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THE
SOCIAL INSURANCE MOVEMENT gggff
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| Organized around the seven interest-group categories of his
study (along with a General grouping), this bibliographic essay
serves as a handy guide to the literature as it existed at the end
of the 1960s. |
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Rationality &
Welfare: Public Discussion of Poverty and Social Insurance in the
United States 1875-1935
by Professor Theron Schlabach |
| Bibliographic Essay |
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The sources
used in this study reflect the purposes set forth in the “Preface”: illumination
of the public discussion which took place in the United States before
1935 concerning social insurance, especially of those ideas which both reflected
American attitudes toward the poor and which affected the actual process
of institution building in a maturing social structure. Being concerned
with public
attitudes
and ideas, they are mainly articles, organizational reports and proceedings,
pamphlets, and books which various interest group spokesmen and individual
commentators produced for all to read.
GENERAL WORKS:
By all odds the best history of the pre 1935 U. S. social insurance movement
is Roy Lubove, The Struggle
for Social Security, 1900- 1935 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1968) . Lubove told the history by devoting
separate chapters to the various social insurance programs workmen's compensation,
health insurance, etc. His main thesis, that Americans' preference for
voluntary over public effort retarded social security's development in
the United States, is no unexpected revelation. But his study covers its
subject well, and is well researched and written in lively style. The
present study, with its organization by interest groups rather than programs,
and with its focus on the urge to rationalize welfare, is a complement
to Lubove's work, but not a substitute.
Many textbooks and general works in the field of social welfare contain
some discussion of social security's historical roots. Helen I. Clarke,
Social
Legislation (New York:
Appleton Century Crofts, 2nd ed., 1957), and Nathan Edward Cohen, Social
Work in the American Tradition: Field, Body _of Knowledge , Process, Method,
and Point of View (New York Dryden Press, 1958), are excellent
examples; while John D. Hogan and Francis A. J. Ianni's American
Social Legislation (New York:
Harper and Bros., 1956) is a useful corrective because it stresses the
labor legislation roots of social security where most such books emphasize
the roots in charity and public relief. Offering even more historical
background, though not necessarily directed toward the actual development
of social insurance, are works such as: Robert Bremner, From the Depths: The Discover of Poverty in
the United States (New York: New York University Press, 1956
); René Sand, The Advance to Social Medicine (New York and London:
Staples Press, 1952) ; Kathleen Woodroofe, From Charity to Social Work, in England and
in the United States (London: Routledge
and Paul, 1962); Samuel Mencher, Poor Law to
Poverty Program Economic Security Policy in Britain and the United States
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967); Philip Klein,
From Philanthropy to Socia1 Welfare: An American
Cultural Perspective (San Francisco:
Jossey Bass, 1968); Milton Speizman, “Attitudes Toward Charity in American
Thought, 1865- 1901" (Tulane University Ph.D. dissertation, 1962);
and an issue of Social Casework, 49(Feb., 1968), devoted to the subject
“Who Spoke for the Poor, 1880-1914?"
Among writings of somewhat more specialized purpose, Karl de Schweinitz’s
England's Road to Social Security: 1943-1947
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1947 , Bentley Gilbert's The Evolution
of National Insurance in Great Britain: The Origins of the Welfare State
(London: Michael Joseph, 19 ,William Dawson's Social
Insurance in Germany, 1883 -1911 (London:
T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), and Sidney B. Fay's articles, "Bismarck's
Welfare State," Current History, 18(Jan. March, 1950), 1 7, 65- 70, 129- 33,
along with many of the works listed below as early social insurance treatises
and writings of social insurance experts, offer detailed accounts of the
foreign origins of social insurance. Ralph and Muriel Pumphrey’s The Heritage of American Social Work: Readings
in its Philosophical and Institutional Development (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1961) is an anthology of many very basic
documents in the history of American social welfare, while John Gillin’s
Poverty
and Dependency: Their Relief and Prevention (New
York: The Century Company, 1925) is a very representative statement of
the state of social welfare thought a decade before the Social Security
Act. The November, 1933 issue of The
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Vol. 170) is a primary document representing
the full range of viewpoints. A pamphlet by W. Rulon Williamson, Social
Insurance Legislation (American
Management Association Insurance Series, No. 21, 1935) spells out very
perspicaciously the fundamental difference between commercial and social
insurance. A document of the 1934 1935 Committee on Economic Security,
Social Security
in America: The Factual Background of the Social Security Act as Summarized
in Staff Reports to the Committee on Economic Security (Washington:
United States Government Printing Office, 1937), provides the historical
information used most directly in formulating the Social Security Act
of 1935. Among many articles interpreting the development of American
social security, Eveline Burns’ “Social Insurance in Evolution,”
American
Economic Review Supplement, 34(Mar., 1944),
199- 211, and her "Social Security in Evolution: Toward What?” Social
Service Review,
39(June, 1965), 129 -40, are perhaps best for offering historical perspective,
a conceptual framework, and observations on present income maintenance
issues. And in his recently published Unemployment Insurance: The American Experience,
1915 -1935(Madison, etc.: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1969), Daniel Nelson has provided an intelligent and definitive
account of the most bitterly argued of the social insurance crusades.
EARLY SOCIAL INSURANCE WRITINGS:
Some of the most notable early treatises on social insurance to appear
in the United States, in addition to the works by Brooks, Willoughby,
and Henderson discussed at length .in Chapter 2 of this study, were: Crystal
Eastman's Pittsburgh Survey study, Work
Accidents and the Law (New
York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910); Henry R. Seager’s somewhat
timid but widely read Social Insurance, A Program Of Social Reform
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910); Lee
Welling Squier's Old Age Dependency in the United States A Complete
Survey of the Pension Movement (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1912); and Lee K. Frankel and Miles M. Dawson's very
informative Workingmen’s
Insurance in Europe (New
York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910). The July, 1911 issue of
The
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Vol. 38) provided a full discussion of workmen’s
compensation, and the U. S. Bureau of Labor published many informative
items, especially the twenty fourth annual report of the commissioner
of Labor, Workingmen's
Insurance and Compensation Systems in Europe
(Washington: The United States Government Printing Office, 1911) , Vols.
I and II.
Perhaps
most notable of all was Isaac M. Rubinow's 1913 book, noted below among
the works of social insurance experts. Closely related to, but not part
of, the compulsory social insurance movement were articles by Louis Brandeis
such as “Massachusetts’s Substitute for Old Age Pensions," The
Independent, 65(July 16,
1908), 125-28, in which Brandeis suggested public savings banks.
CHARITY, RELIEF. AND SOCIAL WORKERS:
The publications of various charity and social work agencies provided
a very substantial bloc of sources for this study. Grand uncle of them
all, of course, were the Proceedings
of
the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (after 1917, of Social
Work). The Conference, dating back to 1874, was a broad forum not only
for professional administrators of charitable and penal agencies but for
almost anyone interested in social. questions and reform, especially in
the late nineteenth century before reform organizations proliferated.
Among the very many useful items, some of them referred to elsewhere in
these remarks, were the discussions and report of a Special Committee
on Workingmen’s Insurance in 1905 and 1906, the landmark report of the
Committee on Standards of Living and Labor in 1912, and John R. Lapp's
effort to keep social reformism and social insurance discussion alive
in the 1920s with his 1927 presidential address, “Justice First.” Frank
J. Bruno has very helpfully written the history of National Conference
discussions in his Trends
in Social Work, 1874 -1956: A History Based on the Proceedings of the
National Conference of Social Work (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2nd ed., with chapters by Louis Towley, 1957).
As social workers became more self conscious, professionalized, and specialized,
they established new organs. The Charities
Review and Charities, and their
successor, The Survey,
were almost as important for this study as the National Conference Proceedings.
