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And it was true, they couldn't. Intellectual difficulties had arrived. Of course, the actuarial problem was especially difficult. The actuaries had to know almost before we met. They had to know what we wanted them to figure it on. It had not occurred to us until then that the actuaries had to have something to go on. They are accustomed to measuring the hazard and the exposure and the victims who are involved in the insurance contract. But first they have to know what is the exposure; that is, how many people are going to be in this pattern. And then how many people do you expect to be victims? To how many people will we have to give compensation? "We can't make the actuarial tables without that. We have to know how many. The population of the United States is 130 million. How many of them will be involved in this?"

That was one of the funny things, you know. While the estimate of the number of people covered by the program -- on an average basis -- was substantially correct, we so desperately underestimated the number of people that would have covered earnings at some time during the year. The actuaries had to have one set of figures for the old-age system and another set of figures for unemployment. We greatly underestimated the number of persons in both categories because there simply were no statistics on turnover of employment. We didn't know; we couldn't know these matters, but we finally rigged up a preconceived state of affairs. And assumed that any law would have to give a four weeks' waiting period, and we assumed a certain number of persons covered, and we assumed a payment of $15 a week as the minimum, but not to exceed, I think it was one-quarter, of the weekly wages of the unemployed person; and something about like that for the aged persons -- also one-quarter of the weekly wages of the previous earnings -- the latest earnings of the aged. This is what we gave the actuaries to figure on, and they did a very good job, I may say.

The legal committee soon broke into a row because the legal problems were so terrible. The constitutional problem was the greatest one. How could you get around this business of the State-Federal relationships? It seemed that couldn't be done.

We continued to wrangle about it for days. But one day I went out to tea, although not because I wanted to. In Washington you don't go to parties just because you want to go, you know; you go because you have to go. I had to call upon Mrs. Harlan F. Stone, the wife of the Supreme Court Justice. She was at home on Wednesday afternoons and so about 5:45, which is nearly the end of the day, I went to her house and presented myself. There were a lot of other people there. We went up to the dining room to get a cup of tea, and there I met Mr. Justice Stone who had just come home from the Court and was getting his cup of tea. We greeted each other and sat down and had a little chat.

He said, "How are you getting on?" I said, "All right." And then I said, "Well, you know, we are having big troubles, Mr. Justice, because we don't know in this draft of the Economic Security Act, which we are working on -- we are not quite sure, you know, what will be a wise method of establishing this law. It is a very difficult constitutional problem, you know. We are guided by this, that, and the other case." He looked around to see if anyone was listening. Then he put his hand up like this, confidentially, and he said, "The taxing power, my dear, the taxing power. You can do anything under the taxing power."

I didn't question him any further. I went back to my committee and I never told them how I got my great information. As far as they knew, I went out into the wilderness and had a vision.

But, at any rate, I came back and said I was firmly for the taxing power. We weren't going to rig up any curious constitutional relationships. "The taxing power of the United States -- you can do anything under it, " said I. And so it proved, did it not?

Of course, some of you don't remember the anxiety with which some of us watched the first case go before the Supreme Court; but it came down absolutely all right. The opinion was written in elaborate, fine social language by Mr. Justice Benjamin Cardozo -- not by Mr. Justice Stone -- but he voted "Aye" on the matter and we were safe. This is the reason, of course, that we built so strongly on the taxing power and that the whole system of taxation is the basis of the Social Security Act. We tax the aged when they are young; that is, we tax all the young people for the social security system while they ate at work; and then when they retire, they are eligible.

Well, of course, this whole thing led us into the problem of what to do with the "half-aged" -- what to do with those who are already 55 and had never contributed. We rigged that up on a compromise basis with all sorts of trading within the committee, but the report finally went in and it was a good-enough report. It was not perfect by any means. There had been trading within the committee; there had been secret work by certain members of the committee who didn't want to show their hands; and there had been a great fight in the President's Economic Security Committee. It had been really a tough fight as to whether we should have a Federal-State system (of unemployment compensation) or pure Federal system, and I cannot tell you how many times I changed my mind, nor can I tell you how many times the other members changed their minds.