The real roots of the Social Security Act were in the great depression of 1929. Nothing else would have bumped the American people into a social security system except something so shocking, so terrifying, as that depression. Frances Perkins
If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The New Deal not only put millions of Americans back to work to rebuild the country and economy, but it also passed legislation to aid those workers and their families permanently — most famously of all, with the Social Security Act, signed into law by President Roosevelt 90 years ago. The President’s principal warrior in this endeavor was Frances Perkins, whose longtime commitment to social justice and economic security characterized her entire career, including the years she worked on labor matters in the 1920s for New York Governors Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt.
When Perkins came to Roosevelt House on February 22, 1933, to meet with President-elect Roosevelt and consider his invitation to serve as Secretary of Labor — and become the first woman to serve in the cabinet — she brought a list of proposed programs to gauge his advance support. Among them were unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, worker’s compensation, health insurance, and what they first called “old age insurance.” Once in office, FDR appointed her head of the Committee on Economic Security, joining experts drawn from government, industry, and universities to study these issues and make recommendations. Out of their report, and in coordination with key members of Congress, including Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, the new law passed overwhelmingly to establish Social Security and unemployment insurance. On August 14, 1935, FDR signed the authorizing legislation. The program born at Roosevelt house would help millions of senior citizens to retire with dignity and income.
Hosting this exhibition at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College honors the legacies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt in their former home which with their help became, and remains, a special place for generations of Hunter College students. The exhibit has been curated by Roosevelt House Historian/Curator Deborah Gardner, and designed by Roosevelt House Production Coordinator Daniel Culkin.
President Roosevelt’s Statement on Signing the Social Security Act, August 14, 1935
Today a hope of many years’ standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.
This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.
We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.
I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts on behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.
If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.
Frances Perkins Recalls The Origins of Social Security at Roosevelt House, February 22, 1933
I suppose the roots–the idea that we ought to have a systematic method of taking care of the material needs of the aged–really springs from that deep well of charitableness which resides in the American people, and the efforts and the struggles of charity workers and social workers to handle the problems of people who were growing old and had no adequate means of support.
Before I was appointed, I had a little conversation with [President-elect] Roosevelt in which I said perhaps he didn’t want me to be the Secretary of Labor because if I were, I should want to do this, and this, and this. Among the things I wanted to do was find a way of getting unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, and health insurance. I remember he looked so startled, and he said, “Well, do you think it can be done?”
I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Well, there are constitutional problems, aren’t there?” “Yes, very severe constitutional problems,” I said. “But what have we been elected for except to solve the constitutional problems? Lots of other problems have been solved by the people of the United States, and there is no reason why this one shouldn’t be solved.”
“Well,” he said, “do you think you can do it?” “I don’t know,” I said but I wanted to try. “I want to know if I have your authorization. I won’t ask you to promise anything.” He looked at me and nodded wisely. “All right,” he said, “I will authorize you to try, and if you succeed, that’s fine.”
“Well,” I said, “that is all I want.” I don’t want you to put any blocks in my way. We’ll see what we can do. There are plenty of people,” I said, “who want it badly and will work for it.” This was the way it all began.
Court Challenges
President Roosevelt wanted the Social Security program to be self-supporting so that contributions paid in by workers would eventually be used to pay retirement benefits. The system was shaped based on the government’s power to levy taxes. A similar model was used to raise funds for unemployment compensation but with contributions from both workers and employers. Both were challenged and eventually three lawsuits reached the U. S. Supreme Court. It upheld the law on May 24, 1937, supporting the constitutionality using taxation to fund both programs. Findings of studies by the Social Security Board were cited in the majority opinions: “the fate of workers over 65, when thrown out of work, is little less than desperate… Approximately three out of four persons 65 or over were probably dependent wholly or partially on others for support.” In regard to Social Security, Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote in the majority opinion for Helvering v. Davis “The hope behind this statute is to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house. as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey’s end is near.” And Justice Harlan Stone concluded in his majority opinion for Carmichael v. Southern Coal Co. “Together the two statutes now before us embody a cooperative legislative effort by state and national governments, for carrying out a public purpose common to both, which neither could fully achieve without the cooperation of the other. The Constitution does not prohibit such cooperation.” These decisions were among the first where the Court upheld the constitutionality of a major New Deal statute, signaling a major change from previous years where a conservative group had prevailed in overturning several major New Deal recovery programs. As part of the core group upholding New Deal legislation, Justices Cardozo and Stone were joined by Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) who had joined the Court 1916 and would serve until 1939; they were nicknamed the “Three Musketeers.”
Justice Stone
Justice Harlan F. Stone (1872-1946). Portrait by Henry Salem Hubbell, 1942, Smithsonian American Art Museum.
