Review the Great Depression time line and the section entitled "The Stock Market Crash and The Great Depression" on The Historical Background and Development of Social Security page, and answer the questions below.
Read the Preamble to the Social Security Act, and answer the questions below.
Read the following text, and work collaboratively with the rest of your group to answer the questions that follow.
Excerpt from George B. Chandler, representing the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, in Senate Hearings on Roosevelt�s "Economic Security Bill," 1935.
STATEMENT OF GEORGE B. CHANDLER, REPRESENTING THE OHIO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
May I first be permitted to indulge in two general observations: first, that Ohio business protests against the coercion of the States by the Federal Government as represented by the assessment on pay rolls and in other ways. We deem this procedure repugnant to American institutions, destructive of the historic relationships between State and Nation, and calculated in the end to do permanent harm and little immediate good.
...Ohio business believes that legislation of this class will permanently weaken the fibre of the American people. Self-reliance has been the key to American success. It has been the initiative, thrift, and self-sacrificing foresight of the individual and the family which has brought this country to its proud position. And I say, "proud position" advisedly even in the midst of this depression. We are incomparably in a better position than any other nation in the world.
This legislation starts this country on a pathway from which there will be no retreat in the course of the next two generations. When the time comes, as it surely will, to reverse these policies, incalculable harm will have been done to the character of the population.
Only the other day when there was a blizzard in New York, it was impossible in this period of unemployment to get men to work. I live in a suburb of Columbus, where men used to apply at the door every day for work and we tried to give them work. No more apply any more; there is no application for work.
Gentlemen of this committee, I want to say in all seriousness that this Nation can recover and will recover from the economic depression in which we are now floundering. We recovered in the panic of 1873, which ran for 6 years and was about as serious as this. We recovered under our own power; but, gentlemen, the loss to the morale of the people through this period and through the methods which have been adopted to alleviate it is something which I will not say is incurable, but whose result will persist for one or two generations; it is the most grave situation which this Nation is facing. And, to enter upon a broad policy whereby the individual is relieved of the responsibility for his unemployment, for his old age, for the care of his children, you are entering upon a pathway which has destroyed other nations. The downfall of Rome started with corn laws, and legislation of that type. I say that and I hope you will be patient with these general observations.