Originating with the New York Charity Organization Society, these journals
were not entirely representative of charity thought nationwide, yet they
quickly developed national perspective and gave voice to persons in Eastern
cities who dominated charity and social work discussions. Other especially
useful publications were: The Family, begun in 1920 as the organ of the American
Association for Organizing Family Social Work and reflecting the leadership
of Mary Richmond and her casework approach; The Compass,
begun in 1921 to be mouthpiece of the American Association of Social Workers;
The Social Service Review,
initiated in 1927 and reflecting the orientation of the Chicago school
of thought with its orientation toward public rather than private efforts;
Public
Welfare News,
which began in 1933 to transmit, along with The
Social Service Review,
the viewpoint of the newly formed (in 1931) American Public Welfare
Association; and Social Work Today,
appearing early in 1934 as the voice of the leftist “rank and files” movement
among social workers.
The literature on the late nineteenth century Charity Organization Society
movement is too ample to be covered in these remarks. Occasional articles
in The
Social Service Review and
other journals touch upon it, and many of the historical works mentioned
above as “General Works” contain extensive sections on it. For primary
documents S. Humphrey Gurteen’s Handbook
of Charity Organization
(Buffalo: the author, 1882) and many, many late nineteenth century papers
in the National Conference Proceedings, especially “Associated Charities,” by Oscar
McCulloch in the 1880 volume, are the best sources. See also Frank D.
Watson, The
Charity Organization
Movement in the United States (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922)
.
Charity and social work thought in the period under study was never static.
Amos Bo Warner's classic American Charities:
A Study in Philanthropy and Economics (New
York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1894 embodied much of the COS spirit,
yet harbingered the newer trends toward reliance on data and environmentalism
rather than on moralism. As James Leiby has emphasized in a discussion
of Warner's significance, “Amos Warner’s American
Charities, 1894-1930,”
The Social Service Review,
37(Dec., 1963 , 441 -55 comparison of the 1894 edition with Warner, Stuart
Queen, and Ernest Harper's fourth edition, American
Charities and Social Work (Crowell,
1930), provides excellent comment on the evolution of social work's assumptions.
One can perceive both the changes and the continuity also in reading Mary
E. Rich, A
Belief in People: A History of Family
Social Work
(New York: Family Service Association of America,
1956 . The historic tension in social work between a reform and a functional
orientation are treated in, among many other references, Porter Lee's
classic 1929 National Conference presidential address, “Social Work: Cause
and Function” (1929 Proceedings,
pp. 3 20), and in several of Clarke Chambers' writings: “Creative Effort
in an Age of Normalcy, 1918- 1933.” Social Welfare
Forum,1961 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961),
252- 71; Seedtime of Reform: American Social Service and Social Action,
1918 -1933 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963); and especially
"Social Service and Social Reform: A Historical Essay," The
Social Service Review,
37(March, 1963), 76- 90. Chambers found social workers more zealous in
support of social insurance than this study would suggest, largely because
he included in the group the leaders of professional social reform organizations
who were almost by definition supporters of reforms of this type whereas
this study focuses much more on spokesmen for family social workers. No
representative of the family social work profession was a better bellwether
of its trends of thought in the first three and one half decades of the
twentieth century than was Edward T. Devine, who expressed himself in
a stream of editorials and articles as an editor of Charities and
The
Survey from 1897 to
1921, in other articles, and in a half dozen books. His “Pensions for
Mothers,” American
Labor Legislation Review,
3(June, 1913), 191- 99, and a few pages (206–215) in his
The
Normal Life (New York: Survey
Associates, 1915), are succinct statements of his rather conservative
outlook on, though support of social insurance.
Devine's just mentioned “Pensions for Mothers” article is also an excellent
Illustration of family social worker opposition to mothers’, pensions.
For other important documents in opposition see C. C. Carstens, “Public
Pensions to Widows with Children” and Mary Richmond's two articles, “
‘Pensions’ and the Social Worker” and “Motherhood and Pensions,” in The
Survey , Vol. 29, respectively (Jan. 4, 1913), 459-66; (Feb. 16, 1913),665-66;
and (Mar. 1, 1913), 774 -80, Frederic Almy’s somewhat ambivalent "Public
Pensions to Widows: Experiences and Observations Which Lead Me to Oppose
Such a Law,” in the National Conference Proceedings (1912),
481 -85, is perhaps more representative family social workers. For a quick
history of the mothers’ pensions movement see Ada J. Davis, “The Evolution
of the Institution of Mothers’ Pensions in the United States,” The American
Journal of Sociology, 35(Jan., 1930),
573- 87.
Family social workers who opposed mothers’ pensions did so out of concerns
for professional standards of casework. Of this concern Mary Richmond
was of course the unrivaled leader. For examples of her thought before
she had fully developed her casework philosophy, see the “Report of Baltimore's
Delegate to National Conference of Charities and Corrections,” Charities, 3(June 24,
1899), 2-4; her “What is Charity Organization,” The
Charities Review, 9(Jan., 1900),
490-500 and her 1905 address, "The Retail Method of Reform,"
in her The
Long View (her
papers and addresses, selected and edited by Joanna C. Colcord and Ruth
Mann; New York, The Russell Sage Foundation, 1930). Her two major works
were Social
Diagnosis and What Is Social Case Work? An Introductory Description
(New York: The Russell Sage Foundation, 1917
and 1922 respectively). Her “The Social Case Worker's Task,” in the National
Conference Proceedings
(1917),
11-2 5 is a succinct synopsis of her central ideas, while The
Long View,
just mentioned, provides both a biographical sketch and a good sampling
of her writings. John M. Glenn, Lilian Brandt, and F. Emerson Andrews,
Russell
Sage Foundation, 1907-1946 (New
York: the foundation, 1947) offers much information on her, her base of
operations, and her influence on social work. An author who best articulated
a psychiatry-oriented version of caseworkism was Virginia Robinson,
with her A Changing Psychology of Social Case Work (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1930). For a sharply dissenting voice, a biting critique of the
way in which case workers neglected reforms such as social insurance,
see Daisy Lee Worchester's 1930 paper, “Relief versus Family Welfare,”
in her Grim
the Battles: A Semi Autobiographical Account of the War Against Want in
the United States During the First Half of the Twentieth Century (New
York: Exposition Press, 1954) ; also her paper, “The Standard of Living,”
in the National Conference Proceedings
(1929), 337 -53 Roy Lubove's The
Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880-1930
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965)
discusses caseworkism in the overall context of the professionalization
of social work.
An article suggesting that the casework approach suited the tastes of
conservative business elements of the community is Walter S. Gifford's
“Pensions, Charities and Old Age,” The Atlantic Monthly,
145(Feb., 1930), 259 65. Further evidence of relationships between social
work as it developed and conservative business elements appears in the
literature of the financial federation and community chest movements.
Some illustrative primary sources are The American Association for Organizing
Charity, Financial Federations: Report of a Special
Committee (New York: the association, 1917) ; Chicago
Council of Social Agencies, The Financing
of Social Agencies: A Fact Finding Report…(Chicago, 1924);
C. M. Bookman, "The Community Chest Movement -An Interpretation,"
in the National Conference Proceedings (1924),
19 29; William Norton, The Cooperative Movement in Social Work (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1927) ; and an exchange between Norton and Joseph
Lee in The
Survey,
59(Nov. 1, 1927, and Mar. 15, 1928), 134-37, 749-50. 792- 93, and 60 (Apr.
15,1928), 90, 135- 37.