A graduate of Columbia Law School, he later served as its Dean from 1910 until he was appointed by President Coolidge in 1924 as Attorney General of the United States. In 1925 he was nominated and confirmed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and then nominated by President Roosevelt to serve as Chief Justice in 1941.
Justice Cardozo
Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870-1938). Photo c. 1931-36, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Harris & Ewing Collection.
A graduate of Columbia Law School, Justice Cardozo served on the New York Court of Appeals (1914-1932) until his appointment in 1932 by President Hoover as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Cardozo joined Justice Louis Brandeis as the second Jewish justice on the Court.
President Roosevelt Signing the Legislation for Social Security August 14, 1935
Frances Perkins later wrote, “He always regarded the Social Security Act as the cornerstone of his administration and, I think, took greater satisfaction from it than from anything else he achieved on the domestic front.”
Clear figures immediately around FDR standing left to right: Rep. Robert Doughton (NC), Senator Robert Wagner (NY) in dark suit, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Senator Pat Harrison with cigar (MS), and Rep. David J. Lewis (MD).
Representative Doughton was Chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means during the New Deal and as such co-sponsored, oversaw its hearings, and secured the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935. Senator Wagner had been elected to the Senate in 1926, helped draft several key pieces of New Deal legislation, and sponsored the Social Security bill in the Senate. Senator Harrison had previously served in the House and steered the bill in the Senate Finance Committee. Representative Lewis was a strong supporter of the bill and acknowledged expert on what was then termed “social insurance.”
Social Security Chronology
February 22, 1933. At Roosevelt House, Frances Perkins asks President-elect Roosevelt to support her proposals for old age insurance, unemployment insurance, and other policies to help Americans.
Early 1934. President Roosevelt asks Perkins to head a Committee on Economic Security to research and write proposals for legislation that would create social security and related programs.
January 17, 1935. President Roosevelt sends proposed legislation for an “Economic Security Bill” to the 74th Congress where it was introduced to both houses.
January-February, 1935. The House Ways & Means Committee held hearings on the bill January 21 – February 12, 1935. The Senate Finance Committee held hearings January 22 – February 20, 1935.
March 1, 1935. The House Ways & Means Committee votes to change the name of the bill to the “Social Security Act of 1935.”
April-June 1935. The House and Senate debate the proposed act and vote to pass it. The House votes 372 to 33 and the Senate votes 77 to 6. Votes to pass the bill were bipartisan in both chambers.
July-August, 1935. A Conference Committee reconciled differences between the House and Senate versions. The revised version was passed by voice vote on August 8, 1935 in the House and on August 9th in the Senate.
August 14, 1935. President Roosevelt signs The Social Security Act into law at a ceremony in the White House Cabinet Room.
The Social Security Act
The Social Security Act (Act of August 14, 1935) [H. R. 7260]
An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes.
TITLE I — Grants to States for Old-Age Assistance
TITLE II — Federal Old-Age Benefits
TITLE III — Grants to States for Unemployment Compensation Administration
TITLE IV — Grants to States for Aid to Dependent Children
TITLE V — Grants to States for Maternal and Child Welfare
TITLE VI — Public Health Work
TITLE VII — Social Security Board
TITLE VIII — Taxes with Respect to Employment
TITLE IX — Tax on Employers of Eight or More
TITLE X — Grants to States for Aid to the Blind
TITLE XI — General Provisions
Implementation
The Social Security agency punched cards from records sent in by employers…all over the country. There were millions and millions of them, and if we hadn’t had some way of putting them together we would have been lost. Thomas J. Watson Sr
With an estimated 26 to 30 million people in the workforce eligible for Social Security benefit accounts, and 3.5 million employers, it was clear that paper-based records would not suffice. In order to create a system that could handle this unprecedented amount of record-keeping, there were only a few companies in the United States that might be eligible for “the world’s largest bookkeeping job.” IBM won the contract on September 16, 1936 having invested heavily in improving and upgrading equipment using machine-readable punch cards to record data and process checks. It was this expertise, ahead of other competing companies, that had secured the contract rather than political support for FDR by Thomas J. Watson Sr, the head of IBM. Indeed, the president would offer him the position of Commerce Secretary, which he declined, but remained on a business advisory group to the Department of Commerce and would accept an invitation to join the board of the new National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (later known as the March of Dimes), started in 1937 by FDR to raise money for treatment and research on polio.
