"Rationality & Welfare: Public Discussion of Poverty and Social Insurance in the United States 1875-1935"

by Professor Theron Schlabach

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

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.