This panel documents the work of the Committee on
Economic Security, which developed the Roosevelt Administration's
Social Security proposal.
The Committee on Economic Security
President Roosevelt appointed a cabinet-level Committee on
Economic Security (CES), under the leadership of Frances Perkins,
FDR's Secretary of Labor. Secretary Perkins was the first woman in
the nation's history to attain cabinet rank, and she was an experienced
social reformer who was very knowledgeable about the philosophy and
practice of social insurance. President Roosevelt could be described
as the political father of Social Security, and Frances Perkins was
its philosophical architect.
In barely six months, from June 1934 to December 1934, the CES researched
social insurance in other nations; documented the need for a social
insurance program in America; and drafted the Administration's legislative
proposal. The Report of the Committee (see display below) remains
to this day the most thorough, comprehensive and persuasive analysis
ever done of the need for government action to address the problem
of economic security in the America of the 1930s. This achievement
was all the more remarkable because this was a new type of program,
the likes of which had never been seen at the federal level in our
history. |
www.socialsecurity.gov