Social Security could not find a suitable building available in Washington DC to handle the weight of 400 large, heavy machines – key punch machines, card sorters, collators, accounting machines, and check-writing machines – plus hundreds of anticipated filing cabinets filled with paper as well, of course, as the employees. Instead, it located to six floors in the 12-story Candler Building in Baltimore, constructed in 1912 by the Coca Cola Company for bottling and distribution activities, whose then unusual reinforced concrete structure could support the Social Security operations. As the agency started operations, 2,500 employees were working there by January 1, 1937, the official start date to start issuing Social Security numbers and begin record keeping. Plans to move to Washington were foiled by other agencies and wartime needs and the agency finally relocated from the Candler Building to Woodlawn, Maryland in 1960. A month after President Roosevelt signed the authorizing legislation, the first meeting of the Social Security Board was held on September 14, 1935. FDR had appointed a bipartisan group whose combined professional and governmental experience prepared them to oversee the enormous challenge of creating a Social Security system capable of enrolling 30 million people. Frances Perkins gave Labor Department space and personnel to the new Social Security Administration to help establish the program which would become an independent agency with a bipartisan board. IBM won the contract to set up a data processing system using punch cards and tabulating devices which were much larger and more complicated than anything that had been used before. IBM even invented new equipment for the huge task of signing up millions of workers and employers by January 1, 1937, and recording their payments into the Social Security fund for later disbursement as pensions. The original Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes were levied on one percent of wages up to $3,000 a year (a salary of approximately $68,000 in 2025). The retirement age was set at 65 and regular benefits became payable as of January 1, 1940 to retired workers and their dependents, and to survivors of deceased insured workers.
The first monthly check was issued to Ida M. Fuller of Vermont for $22.54 (approximately $520 in 2025) in January 1940 at age 65; she continued collecting until her death in 1975. In the following decades the pool of workers eligible to participate in the Social Security system was considerably enlarged and cost of living increases were introduced.
Arthur Altneyer (1891-1972) was a Wisconsin economist and statistician who was recruited to head the Technical Board that worked with the Committee on Economic Security to write the legislation. In 1937 he succeeded John Winant as Chair of the Board and in 1946 he became the first Commissioner of the Social Security Administration serving until his retirement in 1953.
John Winant (1889-1947) was a World War I veteran and had served in the New Hampshire legislature. Although a Republican, as Governor (1931-35) he pursued New Deal style initiatives to help the citizens of his state, and eagerly embraced such New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps. He resigned in 1937 from the Board but FDR valued his competence and appointed him as the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain where he strengthened the wartime ties between the British and American leadership (1941-46).
Vincent Miles (1885-1947) was another veteran of World War I, a lawyer, and active in Democratic politics in Arkansas before joining the New Deal to work with the Public Works Administration and the National Resources Board. He served on the Social Security Board (1935-37) and left to work at the Department of Justice and then as Solicitor of the Post Office.
Initial Social Security Records
Registration for a Social Security account began with a form and social security card. The information was sent back to the Social Security office to be processed. Once completed, with data recorded on punch cards, the forms were filed in what became substantial banks of cabinets.
Processing Social Security Records
These clerical workers are creating an ’employee master card’ by using key punch machines with two keyboards, one for letters and one for numbers. Most of the hundreds of machine operators were women. Punch cards were then put through a sorting machine.
Punch Cards
Punch cards encoding information were first used in textile mills in the mid-eighteenth century but were introduced to American data gathering and analysis for the 1890 census. They kept evolving during the following decades, as increasing the number of holes and rows made it possible to capture more information based on where the holes were punched and then read by machines called card readers. Collecting data and issuing checks for Social Security would require millions of cards as well as hundreds of machines to process the information. IBM improved its process to print punch cards and was soon producing five to ten million a day for its Social Security work as well as other businesses.
Who was Included in—and Who Excluded from—Social Security?
In January 1935, President Roosevelt sent his proposed legislation for the “Economic Security Bill” to the 74th Congress, where it was quickly introduced in both the House and Senate. In January and February, more than 200 witnesses testified at committee hearings on the bill. The list included representatives of professional, civic, religious and nonprofit groups, government agencies, commercial organizations, and higher education.
Both President Roosevelt and Secretary of Labor Perkins intended that the Social Security program apply to all workers—to be “universal” in eligibility and application. Perkins assumed the entire Administration aligned with that ambition.
She was therefore surprised when Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. testified at the House hearings and argued that it would be too difficult to create and administer the program if all workers were included. Morgenthau recommended that domestic and agricultural workers along with irregular laborers known as “casuals” and small firms with less than ten workers all be excluded from the initial organization of the program. In her book The Roosevelt I Knew (1946), Perkins recalled:
This was a blow. The matter had been discussed in the Committee on Economic Security, and universal coverage had been agreed upon almost from the outset. One could concede that it would be difficult for the Treasury to collect these taxes. But the whole administration of the act was going to be difficult.
Representative John W. McCormack of Massachusetts—a future Speaker of the House—was one of the few who really challenged Morgenthau about the proposed limitations, noting:
I recognize the force of the argument that there are administrative difficulties, but that is taking an attitude of defeatism, it seems to me. If we do not get them in the bill, then you are going to have a lot of difficulty in the future getting them into the bill. If we are going to do anything, we might as well embrace them now, and if necessary suspend payments from them for a year or two until you have devised a method of obtaining those payments in a practical way.
