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I've always said, and I still think we have to admit, that no matter how much fine reasoning there was about the old-age insurance system and the unemployment insurance prospects -- no matter how many people were studying it, or how many committees had ideas on the subject, or how many college professors had written theses on the subject -- and there were an awful lot of them -- the real roots of the Social Security Act were in the great depression of 1929. Nothing else would have bumped the American people into a social security system except something so shocking, so terrifying, as that depression.

The wandering boys were a source of terror. But it was the most natural thing in the world for a great big grownup boy 14 to 17 years old to go wandering. Consider the case of a boy who found himself in a family where the breadwinner was unemployed, where there were other children around, where his mother was distracted by the lack of anything to buy food with, and to feel himself, not unwanted, but one more mouth to feed, and a great big mouth at that.

"I ate so much," one boy said to me, "I couldn't stand it. The kids, the little children were hungry. So I went out to find a job, and I went out of town."

This is what the boys did -- not a few of them -- thousands of them. They wandered around the country and were a problem to every charity and relief organization, to every State aid or Federal-and-State relief station; and the railroads were terrified of them. These boys, following the road, would steal a ride under the bumpers, and the railroads were frightened all the time that there would be accidents; that somebody would be killed; and I believe some were. It's a dangerous business to ride the roads. I remember I went out to see some of the boys. They finally gathered them in -- the railroaders did. They sort of herded many of them into the St. Louis yards, and let them pitch a camp. Well, there they lived in the camp -- in the St. Louis railroad yards -- a hazard to the community -- picking up whatever they could. I'm sure some of them learned to steal. Some of them learned be panhandlers. All kinds of things happened. These were really alarming situations. They were alarm because of the demoralization and because of the general hazards to the community and to the total economy.

But everything was down. Nobody could get a job. The grocer didn't employ the young boys to deliver goods any more. He couldn't afford to. The grocer himself finally went bankrupt and closed up. He had given too much credit. I mean the people who were out of work had credit at the grocery store at first and they could eat; but they couldn't pay their bills, and finally, the grocer couldn't pay his bills; and eventually somebody came and sold him out. It went on like that all the time. One thing led to another, and we began to realize how cruel, how very deep, how almost irreversible this situation had come to be. This was the situation which faced people who began to be aware of the problem early as 1930.

THE PEOPLE SPEAK

A lot of private thinking went on. When I got to my office as Secretary of Labor in 1933, I found on desk over 2,000 plans. These were "plans" for curing the depression. All kinds of people with nothing else to do, being out of work, began to plan -- to think. This was social planning. It was extraordinary how many people in their social plans had hit upon something that sounded like social insurance. Often the planners were almost illiterate; often the work wasn't very thoroughly done. Often, however, they were good; well set up, typewritten, sharply organized -- A, B, C; 1, 2, 3, under it, you know -- very good plans. But the extraordinary thing was that there should have been 2,000 of them filed with the Secretary of Labor in the previous year. And many more -- thousands more -- on the President's desk, because everybody had apparently taken to making a social plan. This, I think, was stimulate by the Townsend Plan. The word "plan" had never been a political word before, but the Townsend Plan was wonderful. I mean it sounded so good -- "$30 every Thursday; but you would have to spend it right away. This was for everybody over 65. This was to cure the Depression effects upon the aged. Thirty dollars every Thursday would do it, and if they spent it all before the next Thursday, it would penetrate the market. It would revive the market for goods. That would establish and strengthen the manufacture industries. Industrial concerns would need money from the banks. That would revive the banking industry. Everything would be fine -- $30.

This was a great watchword. This was a real stimulus to thinking in this country. Although it started out as a most crooked -- I don't mean dishonest, I mean wavering -- plan, it became a political move of considerable importance. When I saw that old Dr. Townsend had died just this last winter, I couldn't help but say to myself, "God rest his soul; he was a good old man!" He meant well. He didn't have any learning, but he was sorry for himself and the other old people, so he thought of $30 every Thursday and started us all thinking. In particular, he startled the Congress of the United States, because the aged have votes. The wandering boys didn't have any votes; the evicted women and their children had very few votes. If the unemployed didn't stay long enough in any one place, they didn't have a vote. But the aged people lived in one place and they had votes, so every Congressman had heard from the Townsend Plan people.