Periods of depression invariably intensified discussions of social insurance,
and so it was instructive for this study to examine social workers’ suggestions
for dealing with periods of economic crisis. Mary Richmond articulated
their typical approach in a 1908 paper, a refined version of which appears
in her The Long View as
“Emergency Relief in Times of Unemployment.” Other sources very much in
the same tradition are Leah Feder, Unemployment
Relief in Periods of Depression, 1857 -1922; Philip Klein,
The Burden of Unemployment: A Study of Unemployment
Relief Measures in Fifteen American Cities 1921-1922;
and Joanna C. Colcord, Community
Planning In Unemployment Emergencies: Recommendations Growing Out of Experience
(all published in New York by e Russell Sage
Foundation, respectively in 1936, 1923, and 1930 . A book representing
the National Federation of Settlements, point of view is Marion Elderton,
ed., Case Studies
of Unemployment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1931) . A series of 1934 papers published by the Family Welfare Association
of America as the Family
Life and National Recovery pamphlets
(New York the association, 1935) exhibits the persistence of traditional
emphases on personal help and self efforts even in depression. Other Association
publications, however, such as Rose Porter’s pamphlet, The Organization
and Administration of Public Relief (New York:
the association, 1931) , and the mimeographed 1934 report of its Committee
on Study of Governmental Methods, “Government Relief: The Report of a
Pathfinding Study,” exhibit greater interest in public action in welfare.
A standard work on public relief in the Great Depression is Josephine
Brown’s Public
Relief, 1929-1939 (New
York: Henry Holt and Co., 1940).
Most of the material demonstrating how social workers related social insurance
to their relief traditions was taken from the journals mentioned at the
beginning of this subsection, but a few items deserve additional mention.
Grace Abbott's From
Relief to Social Security: The Development of the New Welfare Services
and Their Administration (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1941), is conceived around that relationship. Demonstrating how oldline
family social workers perceived the relationship are Linton B. Swift,
“Social Insurance and Relief,” The
Family, 12(May, 1931),
81 -85; portions of Edward T. Devine's Progressive
Social Action (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1933), esp. pp.
77 92; and Homer Folks' two papers, "Public Relief as a Social Problem,"
in the National Conference Proceedings (1933),
and “Making Relief Respectable,” printed in Savel Zimand, ed., Public Health and Welfare: The Citizen’s Responsibility
Selected Papers of Homer Folks (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1958). Russell Kurtz, "Social Case Work in a National
Program of Social Security," in the National Conference Proceedings (1935)
demonstrates the manner in which the Russell Sage Foundation group hoped
to apply caseworkism to social security. For the stance of the American
Public Welfare Association see especially its May, 1934 resolutions reported
in The
Social Service Review, 8(Sept., 1934),
528- 29, and its flier, "Legislation for Social Security," from
internal evidence published about July, 1934. For the increasingly leftist
stance of the American Association of Social Workers see especially the
following items in The Compass,
“National Economic Objectives for Social Work,” 14(May, 1933), 10 19 "Recommendations
of the Conference," 15(Mar., 1934), 7 9; and the March, 1935, issue.
A manifesto from the left wing of social work in the Depression was Mary
Van Kleeck’s paper, “Our Illusions Regarding Government,” in the National
Conference Proceedings
(1934), 473-85. Jacob Fisher, The
Rank and File Movement in Social Work, 1931 -1936 (New
York: The New York School of Social Work, 1936 describes the attitudes
behind the left wing Social Work
Today.
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION:
Several general studies of compulsory health insurance movement are: Odin
Waldemar Anderson, "The health Insurance Movement in the United States:
A Case Study of the Role of Conflict in the Development and Solution of
a Social Problem” (University of Michigan Ph.D. dissertation, 1948); David
Henry Clark, "An Analytical View of the History of Health Insurance,
1910 -1959” (University of Wisconsin Ph.D. dissertation, 1963); and John
M. Glasgow, “The Compulsory Health Insurance Movement in the United States”
(University of Colorado Ph.D. dissertation, 1965). A more succinct and
convenient history is Maurice B. Hamozitch's article, "History of
the Movement for Compulsory Health Insurance in the United States , The
Social Service Review,
27(Sept., 1953), 281-99. James G. Burrow, AMA
Voice of American Medicine (Baltimore
The Johns Hopkins Press, 1963), contains the story of the most powerful
medical organizations shifting positions.
A few outstanding sources indicating favorable opinion toward health insurance
in the 1915-1920 campaign deserve mention. Demonstrating early support
from the American Medical Association are several editorials in the Journal
of the American Medial Association; 65(Oct. 30, 1915), 15-60; 65(Dec.
25, 1915) , 22-47; (Feb. 5, 1916) , 4-33; and 66(May 6, 1916), 1469 -70.
Much more informative of the thinking of pro insurance AMA leaders are
the 1915 Report of the AMA Judicial Council, and the 1916 and 1917 reports
of the AMA Committee on Social Insurance, in the AMA
Journal, respectively
65(July 3, 1915), 73-92; 66(June 17,1916), 1951- 85; and 68(June
9, 1917), 1721 55. The pamphlets described in the Journal, 68(June 9,
1917), 17-20, are further material in the same vein. For expressions of
support from other medical voices, including the American Public Health
Association, the American Hospital Association, and the American Academy
of Medicine, note 4 of Chapter 4 provides a good sampling. Much of the
support among the medical hierarchy for social insurance emanated from
New York. Several articles representing the social insurance discussion
there are those Drs. Ira S. Wile, Samuel J. Kopetzky, and Arthur
Krida, respectively in The New York Medical Journa1,104
(Nov. 25, 1916), 1050-53, and the New
York State Journal of Medicine,
17(Feb., 1917), 78-81, and (Mar., 1917), 134 36 ; also, the record of
a New York County Medical Society symposium on compulsory health insurance
in the AMA
Journal, 68(Mar. 10,
1917), 801-04. Among men in the medical field, hospital administrators
were among the most friendly to health insurance. This is evident especially
from two sources, The
Modern Hospital, and the Transactions of the American Hospital Association.
As
developed in Chapter 4, much of the agitation for health insurance turned
on the issue of a general reorganization of medical practice. Much discussion
of this issue appeared in the 1915-1917 AMA reports mentioned above, and
in the AMA Journal and
other sources mentioned herein, throughout the entire period under study.
Good illustrations from the 1915-1920 phase are two articles by Michael
Davis, Jr., "The Medical Organization of Sickness Insurance,"
Medical Record, 89(Jan. 8, 1916), 54-58, and “Organization
of Medical Service” The American
Labor Legislation Review, 6(Mar., 1916),
16-20; and articles by Richard C. Cabot, such as "Better Doctoring
for Less Money," The
American Magazine,
81(Apr., 1916), 7 9, 77-78. In the later period, 1927- 1935, much of the
agitation for reorganization and insurance came from Private philanthropic
foundations. Illustrations of their thinking are an address by Julius
Rosenwald Fund president Edwin Embree, "Medical Costs to Suit
Men of Moderate Means," The New York Times,
July 7, 1929, IX, 3, and an article by Twentieth Century Fund president
Edward A. Filene, “Autocare Versus Medical Care,” AMA
Journal, 93(Oct. 19,
1929), 1247-49. Fuller developments of the foundations’ position appear
in the writings, far too extensive to itemize here, of Michael Davis,
Jr., then of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and Edgar A. Sydenstricker and
I. S. Falk of the Milbank Memorial Fund. By far the most extensive discussion
of these issues appears in the publications of the foundation sponsored
Committee on the Costs of Medical Care of 1927 -1932, and in the ample
discussion that the Committee stimulated in medical and general interest
journals. Harry H. Moore, American
Medicine and the People's Health (New
York and London: D. Appleton and Co., 1927) , reveals the kind of thinking
out of which the CCMC grew. The CCMC itself produced several dozen books;
suffice it to mention its Publication No. 1, The Five Year Program of the Committee on the
Costs of Medical Care (Washington:
the committee, 1928)
, and Medical
Care for the American People: The Final Report of the Committee on the
Costs of Medical Care (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932)
. For an excellent further example of such discussion, see the May 14,
1929 issue of the New
York State Journal of Medicine
(Vol. 29).
