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President
Roosevelt signing Social Security Act of 1935 in the Cabinet
Room of the White House. Also shown, left to right:
Rep. Robert Doughton (D-NC);
Sen. Robert Wagner (D-NY); Rep. John Dingell, Sr. (D-MI);
Unknown man in bowtie; Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins;
Senator Pat Harrison (D-MS); Congressman David L. Lewis
(D-MD). Library of Congress
photo, LC-US262-123278. |
(For
a more detailed depiction, showing more of the participants,
see the illustration below.) |
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President Roosevelt
signing Social Security Act into law, 8/14/35. Based
on a blurry Harris & Ewing Photo (public domain), from
NARA. Illustration by Jerry Dadds. SSA History Archives. |
There were many photographs taken of the
Social Security Act signing ceremony. The posing was different
in many of the photographs and in no single photograph are
all the participants clearly visible. This illustration,
based on a Harris and Ewing photo of the event, shows 18
of the participants--some clearly, some not so clearly.
We have endeavored to identify each of the participants
and explain a little about why they were there on that historic
occasion. |
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Who's Who
& Why They Were There |
1. Rep. Frank Buck
(D-CA) was a second-generation
industrialist and fruit grower from California. He was a
member of the House Ways & Means Committee, which had
jurisdiction of the bill in the House. He graduated from
Harvard Law School and served five terms in Congress, from
1933 until his death in 1942. (Representative Buck has
often been misidentified in photos of the signing as being
Edwin Witte. Witte, in fact, was not in the signing photographs.)
2. Rep. Robert Doughton (D-NC)
was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. As such
he was the principal official sponsor of the legislation
in the House.
3. Sen. Robert LaFollette, Jr., (PROG-WI)
was the eldest son of Robert LaFollette, a progressive Senator
from Wisconsin and one-time presidential candidate. When
his father died in 1925, Robert Jr., then only 30 years
old, was appointed to succeed him. Initially elected as
a Republican, LaFollette changed his party affiliation to
the Progressive Party in 1934. LaFollette served on the
House-Senate conference committee that drafted the final
version of the Social Security bill. He served in the Senate
until 1946, when he was defeated by Joseph McCarthy. In
1953, LaFollette committed suicide in Washington, D.C.
4. This individual is presently unknown.
5. Sen. Robert Wagner (D-NY)
was born in Germany, immigrated to New York City, attended
law school and was elected to the Senate in 1926. He served
four terms. He was a close associate of Frances Perkins
and helped draft several early New Deal measures. Wagner
introduced the bill into the Senate. His son, Robert F.
Wagner, was mayor of New York City for 16 years.
6. Rep. John Dingell, Sr. (D-MI).
Rep. Dingell was a member of the House Ways & Means
Committee. He was a prominent leader in Congress in sponsoring
social insurance legislation and teamed with Senator Wagner
he authored a couple of important precursor bills to the
Social Security Act. (Several authors have identified
Dingell as "unidentified man" in some versions
of the signing photo.)
7. Frances Perkins was
appointed Secretary of Labor in 1933, making her the first
woman to hold a cabinet-level position. Like FDR, she was
a child of privilege, but became a strong advocate for the
poor and working class. She began her career in New York
City as a social worker and held several responsible State
government jobs. She served as head of Roosevelt's Committee
on Economic Security, set up in 1934. The Social Security
legislation sprang from this committee.
8. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
9. Sen. Byron Patton "Pat"
Harrison (D-MS) was a Congressman for 8 years
before being elected to the Senate in 1918. In his book
"The Development of the Social Security Act,"
Edwin Witte gives Harrison credit for his "adroit"
handling of the Social Security bill in the Senate Finance
Committee. According to Witte, Title II would not have been
approved by the Committee without Sen. Harrison's help.
Harrison went on to serve in the Senate for the rest of
his life and was elected President pro tempore 6 months
before his death in June 1941. (In other versions of
the signing photo, Sen. Harrison can be more clearly seen
wearing a white suit and tie and holding his trademark cigar.)
10. Sen. William H. King (D-UT).
King was a conservative Democrat and member of the Senate
Finance Committee. King expressed persistent opposition
to many features of the bill as it was being considered,
and his support of the legislation was in doubt until the
last possible minute. In the end, he voted for passage of
the Social Security Act. (Senators King and Harrison
have often been confused in the signing photos, including,we
are embarrassed to admit, in SSA's own OASIS magazine. Clue:
King has a bowtie, Harrison has a regular long tie.)
11. Sen. Augustine Lonergan (D-CT)
was a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale University.
Although he was a four-term Congressman, he served only
one term in the Senate. During the discussions on the Social
Security bill, Lonergan gave information about various private
insurance annuities to show how they compared to the social
insurance program that was being proposed.
12. Sen. Joseph Guffey (D-PA)
was 65 years old at the time the Social Security Act was
passed, although he was only a first-term Senator. From
Pennsylvania, he served two terms before being defeated
in 1946. His vote on the Social Security bill was in doubt
until the final roll call.
13. Rep. David J. Lewis (D-MD)
was a member of the House Ways & Means Committee and
was probably the leading expert on social insurance legislation
on the Committee. It was Lewis, a former coal miner and
self-taught lawyer, who introduced the Social Security bill
into the House on January 17, 1935. However, Chairman Doughton,
exercising what he took to be the Chairman's privileges,
made a copy of Lewis' bill and submitted it himself. Then
he persuaded the House clerk to give him a lower number
than Lewis' copy. Newspapers then began calling the bill
"The Wagner-Doughton bill." When Lewis found out,
he sputtered and swore, then went to work to understand
every sentence and master the arguments in favor of the
bill. And when David Lewis walked down the aisle of the
House to debate on the bill's behalf, he received a standing
ovation–a subtle rebuke to Chairman Doughton's high-handed
treatment.