Unfortunately, his view did not prevail, as Perkins reported:
The Ways and Means Committee members, impressed by the size of the project and the amount of money involved, nodded their heads to Secretary Morgenthau’s proposal of limitation. There was nothing for me to do but accept, temporarily at least, though I continued to recommend universal coverage as the best and safest way for the United States.
Perkins went on to write that that fear and confusion about a large system made it “a foregone conclusion that if the Secretary of the Treasury recommended limitation, limitation there would be.”
The only witness to push back against Morgenthau’s proposed limitations in the Senate Finance Committee hearings was Charles Hamilton Houston, incoming general counsel for the NAACP. He testified that the exclusion of domestic and agricultural workers would immediately have a disproportionate impact on Black Americans:
When you realize that out of the 5,000,000 Negro workers in this country, approximately 2,000,000 are in agriculture and another 1,500,000 are in domestic service — 3,500,000 Negroes dropped through the act right away when it comes to the question of old-age annuity; in other words, every 3 Negro workers out of 5, and then when you realize that of all of the elements in our population, the depression has thrown more Negroes out of work proportionately than any other element of population, you begin to appreciate my statement at the outset of my testimony that this bill looks like a sieve with holes just large enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.
History would prove Houston right. Recent scholarship has characterized the final Social Security program adopted in 1935 as discriminatory, with one scholar noting, “65 percent of African Americans throughout the country were ineligible for benefits, with an even higher percentage of African Americans in the South excluded from the program.”
So the question remains: was the program racist? In summary, one can say the original intention was anything but racist with its goal of including all workers. The revised version proposed by Morgenthau for bureaucratic reasons affected all workers, Black and white, in the newly excluded occupational categories as well as omitting self-employed professionals like doctors, all government and religious employees, and even employees of the ASPCA. But the revision had a disproportionate effect on the Black workforce because so many workers of color were employed in agricultural and domestic work.
Morgenthau’s bureaucratic views prevailed because of his influence in the administration and his persuasive argument about the difficulties of creating and managing such a huge new system; there was also growing resistance among both workers and employees to paying into it. Scholars have been arguing about the “original intent” of social security ever since: was it “founded on racial exclusion” or a giant first step in crafting the social safety net? the debate continues.
Not until 1950 would some exclusions be eliminated from the pension system when coverage was expanded to self-employed workers, federal civilian employees, and some state and local government employees. Many other changes would follow to adjust benefits, improve or expand programs, and include more workers. In 2025 there are approximately 69 million people receiving some form of Social Security benefit.
Charles Hamilton Houston
Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950) graduated from Amherst College and served in World War I where his bitter experience of racism in the segregated military led to his decision to become a lawyer and fight such injustices. After graduating with distinction from Harvard Law School, he practiced law in Washington DC with his father, taught at and became Dean of Howard University Law School, which educated a vast number of Black lawyers. He then became the first general Counsel at the NAACP. In that capacity he testified in 1935 about the harmful impact for Black Americans of the proposed Social Security law if domestic and agricultural workers were left out of the system but was unable to persuade Congress to include them. During the next fifteen years he worked on civil rights cases in regard to jury service, restrictive housing covenants, and voting rights. He gradually built the arguments in a series of cases that would finally demolish the prevailing “separate but equal” doctrine, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education which outlawed segregation in public schools in 1954. Houston died before that unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court where it had been argued by his protégés from Howard Law School and the NAACP.
Henry Morgenthau Jr.
Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891-1967) was born in New York City, son of a successful businessman, philanthropist, diplomat, and early supporter of Franklin Roosevelt’s public career. Morgenthau studied agriculture in college and he and his wide Elinor cultivated a farm in the Hudson Valley near the home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and those shared interests led to friendships and public service for Henry. When FDR became Governor in 1929, he appointed him to chair the New York State Agricultural Advisory Committee and to a leadership position with the state’s Conservation Department. When FDR became president in 1933, Henry was appointed head of the Federal Farm Board but in 1934 he left this position to become Secretary of the Treasury, becoming a powerful and influential member of the cabinet. He was always concerned with having a balanced Federal budget and limited deficit spending although he had to adjust to that reality with the New Deal programs to employ Americans and rebuild the economy. His belief that it would be very difficult to implement universal coverage for Social Security prevailed in Congress much to the chagrin of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. Henry was involved with numerous important matters around war financing, and domestic and foreign monetary policy, He finally persuaded the President in 1944 to allow more Jewish refugees into the country to escape the Holocaust. After the war he became a supporter of the newly established state of Israel. His son Robert M. Morgenthau (1919-2019) was the longest serving District Attorney of New York County (Manhattan) in office from 1975 until 2009.
New Deal-era Posters for Social Security