Medical profession literature in opposition to health insurance developed
gradually in the 1915-1920 period, and was ample thereafter. Several articles
by Eden V. Delphey illustrate the opposition that developed in the New
York area: "Compulsory Health Insurance," New
York Medical Journal,
104(Dec. 16, 1916), 1191-93 "Arguments Against the ‘Standard Bills’
for Compulsory Health Insurance," AMA Journal, 68(May 19, 1917), 1500 01; and "Report
of the Committee on Compulsory Health and Workmen’s Compensation Insurance
of
the
Medical Society of the County of New York," New
York State Journal of Medicine,
20(Dec., 1920), 394 96. The fullest statement, containing virtually every
conceivable argument medical men ever raised, originated in Chicago: "Objections
to Social or Compulsory Health Insurance by Committee on Health Insurance,"
Illinois Medical
Journal, 31(Mar., 1917), 188 94. Chicago -based Edward
Ochsner’s pamphlet, Further Objections
to Compulsory Health Insurance (Insurance Economics Society
of America Bulletin No. 10 is an illustration of adverse propaganda from
both a zealous anti insurance physician and an even more zealous anti
insurance organization. Another zealous organization was the Physician’s
Protective Association of Erie County (New York). Its pamphlet, Compulsory
Health Insurance and Labor: How the Interests of the Workers Would Be
Affected by this Legislation (Buffalo, 1918?),
and the Ochsner pamphlet are excellent illustrations of the less responsible,
more bombastic adverse propaganda. For especially responsible dissents,
see two articles by M. L. Harris, "Compulsory Health Insurance"
and "Effects of Compulsory Health Insurance on the Practice of Medicine,"
in the AMA
Journal,
74, respectively (Mar. 27, 1920), 907- 08, and (Apr. 10, 1920), 1041-42.
The AMA's decisive rejection of health insurance is
reported in its Journal, 74(May 1,
8, 1920), 1241-42 and 1319.
Several items that especially illuminate the private practitioners' fear
of medical reorganization are Frank
Billings' "The Future of Private Medical Practice," an AMA presidential
address by William Pusey entitled "Some of the Social Problems of
Medicine," and an editorial entitled "The Physician of the Future,”
all in the AMA
Journal, respectively
76(Feb. 5, 1921), 349-54; 82(June 14, 1924), 1905- 08 and 86(Feb. 6, 1926),
419- 20. For the Journal’s editorial response to Embree and Filene, see
"Doctors of Medical Practice and the Cost of Medical Care,"
in Vol. 93(Aug. 10, 1929), 458- 60. As for the AMA response to the issues
raised by the CCMC, the various publications .of its Bureau of Medical
Economics, which it created in 1930 seemingly in response to the CCMC,
are most to the point. The Bureaus most direct statement on health insurance
is its A
Critical Analysis of Sickness Insurance: Preliminary Report by the Bureau.
, , (AMA Bulletin #29, 1934), summarized succinctly in the AMA Journal,
102(May 12, 1934), 1612- 18. In general the CCMC minority report, published
in Medical Care for the American People, pp. 150 83 represented the AMA point of view,
although AMA Journal editorials
on the CCMC final report, in Vol. 99(Dec. 3, 10, 1932), 1950- 52 and 2034
-35, reveal some divergence. The Journal, 1927-1935, contains much comment on the subjects
of the CCMC's discussions, of course. Several further notable items are
a 1934 pamphlet by the AMA's Board of Trustees, Sickness Insurance Problems in the United States, summarized in the Journal, 102(June 30,
1934) , 2191- 2207; and the proceedings of a special session of the AMA
House of Delegates in response to the Committee on Economic Security's
report, in the Journal, 104(Mar. 2,
1935), 747 -53.
Especially interesting for revealing tensions within the medical profession
over health insurance and the CCMC's efforts are the records of the American
Dental Association's response, revealed in The Journal of the American Dental Association
and in that Association's Transactions. For a spirited
account of the dental associations shifting position see Herbert E. Phillips,
"Health Insurance, Clinics, Corporate or Contract Practice and Resulting
Organization Problems,” in the Association's Journal, 20(Jan., 1933),
67- 82. For dental spokesmen more friendly to insurance than was the Association,
see The
Dental Cosmos;
two items by the 1933- 34 president of the American College of Dentists,
Bissell B. Palmer, his “Presidential Address” and his "The Adequate
Health Service Movement," in The
Journal of the American College of Dentists,
respectively 1(Oct., 1934), 97 108, and 2(Apr. July, 1935) , 81 89; and
the latter Journal's
discussion of the issues, in "Socio Economic Data," its Vol.
2(Jan., 1935), 48 55. Other voices more friendly than the AMA and the
ADA were still The
Modern Hospital and
the Transactions
of the American Hospital Association, although in
the 1927-1935 period their discussions tended more and more toward voluntary
insurance. The American College of Surgeons took an open minded attitude,
as revealed in its resolutions of June,1934. These resolutions, and those
of a number of other medical organizations, are published as appendices
in I. S. Falk's Security
Against Sickness: A Study of Health Insurance (Garden
City: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1936). "Mutual Health Service,"
the proceedings of a special April, 1934 meeting of the Michigan State
Medical Society, published as a supplement to the Journal of the
Michigan State Medical Society, 33(May, 1934),
is an important document often interpreted as favoring health insurance,
but actually highly equivocal.
BUSINESS SOURCES:
Several general works especially valuable for understanding the social
outlook and influence of businessmen in the period under study are Irvin
G. Wyllie's study of the self made man myth, The Self Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags
to Riches (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1954)
; two studies of the relation of businessmen to the progressive era, Robert
Wiebe's Businessmen
and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) and Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation
of American History, 1900-1916 (New York:
The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963) ; and James Prothro's study of the social
outlook especially of the National Association of Manufacturers and the
U. S. Chamber of Commerce, The
Dollar Decade: Business Ideas in the 1920s (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954).
Among sources dealing specifically with businessmen's attitudes toward
social insurance, those revealing opposition are, as might be expected,
far more ample than those revealing sympathy. The most well financed and
persistent of the adverse propaganda consisted of organizational proceedings,
booklets, books, and pamphlets mainly of three organizations: The National
Association of Manufacturers, The National Civic Federation, and the National
Industrial Conference Board. The footnotes of Chapter 5 reveal the range
of such sources. A very few examples of such literature are: the "Industrial
Betterment" Committee reports in the NAM"s convention Proceedings
from 1915 through 1918, revealing a quick shift
away from an initial openness toward health insurance; the NAM’s solid and
stanchly anti reform Unemployment
Insurance Handbook: A Reference Book for the Use of Legislators Business
Executives, Teachers and Students (New York: the association, 1933); the NCF’s
well researched and anti health insurance Second Report
of the Committee on Foreign Inquiry (New York: the
federation, 1920) , and its State Old Age
Pensions: Constructive Proposals for Prevention and Relief of Destitution
in Old Age… (New
York: the federation, 1929) the NICB’s misleading but representative Sickness Insurance or Sickness Prevention?
(Boston: the board, 1918); and the same organization's
Unemployment Benefits and Insurance (New York: the board, 1931).
To understand businessmen's attitudes toward social insurance also requires
some study of businessmen's own efforts to provide welfare. Many, many
items referring to such efforts are scattered through business journals
in the period under study, in the kinds of studies of social insurance
referred to in Chapters 2 and 7 of this study, in social welfare journals
such as The
Survey, and (generally
with bitterly disapproving comment) in the labor journals surveyed in
Chapter 6. Early examples of business literature promoting such efforts
are the publications of the National Civic Federation's Welfare Department,
for instance Herbert H. Vreeland, Welfare Work
(New York: the federation, 1905). A good example
from the NCF in the heydey of welfare capitalism in the 1920s is its Industrial
Welfare Department's Old
Age Annuities: Recommendations to Industrial Establishments for the Stud
and Formulation of Funded Pension Plans (New
York: the federation, 1926) . The National Industrial Conference Board
was the most vigorous promoter of such literature: its Experience with
Mutual Benefit Associations in the United States
(1923), Elements of
Industrial Pension Plans (1931), Essentials of a Program of Unemployment Reserves 1933), and Recent
Developments in Industrial Group Insurance (1934)
- all published by the board, in New York are examples. The most widely
discussed proposal in its day was that put forward by Gerard Swope in
1930, and described and defended in The Swope Plan: Details: Criticisms, Analysis
(New York: The Business Bourse, 1931 , edited
by J. George Frederick. A businessman who was highly expert on the technicalities
and rationale of such plans was Marion Be Folsom, of whose articles and
papers "Old Age on the Balance Sheet," The
Atlantic Monthly,
144(Sept., 1929), 339 4-06, and "The Rochester Unemployment Benefit
Plan," Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 14(Jan., 1932), 469 -81, are representative.
