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BEATING THE DEADLINE

We voted once to have it a pure Federal system. By the time the others had been out of my office a couple of hours, I began to get telephone calls from them individually saying they thought we ought to meet again -- that there was something to be said against that and they would like to review their vote; and could we meet next week? So we would meet and we would vote the other way the next week -- we'd vote to have it a Federal-State system. Then we would have the same experience; people would telephone and want to review it again, and we would meet again. This went on for weeks. We came, really, up to the date when the report had to go in within a week. I then took the strong measure of asking them to come to my house -- not for dinner but after dinner -- and then I told them I was going to lock the door and we would stay until we had settled it and there would be no more review. This was the final and the last meeting -- "We have to settle it tonight."

Well, we locked the door and we had a lot of talk. I laid out a couple of bottles of something or other to cheer their lagging spirits. Anyhow, we stayed in session until about 2 a.m. We then voted finally, having taken our solemn oath that this was the end; we were never going to review it again.

We voted to make unemployment insurance a State-Federal system. Now there were reasons for that which were entirely practical. We knew, of course, that a Federal system would have been much simpler to operate, but the opposition in Congress to unemployment insurance was very large, while the opposition to old-age insurance was very small. The opposition in the Congress to unemployment insurance to the form of being in favor of merit rating, which is a pestiferous thing. It gives the insurer the opportunity to have his taxes reduced if he doesn't produce much of the hazard, but that throws your whole system into disorder. If the bill had come up on the floor of the Senate or of the House as a Federal system, they would surely have put in amendments here, amendments there, and amendments to the unemployment insurance galore, until they would have gotten a good name but the bill would not have passed. This I was sure of. I'd seen it happen in New York State; I'd seen it happen in other places; and the President agreed with me it was the thing they would most certainly do. They would pass old-age insurance but they would not pass the unemployment insurance part. So, we put it all in one bill and then acted as though we were rigged; we wouldn't compromise with people but insisted that it all go through in one deal: unemployment insurance and old-age insurance. This was the reason it was done -- because of our belief that the Congress would have monkeyed with the unemployment insurance sections so much that we would have lost the bill entirely. It could not have been passed. But with the States coming in to run the unemployment insurance you always had the theory that the States could experiment in this line without ruining the whole system. And so, we now have the matter firmly fixed, but not so firmly that it can't be modified at some future time.

This, then, was the genesis of the whole bill. We did a great deal of educating by one kind of propaganda or other, chiefly hearings. Senator Wagner put it up -- a bill which he called a model bill -- and held public hearings in the Senate, which attracted a great deal of attention from the Senators. We had a number of senatorial committees which we asked to look into this or that. We got advice. All these actions were for the purpose, not so much of advice as of propaganda -- that is, of education of the public. I don't remember how many speeches we made. I made over 100 speeches myself in that period, and practically everybody else who had anything to do with the scheme made many, many speeches. The result was a bill that finally was presented to Congress and, as you know, was debated very briefly, really quite briefly when you think of the problems that were involved -- only a decent amount of debate -- and we gave way on all kinds of things. We gave way on washing out universal insurance; that is, universal coverage. We let them take out one group after another; no objections, just so we got the basis of the bill. And finally, we did get the basic bill passed. It came through after amendments, and so forth, and was passed in August 1935 by an extraordinary vote. There were only nine votes against it in the Senate. One could hardly have believed that was possible. I forget the House vote, but it was perhaps 90 votes against or something of that sort.

Yes, an overwhelming vote for Social Security, and so it was established. But of course you knew the two committee chairmen. Senator "Pat" Harrison of Mississippi was a wonderful orator. He didn't know the first thing about this bill. Congressman Bob Doughton of North Carolina knew even less about it because he was deaf and couldn't hear what was said to him about it. But there wasn't much debate in the House anyway. Senator Harrison had to present the bill. This was the occasion, of course, on which Mr. Thomas Eliot, now the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, undertook to sit on the steps of the Senate beside Pat Harrison and pass up to him the answers to the questions that were asked him.