In 1933 the Department of the Interior created what it called
the National Planning Board (NPB), which was intended to plan public
works initiatives for the Depression-era relief projects undertaken
as part of the New Deal. In 1939, the federal government underwent
a large reorganization, one result of which was to transfer the
NPB to the Executive Office of the President, and to rename it the
National Resources Planning Board (NRPB). (U.S.
Code documenting creation of NRPB.)
The NRPB was a small executive group, headed by the President's
uncle Frederic A. Delano, and staffed by a small group of academic
and government experts. The Research Director for the Committee
on Long-Range Work and Relief Policies was Eveline
Burns, an economist associated with Columbia University and
a former adviser to the Committee on Economic Security. Professor
Burns was an expert on Social Security and related social insurance
programs and she had a close working relationship with the Social
Security Board in its early years. Other important members of the
Committee who had Social Security connections were: Katherine Lenroot
(of the Children's Bureau); Mary Switzer (who would later head the
Office of Vocational Rehabilitation); and Ellen Winston (who would
later be the Commissioner of Welfare in the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare).
The NRPB produced a large collection of reports and pamphlets,
and published a massive three-part report in 1943 (which appeared
in separate pieces and various formats). Of special interest here
is Part 3 of that report--authored principally by Professor Burns--which
was on the status and prospects for the nation's social welfare
programs. This 640-page report--entitled "Security, Work, and
Relief Policies"-- is reproduced here in full.
The report by the social welfare group began as an effort to craft
the blueprint for continuing to expand the government's social welfare
programs in the years after the New Deal. It began as an enormously
ambitious project, that ultimately ended in the report being, for
all practical purposes, completely ignored. And yet, the report
had value in that it was the most thorough documentation then available
of the nation's social welfare programs, and some of its recommendations
would actually come to pass, after the NRPB itself had passed from
the scene.
Although the report was actually completed and submitted to the
President three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the subsequent
sudden entry of the U.S. into the War caused the report to languish
for attention. Indeed, the President did not release the report
until late in 1942, and it was not actually published until early
1943 (even though it bears a publication date of 1942).
In a political dispute with the Administration over the nation's
policy direction in the domestic area, the Congress decided to terminate
the NRPB and did so in legislation enacted in June 1943, with an
effective date of August 1943. By January 1944 the NRPB has closed
shop and transmitted its records to the National Archives and it
disappeared in the governmental sunset.
Despite this history, the report of the NRPB has been, and remains,
an important historical document regarding the development of the
nation's social welfare programs. |