Read a short overview of Social Security and African Americans and the New Deal.
Next, listen to, and read a transcript of Francis Perkins' statements from a debate on the Social Security Act on December 19, 1935. In order to listen, follow these steps:
After completing these steps, and reading the transcript of the speech below, answer the questions that follow.
Transcript of minutes 11:20 to 14:50 of Francis Perkins' statements from America's Town Meeting of the Air, "Should We Plan for Social Security?" of December 19, 1935.
"The Social Security Act provides, if I may take out time to outline what it is directly, provides federal grants and aids for old age pensions provided for in the state, to those who are now both aged and indigent. The federal government will match the state, dollar for dollar, up to fifteen dollars per month by the federal government, and any amount more, which the state may seem fit to add in providing free pensions for all people who are without other means of support. The state must, however, comply with certain standards in order to get this federal grant and aid. Certain standards, in their old age pensions, administrations, and laws. Including an age limit of sixty five, although seventy is the usual rule today, and a residents requirement of not more than five years other than the nine years preceding application. Thirty nine states already have old age pensions, but most, many of the state laws have to be revised in order to meet these standards. The same sort of assistance is given by federal grants and aid to the needed blind and twenty eight states now make many of them inadequate provisions for assistance to the needed blind. The bill also provides federal grants and aid for mothers pensions where there is a dependent family without a bread winner. Forty six states have pension laws for mothers with dependent children, but the funds are so inadequate that about, only about one hundred and nine thousand families in the United States are receiving regular mother's aid allowances under state laws, although there are three times that numbers of fatherless families now on the relief role. The inadequacy of the state funds and irregularity of their administration, has been the cause of this anomaly. Under the present act, the state may secure federal aid of one third of their total expenditure on fatherless families up to eighteen dollars a month for one child and twelve dollars for each additional child in the household to enable mothers to take care of their own children at home. And this, of course, will be an extraordinary, a great expansion of a principle of taking care of dependent children in their own home. The act also provides grants and aid for child and maternal healthcare. It provides grants and aid for neglected and handicapped children. It provides grants and aid by the federal government to the state for health protection. The federal appropriation will be allotted to the states for strengthening their present public health services or developing public health services where they have none. This, of course, in the direction of preventing illness. The state also provides two other forms of social security which are in the insurance aspect rather than the relief aspect. The act provides for compulsory old age insurance under United States government supervision. The problem with the wage earner, too old to be hired is growing yearly in size. Today, six percent of our population is sixty five years of age and over, and by 1965 the percentage will be doubled. To prevent future old aged dependency as far as possible, now is the time to set up a compulsory old age insurance program"
Next, you will listen to and read a transcript of George Sokolsky's statements from this same debate. In order to listen, follow these steps:
After completing these steps, and reading the transcript of the speech below, answer the questions that follow.
Transcript of minutes 6:22 to 9:35 of George Sokolsky's statements from America's Town Meeting of the Air, "Should We Plan for Social Security?" of December 19, 1935.
"Human liberty, my friends, is a rare privilege. Not likely gained, nor is it to be sacrificed for bread alone, fore without it, the guaranteed, the secured bread becomes the wages of a driven slave. There are no poor, no unemployed, no indigent, but I also want liberty. I want the human right which my ancestors never enjoyed, but which, to me, are more precious than life. Fore without them, life is a concha of crushing death. It is upon this basis that I shall now devote myself to the specific plan for social security, the federal government's Social Security Act passed by Congress and signed by the president and now is the law of the land. When we talk of that we have something very specific before us. Pretty close to five billion dollars annually within the next 15 years to be met by taxes which will produce increased prices, reduced profits and possibly even reduce the employment of labor. We need not be abstract or idealistic about this plan. It is here with us and we have to face it. Curiously enough, one of the first obstacles we encounter in this plan arises from our form of government. Clearly the rights to provide for unemployment insurance rests with the state but the federal government has the right to tax us too. The authors of this bill face their dilemma which in time, we must all encounter. They wanted to do something which they are not allowed to do. They got around their difficulty by a very simple device. They would tax all the payrolls of the United States and then they would remit ninety percent of the tax if the burdened citizens could free their state, could force their state legislature to pass such an act as the federal government wanted pass, passed. Here is a new principle of policy, a new departure from liberty. The federal government cannot coerce the state to pass a law, but it can offer the citizens of each state a bait, a monetary bait to have the law passed. Ninety percent of the federal tax is to be remitted if the state passes a law to conform to federal standards. The remaining ten percent remains with the federal government, but the federal government does not engage in the unemployment insurance business except to make grants and aids for administrative purposes for the state. The actual administration of the business is admittedly the function of the state therefore the remaining ten percent has no function. It is either a clear profit for the federal government, a hidden form of taxation, or it is a service charge for coercion."