14. Sen. Alben Barkley (D-KY)
was a seven-term Congressman before being elected to the
Senate in 1926. By 1937, he was Senate Majority Leader and
a decade later, Vice President of the United States. He
was an ardent New Dealer and helped shepherd the Social
Security Act through the Senate. He argued for "a universal
and uniform program in general." He didn't want to
exempt certain private groups merely because they already
had pension systems, as was proposed by some conservatives
in the Congress.
15. Rep. Samuel B. Hill (D-WA)
was a member of the House Ways & Means Committee.
16. & 17. We are uncertain who figures 16 and 17 in
the drawing are meant to represent. But other people we
know to have been in the signing photos include: Rep.
Frank Crowther (R-NY) was a Republican member
of the House Ways & Means Committee; Senator
Edward Costigan (D-CO), a member of the Finance
Committee.
18. Rep. John Boehne, Jr.(D-IN)
succeeded his father as a representative from Indiana. He
was first swept into office in the 1932 elections with President
Roosevelt and strongly supported FDR's programs. At first,
he was against the Social Security bill and wanted to exempt
industrial employers with their own pension systems.
Note: We have recently discovered additional images of the
signing ceremony in the archives of the Corbis company.
In these images we have seen for the first time two additional
individuals who were not previously recognized as being
present. Both individuals are standing to the left of Chairman
Robert Doughton and they had been cropped out of previously
seen versions of the signing photos. The Corbis images are
copyrighted but we are able to include here a fragment from
the reference image Corbis makes available on its website
(cf. www.corbis.com).
Left to right: Jere Cooper; Claude Fuller; Robert
Doughton. Primary image copyrighted by Corbis, image
U315637AACME. |
19. Rep.
Claude Fuller (D-AR). Fuller was a
member of the Ways & Means Committee and was generally
opposed to the Administration's bill. During Committee
consideration he made motions seeking to strike key
provisions of the legislation. But when his efforts
failed, he compromised with the Administration and
joined in voting for passage of the bill.
20. Rep. Jere Cooper (D-TN).
Cooper was a member of the House Ways and Means Committee
and would go on in subsequent years to become something
of an expert on Social Security topics and he was
a major force in Social Security legislative developments
during the 1940s to the mid-1950s. Mr. Cooper also
rose to the position of Chairman of the Ways &
Means Committee during the Eighty-fourth and Eighty-fifth
Congresses. |
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NOTE: For more biographical
information on any of the members of Congress see the U. S.
Senate Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
on the Senate
website |
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Correcting the
Record |
The participants in the signing
ceremony have been misidentified numerous times in published
sources. In order to prevent these mistaken identifications
from being picked-up and repeated, we are listing here some
of the errant identifications that have come to our attention:
- Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, by
William E. Leuchtenburg. Harper Torchbooks paperback
edition. 1963. In the signing photo
included following page 172, Rep. Frank Buck (D-CA)
is misidentified as Edwin Witte. (Witte
was not at the signing ceremony--he was vacationing
in Europe at the time.)
-
-
The Making of the New Deal: The Insiders
Speak, edited by Katie Louchheim. Harvard University
Press. 1983. In the signing photo
preceding page 153, Rep. Frank Buck (D-CA) is misidentified
as Edwin Witte; and the person shown as "unidentified
man" is actually Rep. John Dingell, Sr. (D-MI).
-
In 1985, on the occasion of the 50th
anniversary of Social Security, the National Committee
to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, sent out a
mass-mailing to thousands of households throughout America.
As part of their fund-raising appeal, they sent a copy
of the Social Security Act signing photo, along with
an annotated message from the group's President, former
Congressman James Roosevelt (son of the late President).
In the signing photo included
in the package Senator Harrison is misidentified as
Senator King. The annotation also states that Senator
Harrison is visible between Secretary Perkins and the
figure mistakenly identified as Senator King. In fact,
it was Senator King
who was between the other two at this point in the proceedings,
although he is not really visible in this version of
the photo. The photo also states that Rep. Samuel B.
Hill is next to Congressman David Lewis. Rep. Hill was
indeed next to Congressman Lewis in many versions of
the signing photo, but he is not in fact visible in
the photograph circulated by the Committee.
-
In 1990, on the occasion of the 55th
anniversary of Social Security, the National Committee
to Preserve Social Security and Medicare sent out another
mass-mailing with a signing photo included in which
they repeated the same errors they had made five years
earlier.
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Recollections of the New Deal: When
People Mattered, by Thomas Eliot, published posthumously
by Northeastern University Press. 1992. In
the signing photo included following page 72, Rep. Frank
Buck (D-CA) is misidentified as Edwin Witte.
The person identified as Senator
William H. King is in fact Senator Augustine Lonergan
(D-CT). The person identified as Senator Pat Harrison
(D-MS) is in fact Senator King.
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Pitied But Not
Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare,
by Linda Gordon. Free Press. 1994.
In the signing photo preceding page 253, our unidentified
man is misidentified as Harry Hopkins. (Hopkins is not
in the signing photos.) Also, Senator Robert M. La Follette,
Jr. (PROG-WI) is misdescribed as Governor of Wisconsin.
(Robert La Follette Jr. was never Governor; his father
Robert M. La Follette Sr., who died in 1925, was Governor
of Wisconsin from 1901-1906; and his brother Phil was
Governor from 1931-1933 and again from 1935-1939, but
Robert Jr. never served in that office.)
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