An early critic of industrial welfare plans from a reformer’s point of
mew was Louis Brandeis, as evidenced in his "Our New Peonage: Discretionary
pensions," The Independent,
73(July 25, 1912), 187-91. Articulating very well labors suspicions regarding
the plans was Robert W. Dunn, in his The
Americanization of Labor The Employers Offensive Against the Trade Unions(New
York: International Publishers, 1927). Among more objective studies Luther
B. Conant, Jr.'s A Critical Analysis
of Industrial Pension Systems (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1922 is an early work, but it is still informative and
sets forth virtually every point to be made in evaluating industrial pension
schemes. Anice L. Whitney’s two part article, "Operation of Unemployment
Benefit Plans in the United States up to 1934,” The
Monthly Labor Review, 38 (June,
1934), 1288 -1318, and 39(July, 1934), 1 24, is very informative concerning
private unemployment insurance schemes, though not evaluative. The most
thorough and objective studies of the subject produced in the period were
those of the Industrial Relations Counselors of New York. Among their
numerous publications, Murray Latimer’s massive Industrial Pension Systems in the United States
and Canada (New York: The counselors, 1932) and Bryce
Stewart and colleagues' Unemployment
Benefits in the United States: The Plans and Their Setting (New
York: the counselors, 1930 are outstanding illustrations.
To understand the businessmen's attitudes toward social insurance also
requires some understanding of the propaganda proceeding from insurance
companies on the subject. In their day P. Tecumseh Sherman and Frederick
L. Hoffman were considered outstanding spokesmen for the insurance company
point of view; some of their foremost writings appear in note 6 of Chapter
5 of this study. For an example of the manner in which insurance company
spokesmen brought the assumptions of private insurance to social insurance
questions, see Albert Whitney, "Health Insurance an Imminent Problem,"
The
Weekly Underwriter,
95(Oct.,28, 1916), 507 -09; for an exceptionally thoughtful statement
from an insurance company offical, see Reinhard A. Hohaus, Jr., “The Function
and Future of Industrial Retirement Plans,” Proceedings of the Casualty Actuarial Society, 12(May 21, 1926), 303 19. The Metropolitan
Life Insurance Company was the most indefatigable of publishers on social
insurance questions; suffice it to mention among its many publications
and the extensive speaking and writing of its Third Vice President Lee
Frankel its Monograph Series on Social Insurance. The Series, published
in the early 1930s, covered the subject from many angles, with reasonable
objectivity.
Expressions of support for social insurance from businessmen are scattered,
but some such expressions were forthcoming throughout the entire period.
Frank A. Vanderlip, “Insurance for Workingmen,” The North American Review,
181(Dec., 1905), 921 -32 is an early example by an outstanding business
leader. Ferdinand Schwedtman and James Emery, Accident
Prevention and Relief: An Investigation of the Subject in Europe with
Special Attention to England and Germany Together with Recommendations
for Action in the United States of America
New York: The National Association of Manufacturers, 1911 and other NAM
publications of the time, and the NAM Proceedings, reveal a cautious but friendly attitude toward
workmen's compensation. Howell Cheney's "Compulsory Health Insurance,"
The
North American Review,
209(Apr., 1919), 490 -98, is a statement of support by a man who influenced
Schwedtman and the “Industrial Betterment” Committee of the NAM that Schwedtman
chaired in 1915 and 1916. The
American Labor Legislation Review constantly
published statements from the few businessmen who supported the reform:
for instance, Edmund Huyck, “Establishment Funds and Universal Health
Insurance,” in Vol. 7(Mar., 1917), 85 -90, or occasional lists of businessmen
testimonials, such as appears in Vol. 6(Dec., 1916), 345- 48.
An examination of that Review
and other sources
reveals that businessmen who spoke up in favor of social insurance were
most often those identified with the scientific management trend of thought.
A few examples are: Henry Dennison's endorsement of a Wisconsin unemployment
insurance bill in “Depression Insurance , A Suggestion to Corporations
for Reducing Unemployment,” in the Review,
12(Mar., 1922), 31-36 Sam Lewisohn's presidential address vigorously defending
social legislation in general as compatible with a scientific management
outlook, published as “Labor Legislation and the Business Mind,” the Review, 18(Mar., 1928), 51- 60; and Harold Hatch's
"Old Age Security and National Stability," in the proceedings
of the American Association for Old Age Security's 1930 annual convention
on old age, entitled Old
Age Security Progress (New York: the
association, 1930). Sam Lewisohn and Ernest Draper joined with two economists
to author a book, Can
Business Prevent Unemployment? (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), and the American Management Association
underwrote another by Herman Feldman, The Regularization
of Employment: A Study in the Prevention of Unemployment (New
York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1925) , each of which supported
unemployment insurance and breathed the assumptions of scientific managers.
The most useful sources for studying this coincidence of interest were
such scientific management journals as Management
Review, The
Society of Industrial Engineers' Bulletin,
and especially The
Bulletin of the Taylor Society.
These revealed not automatic approval of social insurance, but receptivity
to the idea, See, as outstanding items, H. S. Person, "The Work Week
or the Work Life?", the discussion following Persons' paper, and
the editorial comment thereon in The
Bulletin of the Taylor Society, 13(Dec., 1928),
230- 32, 232- 45, and 221- 22; and "Three Papers on Economic Security:
Presented to a Meeting of the Taylor Society, New York, December 9, 1932,11
in The Bulletin
of the Taylor Society, 18(June, 1933),
61 -68,
In the Great Depression a few outspoken representatives of scientific
management thought came forward with plans for unemployment insurance
legislation of one sort or another: see, for example, Ernest Draper, "A
State Dismissal Wage Act," The
Survey, 65(Jan. 15,
1931), 426 279 Edward A. Filene, "State Unemployment Insurance Is
Inevitable,” The
American Labor Legislation Review,
21(June, 1931), 209 -13 Sam Lewisohn, "Principles of Unemployment
Insurance," Review of
Review and World's Work,
87(Mar., 1933), 29 -31, 50; and Ralph E, Flanders' pamphlet, An
End to Unemployment
(June 17, 1934), Perhaps the most liberal unemployment insurance scheme
put forward by arty business groups was that of an Industrial Advisory
Board Committee. The plan appears in Robert Elbert, Unemployment and Relief
(New York: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1934) and in a pamphlet by Elbert
and W. E. Woodward, Report of Unemployment
Insurance Committee to the Industrial Advisory Board
(June 18, 1934) Other business spokesmen became willing at least to recognize
the inevitability of unemployment insurance legislation, and to discuss
measures in that tone: the National Industrial Conference Board's Essentials of a Program of Unemployment
Reserves (New York: the board, 1933) and Marion Folsom's
"Future Protection of the Jobless," in the March, 1934 issue
of Nation's
Business,
are illustrations. Moreover, some major business organizations had more
or less come to accept old age pensions if conservatively framed; see
the National Industrial Conference Board's The Support of the Aged: A
Review of Conditions and Proposals (New York: the board, 1931) , and a
pamphlet of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Employes’ Retirement
Annuities (Washington: the
chamber, 1932),
as examples. Businessmen's support for various forms of social insurance
remained highly equivocal, and evidence of such support remained sketchy
and scattered, yet there are some such sources.
LABOR UNIONS:
By far the most important sources for gleaning trade unionists' attitudes
toward social insurance were the unions’ own proceedings and periodicals.
