's little book and this was going to take care of the maid when she was old -- when she was 70 years old or 65 years old, she could collect something. Now wasn't that a good idea? Thousands of people thought it was a fine idea

We looked into this, and we fell back upon the report of Mayor's Committee on Unemployment which was written in 1919 and 1920 and had recommended some form of unemployment insurance. We started on a program of writing a report on unemployment insurance in 1922, in the State of New York -- on a State basis -- because we were in the midst of a depression -- a little depression, not a big one. At that time I conceived the idea to stir this thing up. I got the Governor to authorize me to go to England to study their system. The English system was full of horrors to me because of their recordkeeping arrangements, which I went to see at Kew.

Now you know all about recordkeeping here. I have observed this enormous building that you have erected to keep your records in, and it's almost as big as the one at Kew, which terrified me because it was so big. And we have the benefit of the IBM which the British didn't have when they began their handwritten system. I remember seeing ladies climbing up on great high stepladders and getting files out of shelves -- dusty, dirty -- many wearing gloves so they wouldn't get their hands dirty while hunting through the files for John Jones' record. A terrific problem of recordkeeping! You don't do that today.

I'll never forget how startled I was when I saw the first IBM machine throw up records in front of you. It's an amazing convenience! You don't realize what it would be otherwise unless you have tried it.

At any rate, in the State of New York, while Roosevelt was Governor and we were in the midst of this depression in the early twenties I did get him sort of worked up about it. At that point education was the whole thing, you see. We had to get people used to the idea.

American manufacturers and businessmen were coming back from England and saying, "Oh, they have the do over there. The dole is horrid!" Nobody then knew what the dole was. I do now. It wasn't so bad even then, but it was getting something you yourself hadn't paid for. When the depression came, the English put unions into the unemployment insurance system other than those who had originally begun it and paid into the fund.

What else were they going to do with them? They had to do something with the unemployed. They had to provide some form of relief, but it was greatly resented by the older, stable, skilled trades organizations, who had thought they would get up a fund for themselves, to find that their Government put everybody that was unemployed on that fund. It wasn't really very nice, but it wasn't wicked, although the American manufacturer though it was, so that we had a big group of businessmen who would say: "Oh, no; terrible, the dole! Don't mention unemployment insurance to me. That's nothing but the dole."

And I would mention old-age insurance to them to make it easier, but they would say, "No, that's the dole too. I don't believe in the dole."

Franklin Roosevelt was greatly opposed to the dole: "Oh, we don't want the dole; not the dole!" I had a great time to get him quiet down and stop talking about the dole; to try to think about the realities.

GETTING ORGANIZED

Anyhow, this was what we finally did: first, we appointed a committee for the relief of the unemployed in New York State. That was our first duty. Then we conceived the idea of calling a conference of Governors of the surrounding States because at that time every study of unemployment insurance or old-age insurance brought us up flat against this: How can this possibly be done by one State alone?

The conditions are so different in different States. The revenue situation is so different; the tax laws are so different; the industries are so different; the composition of the population is so different. There are great collections of aged people in some States and very few aged in others. California at that time was not the prize old-age State that it is today. But there were equally notable differences between the States. How could Arizona, how could Alabama, how could the State of Maine with its disproportionate population of old people, its decline of youth (because they all left Maine to go to the city) -- how could they possibly have individual old-age insurance systems or unemployment insurance systems? How could they rely upon their own villages to collect enough money from the unemployed or the aged (when they were working) to carry such a system? It was also a very difficult thing to do with the small actuarial exposure of the various States. We couldn't ever figure it out for New York State, which is a large, rich State with high tax values and all that sort of thing. There just wasn't enough exposure and there wouldn't have been enough collected to warrant the program.