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THE SOCIAL INSURANCE MOVEMENT gggff |
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| In 1968 the U. S. Social Security Administration (SSA) commissioned
a study by Professor Theron Schlabach of the History Department of Goshen
College. The purpose of the study was to examine the period from the start
of the Gilded Age up to the eve of the passage of the Social Security
Act of 1935. The goal was to identify and trace some of the major intellectual
developments related to social insurance in the years prior to the adoption
of the Social Security program. Professor Schlabach's report focuses on one major theme from this period, the interplay between traditional personalized approaches to the problem of economic security versus the development of institutional structures designed to "rationalize" responsibility for the problem of economic security. As Professor Schlabach documents, this was a major theme within American thought for many years and was an important issue in the public policy debates leading up to the passage of the Social Security Act. Professor Schlabach illustrates his central thesis by recounting the positions and the actions of major players in the public policy debates about economic security. This is a study which is not a recovery of obscure archival materials or an exploration of the hidden agendas or motivations of principal players. Rather, it is a study of the published literature involving each of the major groups shaping public policy during this period to discern their public philosophies and their proposed views on the development of social insurance. He identifies seven categories of stakeholders in these debates: charitable organizations; the social insurance movement; social workers; the medical profession; business; labor unions; and policy experts. It is illuminating to learn what the role and positions of each of these interest groups was in the debates leading up to the social insurance proposals of the New Deal. At the end of his manuscript is an extended Bibliographic Essay. Professor Schlabach's study was published internally within SSA in September 1969, under the title "Rationality and Welfare: Public Discussion of Poverty and Social Insurance in the United States 1875-1935." Although Professor Schlabach's study was read within SSA, it had not been published or made available to a broader audience. In the Spring of 2002 the full study was published on the SSA website for the first time anywhere and is being made available in full here. This study, written more than 30 years ago, reflects the state of the discussion within the history profession at that time. Today's readers may find that some more recent trends in historical analysis (especially the contemporary focus on race and gender) are absent from Professor Schlabach's analysis. Even so, the study is instructive and valuable on many levels, and its recovery from having been virtually lost to scholarship is an event of some importance. |
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