An invaluable tool for making these useful was Lloyd Reynolds and Charles
C. Killingsworth's three volume subject index of such writings, Trade
Union Publications: The Official Journals, Convention Proceedings and
Constitutions of International Unions and Federations,
1850- 1941 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1944-45). The notes of
Chapter 6 reveal the range of such sources used, For the dominant union
view, the major publications of the American Federation of Labor were,
of course, leading sources: its The American
Federationist, a monthly journal whose editorial policy
the AFL leadership closely controlled; and its Report[s] of
the .. . Annual Convention[s]
of the American Federation of Labor, which, as organizational proceedings
go, are exceptionally complete records, both of reports which the federation
officials brought to the conventions and of discussions on the convention
floor. Some of the sources making most frequent reference to social insurance,
however, were those which spoke for unions more or less at odds with the
AFL- for instance textile union publications such as the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers' and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers' respective Proceedings
and
their journals, Advance and Justice; The
United Mine Workers Journal;
and various railway union journals. Since social insurance legislation
in the period under study generally meant state legislation, and since
state federations of labor provided bases for leaders sometimes at odds
with the AFL leaders, Proceedings
of state federations
are valuable sources especially those of industrial states such as Massachusetts,
New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and California. The
magazine Labor
Age is invaluable
for the left wing or "progressive" labor point of view, and
contains many references to social insurance.
Among books providing either specific or background material, Philip Taft’s
writings, especially his The A. F. of
L. in the Time of Gompers and The A. F. of L. from the Death of Gomers
to the Merger (New
York; Harper, 1957 and 1959) and his Organized
Labor in American History
(New York; Harper& Row, 1964),
are excellent
reference works for any topic touching labor history, though more descriptive
than analytical. Lewis Lorwin and Jean Flexner, The American Federation
of Labor: History Policies and Prospects (Washington: Brookings Institution,
1933 is old, but actually contained more references to
social security. Thomas Ige, "Organized Labor and Old Age Security"
(University of Wisconsin Ph.D. dissertation, 1950) provides a competent
overview of its subject, and comments on labor attitudes toward other
social security measures as well. Also telling the basic story up to its
date of production is Gertrud Kroeger's "The Policy of the American
Federation of Labor with Reference
to Social Insurance” (University of Chicago Master's thesis, 1931). George
G. Higgins, Voluntarism
in Organized Labor in the United States, 1930 -1940
(Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1944), has an excellent
section on the AFL's historic switch to support of unemployment insurance
in the early 1930, and general background material as well. Irwin Yellowitz,
Labor
and the Progressive Movement in New York State
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965) provides both information on
a key state and comments on the relation of labor leaders to social reformers.
Richard Bransten and John Stuart, Men
Who Lead Labor (New
York: Modern Age Books, Inc., 1937), and Charles A. Madison, American
Labor Leaders: Personalities and Forces in the Labor Movement (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.,
1950), illuminate the views of various unionists, some of whom were influential
in the period under study. Louis Reed Schultz, The Labor Philosophy of Samuel Gompers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930),
does the same for Samuel Gompers. Samuel Gompers, Labor
and the Employer (comp. and
ed. by Hayes Robbins; New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920) , is a collection
of Gompers' own sayings and writings that contains a number of references
to charity and social insurance, in addition to documenting Gompers' general
point of view. A most interesting interpretation of Gompers and the AFL,
around the thesis that AFL beliefs gradually hardened into a “formalistic”
rather than a pragmatic philosophy, is Michael Rogin's “Voluntarism: The
Political Functions of an Antipolitical Doctrine,” Industrial
and Labor Relations Review, 15(July,
1963), 521- 35.
Deserving
special mention are a few specific items illustrating the dominant point
of view of the AFL and those who thought as its leaders did. Probably
the clearest articulation of the AFL's position toward social insurance
ever put forward was Grant Hamilton's “Trade Unions and Social Insurance,”
The
American Federationist,
24(Feb., 1917), 122- 25. For Gompers own statements see: "Editorial,"
The American Federationist,
17(July, 1910), esp. pp. 595-96; two versions of Gompers’ testimony
before the U. S. Commission on Industrial Relations his critics’ in Morris
Hillquit, Samuel Gompers, and Max Hayes, The Double Edge of Labor’s Sword (Chicago: the Socialist Party, 1914), and Gompers'
own in his The American Labor Movement: Its Makeup Achievements
and Aspirations (Washington:
The American Federation of Labor, 1914?); his "Voluntary Insurance
vs. Compulsory. Shall the Toilers Surrender Their Freedom for a Few Crumbs,"
The American
Federationist, 23(May, June, Aug., 1916), 333- 57, 453-
66, 670 -81; his “Political Labor Party Reconstruction Social Insurance,"
The
American Federationist,
26(Jan., 1919), 33- 46; his "Not Even Compulsory Benevolence Will
Do: Infringement of Personal Liberty," in Compulsory Health
Insurance: Annual Meets Addresses . . . January 22, 1917 (New
York: The National Civic Federation, 1917); and his remarks in another
National Civic Federation pamphlet, Unemployment
Insurance Conferences At Annual Meeting . . . January 31, 1922 (New
York: the federation, 1922). National Civic Federation publications were
sources of anti insurance statements by other unionists as well; see especially
its Second
Report of the Committee on Foreign Inquiry (New
York: the federation, 1920) as well as articles by others than Gompers
in the above pamphlets. As for the views of Gompers' successor William
Green, favoring social insurance before he became AFL president and opposing
it thereafter, see material cited in note 23 of Chapter 6. For exceptionally
notable items in the Reports of Proceedings of
AFL conventions, see the material on workmen's compensation in 1909; on
old age pensions in 1902, 1909, 1921, 1922, 1928, and 1929; on social
insurance (i.e., health insurance) in 1914 and 1916; and on unemployment
and unemployment insurance in 1921, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1934. The
Reports of Proceedings are
well indexed. See also William Green, “Unemployment Insurance,” The
American Federationist,
41(Dec., 1934), 1292- 93.
As with businessmen, some knowledge of unionists’ own efforts to provide
workers’ security institutions is necessary to understand their attitudes
toward social insurance. References to such efforts are scattered through
the writings listed in this essay as Pearly writings on social insurance's
or the works of "social insurance experts." Beyond them a few
early discussions of the subject are: James B. Kennedy, Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions (Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins Press, 1908);
Boris Emmet, "Operation of Establishment and Trade Union Disability
Funds," Monthly
Review of the U. S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, 5(Aug., 1917), 217- 36; Chapters 1 and 2 of the United
States Commissioner of Labor's twenty-third annual report, 1908, entitled
Workmen's
Insurance and Benefit Funds in the United States
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909); and parts of David Smelsner,
Unemployment and American Trade Unions (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1919).
The Industrial Relations Counselors researched the subject and produced
some well researched reports typical of their style, represented by parts
of their An Historical
Basis for Unemployment Insurance (Minneapolis:
The University of Minnesota Press, 1934) and
portions of Bryce Stewart and colleagues' Unemployment
Benefits in the United States: The Plans and Their Setting (New York: the counselors, 1930; and by Murray
Latimer's Trade Union Pension stems arid Other Superannuation
and Permanent and Total Disability Benefits in he United States and Canada (New
York: the counselors, 1932) . See also two AFL publications, Unions Provide Against Unemployment and Trade
Unions Study Unemployment (both: Washington,
the federation, 1929), and Anice Whitney, “Operation of Unemployment Benefit
Plans in the United States,” Monthly Labor Review,
38(June, 1934), 1288 -1318, and 39(July, 1934), 1 24. Lloyd Ulman, The Rise of the National Trade Union: The Development
and Significance of Its Structure and Governing Institutions (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2d ed., 1966) provides information on and a
theory of the very early development of union benefit systems. On the
most interesting of the trade union efforts, the needle trades' unemployment
insurance funds, there is, in addition to that in the unions' own publications,
much material scattered through various journals from The
American Labor Legislation Review
to Labor Age. For further background material see also J.
M. Budish and George Soule, The New Unionism
in the Clothing Industry
(New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920) ; Wilfred Carsel, A
History of the Chicago Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
(Chicago: Normandie House, 1940) ; Charles Zaretz, The
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America: A Stud in Progressive Trades
Unionism (New York: Ancon Publishing Co., 1934) ; and
Matthew Josephson, Sidney Hillman:
Statesman of American Labor (Garden City:
Doubleday and Co., 1952).
A sampling of some items representing dissonance toward or a going beyond
the positions of the dominant, conservative labor leaders might include:
John H. Walker's presidential addresses in the Illinois State Federation
of Labor Proceedings, especially
on unemployment insurance in 1914 and 1928; the Wisconsin state federation's
favorable reports on health insurance in 1918 and on unemployment insurance
in 1922; in the California federation's Proceedings, the President's
Reports on health insurance in 1917, and on unemployment insurance in
1929 and 1930;
the discussions of health insurance in the conventions of the New York
federation in 1918 and 1919, as reported in its Proceedings;
the health insurance views of one principle protagonist in New York, James
Lynch, as recorded in his “Sickness in Industry as a Cause of Poverty
and a Remedy Therefor,” The Typographical Journal,
57(July, 1920), 12 -16; the persistent support of old age pensions by
a United Mine Workers committee throughout the 'twenties, reported in
successive Proceedings
of
that union; Mine Worker
Thomas Kennedy’s progressive views on unemployment insurance, in his "Kennedy
Recommends Nationalizing of Unemployment Insurance for Industry,"
The
United Mine Workers' Journal,
45(Dec. 1, 1934), 5 6; James Hudson Maurer's zeal for old age pensions
as expressed in his “Battling for the Aged,” Labor Age, 14(Jan., 1925), 1 4, or as remembered in
his It Can Be Done: The Autobiography of James
Hudson Maurer (New York: The Rand School Press, 1938) ; support
of a committee of railway men for unemployment insurance, as reported
in a number of railway union journals in 1923, for instance The Railway Conductor,
40(Apr., 1923), 21-5 8; objection to the AFL's anti unemployment insurance
stance, in the Pattern Makers’
Journal, 40(May, 1929), 11-13 and 41(Oct., 1930),
4 8; "Our Platform," The Railway
Clerk, 29(Dec., 1930). 516 17; articles such as
J. Charles Laue’s "Aid for the Jobless" in Justice, 5(Jan. 26,
1923), 4; or further progressive needle trade opinion represented in an
"Editorial," Advance, 15(June 14,
1929), 2, or Sidney Hillman, "Unemployment Reserves," The
Atlantic Monthly, 148(Nov.,
1931), 661- 69, or Joseph Schlossberg, "The Movement for Unemployment
Insurance in the United States," Advance,
18(Mar., 1932), 4 5; and, for views further to the militant left, Robert
Dunn, The Americanization of Labor: The Employers’
Offensive Against Trade Unions (New York: International
Publishers, 1927 , or Israel Mufson, “As Labor Sees Unemployment Insurance,”
The
Survey,
61(Oct. 15, 1928), 87- 88, or “Unemployment Insurance The Next Step,”
Labor
Age,
19(June, 1930), 21 24, or “C.P.L.A. Unemployment Insurance Bills,” Labor
Age,
19(Dec., 1930), 21 -23, or A. J. Muste, "The C.P.L.A.: A Positive
Statement of Program and Action," Labor Age,
20(Dec., 1931), 18- 20.
SOCIAL INSURANCE EXPERTS:
The works included above as "early social insurance writings"
reflect the expertise that was developing by about 1915. The American
Association for Labor Legislation, organized in 1906, became a major point
around which the early expertise coalesced. The journal it began in 1911,
The American Labor Legislation Review, is therefore an excellent source for studying
experts' views, although in the 1920, and early 1930’s it more and more
represented the views of one school of social insurance thought, the Commons
or preventionist school. The AALL also published pamphlets, whose titles
may be found advertised throughout the Review, but many of them are reprints of Review items.
Some exceptionally notable items in the Review
follow.
The entire June, 1913 issue, consists of proceedings of an AALL sponsored
"First American Conference on Social Insurance," held
in Chicago, June 6 7, 1913. The entire May, 1914 issue prints proceedings
of a "First National Conference on Unemployment," sponsored
by the AALL on February 27- 28, 1914. The June, 1915 issue is devoted
largely to addresses at the “Second National Conference on Unemployment,"
December 28 -29, 1914; and also includes "A Practical Program for
the Prevention of Unemployment in America," which in turn is the
fourth edition of a pamphlet by John B. Andrews, A
Practical Program for the Prevention of Unemployment in America: First
Tentative Draft Submitted for Criticism and Suggestions (New
York: American Association on Unemployment, 1914. The November, 1915 issue
is also devoted to unemployment. From 1916 to 1919, many, many items appear
on health insurance. Taken up entirely with the subject, and printing
a model bill and lengthy brief in its support, is the June, 1916 issue.
The December, 1917 issue consists entirely of another brief entitled “Health
Insurance: A Positive statement in Answer to Opponents." The June,
1918 issue is proceedings of "Second National Conference of Health
Insurance Commissioners," and the June, 1919 issue is also devoted
almost entirely to health insurance. Signaling a shift in interest from
health to unemployment insurance is John B. Andrews’ "Unemployment:
Prevention and Insurance,” in the Dec., 1920 issue (pp. 233- 39). The
September, 1921 issue consists largely of a report on unemployment survey,
plus a forty page item on British health insurance. Throughout the 1920s
the Review
frequently included
sections on stabilizing employment, including, beginning about 1924, numerous
articles on private unemployment insurance plans in the clothing industry
and elsewhere. Similarly, it continued to print articles and sections
on old age pensions and on workmen’s compensation, in which it had shown
interest from its beginning. The June, 1928 issue suggested a renewed
interest in social insurance, with a general discussion of the subject.
Beginning in 1930 and throughout the early 1930, the sections on “Stabilizing
Employment” took up larger and larger portions of successive issues, with
unemployment insurance getting more and more attention and alternative
solutions relatively less, See especially: "An American Plan for
Unemployment Reserve Funds: Tentative Draft of an Act," in the December,
1930 issue (pp. 349 -56); and "An American Plan for Unemployment
Reserve Funds: Revised Draft of an Act,” in the June, 1933 issue (pp.
79 95). In 1933 and 1934 the Review
also showed
a renewed interest in health insurance, with a number of articles on that
subject., For a descriptive, though not very critical, account of the
AALL’s role in the history of social security see Lloyd F. Pierce, “The
Activities of the American Association for Labor Legislation in Behalf
of Social Security and Protective Labor Legislation" (University
of Wisconsin Ph.D. dissertation, 1953).
The master of the preventionist school was, of course, John R. Commons.
Among his major articulations of his point of view, his "Social Insurance
and the Medical Profession," The Wisconsin Medical Journal,
13(Jan., 1915), 301 -06, demonstrates that he had his basic social insurance
ideas formed a half dozen years before he applied them to his famous unemployment
insurance bill in Wisconsin. At the time when he was forming that bill
he spelled out his rationale in his “Unemployment: Compensation and Prevention,”
The Survey,
47(Oct. 1, 1921), 5 9. Perhaps his best statement of his theory of unemployment
insurance, and one which both demonstrated the importance of his experience
in the Chicago clothing industry and revealed his inclination toward the
segregated reserve funds device, is his "The True Scope of Unemployment
Insurance,” The American Labor Legislation Review, 15(Mar., 1925), 33 -44. A book which he co
authored, Can Business Prevent Unemployment?, mentioned above in the paragraph commenting
on the writings of the scientific management wing of business, reveals
further how closely his thought coincided with that of the scientific
management school. His “Unemployment Reserves and “Unemployment Insurance,”
and his "The Groves Unemployment Reserves Law," both in the
American
Labor Legislation Review,
respectively 20(Sept., 1930), 266- 68, and 22(Mar., 1932), 8- 10, reveal
his approval of the segregated fund device at the point where the famous
Groves bill in Wisconsin was being formulated, and just after its passage.
A discussion of his ideas on unemployment insurance in the context of
his larger economic theories appears in his Institutional Economics (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1934), 840- 65. For a succinct statement
of his larger economic theories, see his "Institutional Economics,”
The
American Economic Review,
21(Dec., 1931), 647-58. For commentaries on his economic thought see Kenneth
Parsons' "John R. Commons' Point of View," in John R. Commons,
The
Economics of Collective Action (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1950) and Theron F. Schlabach, Edwin
E. Witte: Cautious Reformer
(Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1969, 19-26.
For the major defenses that Commons’ Wisconsin protéges put forward
for their segregated reserve unemployment compensation plan see the items
cited in note 23 of Chapter 7. Herman Feldmane’s The Regularization of Employment,
cited above in the paragraph on the literature of the scientific management
school of business thought, is both a statement by another Commons follower
and further evidence of the affinity between Commons' style and scientific
management ideas.
Among the social insurance experts characterized roughly in this study
as "welfare statists," Isaac M, Rubinow spanned the years of
the social insurance movement and was most articulate. His ideas and style
are very well represented in his two major books: Social
Insurance With Special Reference to American Conditions (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1913) , which
grew out of an extensive and well informed series of lectures that he
delivered to the New York School of Philanthropy in 1912; and The Quest for
Security (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1934), which
represented his matured thoughts, after the long discussion of social
insurance with its developments and squabbles. Both books convey very
well Rubinow's contributions to the social insurance movement solid intelligence
and information, plus a low keyed, graceful polemicism. In addition
to his books Rubinow produced a constant stream of articles, in journals
ranging from the scholarly, to special interest periodicals such as The
Journal of the American Medical Association or
The
American Labor Legislation Review, to The Survey and
highbrow general interest magazines. Among this stream, several
articles deserve specific mention: his "Labor Insurance," The
Journal of Political Economy,
12(June, 1904), 362 -81, as an early statement of his views; his "Standards
of Sickness Insurance," The Journal of Political Economy,
23(Mar., Apr., and May, 1915), 221- 51, 327 -64,437- 64, which formed
the substance of a book, Standards of
Health Insurance (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1916), which
he then published; and his "Job Insurance The Ohio Plant,”
The
American Labor Legislation Review, 23(Sept.,
1933), 131- 36, his best direct reply to the Wisconsinites. See also his
Ph.D. dissertation, published under the title Studies in Workmen's Insurance
(New York, 1911), as part of the twenty fourth annual report of the United
States Comissioner of Labor; and also The
Care of the Aged: Proceedings of the Deutsch Foundation Conference, 1930
(Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1931 , which Rubinow edited.
Next to Rubinow, the major figure among the welfare statists was Abraham
Epstein. Epstein began his social insurance efforts in the late 'teens
and 1920s by promoting old age pensions, and wrote two books on that subject,
Facing Old Age:
A Study of Old Age Dependency in the United States and Old Age Pensions
(New
York: A. A. Knopf, 1922 ), and The
Challenge of the Aged (New
York: Macy Masius, The Vanguard Press, 1928), The second was essentially
a rewriting and elaboration of the first, and the substance of both is
contained in a pamphlet he wrote, Old Age Security (New
York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1929). Superceding them, and reflecting
the fact that Epstein went on to broaden his efforts to cover the entire
field of social insurance, is his Insecurity, A Challenge to America: A Study
of Social Insurance in the United States and Abroad (New
York: H. Smith and R. Haas, 1933 later expanded, 1936,1938). Like Rubinow’s
books, Epstein's are a combination of polemicism and solid research. Both
men's writings provide valuable historical information on the roots of
social insurance. But Epstein's polemicism was less graceful. Epstein
also wrote many articles, in periodicals ranging from the leftist Labor Age to general interest journals. Suffice it to
mention only two: his “Enemies of Unemployment Insurance,” The
New Republic, 76(Sept. 6,
1933), 94 -96, a good example of his style and his bitterness toward the
Wisconsin school; and "Social Security: Fact or Fiction," American Mercury, 33(Oct., 1934), 129-38, giving his views
at the close of the period under study. Beginning in 1927 Epstein had
his own organization with its own publication, from 1927 through 1929
entitled Bulletin of
the American Association for Old Age Security, from 1930
to 1933 the Old Age Security Herald,
and thereafter Social
Security. Its use for
research is limited, as most of its articles show more zeal than deliberate
thought. It may be used as a guide to the facts of the advance of old
age pensions legislation (and beginning about 1933, of other social insurance
programs), but its facts should be checked against other sources. See,
however, "Unemployment Insurance Standards,” Social Security,
7(Sept. Oct., 1933), 1, 6 7; and “The Social Security Bill for Health
Insurance," published as a supplement to the January, 1935 issue
of Social
Security.
More useful than Epstein's journal are the proceedings of annual conventions
his organization sponsored beginning in 1928, published yearly (New York:
The American Association for Old Age Security or, from 1933 onward, for
Social Security) under the title Old
Age Security, or from 1933
on, Social Security in the United States. The conferences attracted a variety of speakers,
though virtually all were sympathetic to Epstein’s viewpoint. For a (generally
pro Epstein) biography of Epstein, see Louis Leotta, Jr., "Apraham
Epstein and the Movement for Social Security, 1920- 1939" (Columbia
University Ph.D. dissertation, 1965).
William Leiserson is best remembered as chief author of the famous 1932
Ohio Commission report on unemployment insurance . see State of Ohio Commission
on Unemployment Insurance, Report: Part I: Conclusions and Recommended
Bill (Columbus: F. J. Heer, 1932). For his early
thoughts see his Unemployment in the State of New York (New York: being a part of the third Report
of the New York State Commission on Employers' Liability, 1911); for an
item showing his fundamental difference from the Commons' approach, see
“Industrial Fluctuations and Unemployment,” The
American Labor Legislation Review,
21(Mar., 1931), 65- 83; for a defense of the Ohio Plan, his “Ohio's Answer
to Unemployment," The Survey,
68(Dec. 1, 1932), 643 -47; and for an emphatic attack on Commons' approach,
his “Will. Industry Provide Security?” in American Association for Old
Age Security, Social
Security in the United States . . . 1933 (New
York, the association, 1933). 77- 85. A complete bibliography of Leiserson's
writing, as well as a rather too sketchy account of his efforts for unemployment
insurance, appears in J. Michael Eisner, William Morris Leiserson: A Biography (Madison, etc.: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1967 .
Among other more or less welfare statist experts' writings are those of
Barbara N. Armstrong, most notably her Insuring
the Essentials: Minimum Wage Plus Social Insurance A Living Wage Program
(New
York: The Macmillan Co., 1932), and her "The Nature and Purpose of
Social Insurance," The Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
170(Nov., 1933), 1-6. The major publications of the Industrial Relations
Counselors of New York are those cited in note 8 of Chapter 7. For Paul
Douglas, views see especially his "The Changing Basis of Family Support
and Expenditure," The Family, 8(Dec., 1927), 288 -94, on family allowances;
his remarks in The Care of the Aged,
cited above as edited by Rubinow, pp. vii xii, on old age pensions; and
on unemployment and unemployment insurance the following: his "Can
Management Prevent Unemployment?” The American Labor Legislation Review, 20(Sept., 1930). 273- 81; his and Aaron Director's
The Problem of Unemployment (New
York: The Macmillan Co., 1931); his Standards
of Unemployment Insurance (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1932) ; and his Controlling
Depressions (New
York: Norton, 1935). The major works from the Minnesota group of unemployment
insurance experts are Alvin Hansen, Economic Stabilization
in an Unbalanced World (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1932), and those cited in note 9 of Chapter 7. The 1933 book by
Hansen and Murray, it must be said, was more akin to the preventionist
than to the welfare-statist point of view. |