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Bringing the Constituents Back In: The Politics of Social Security in the 1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2024

ERIC S. YELLIN Open the ORCID record for ERIC S. YELLIN [Opens in a new window]
ERIC S. YELLIN*
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University of Richmond
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Abstract

This article argues that scholars’ current understanding of Social Security policy making in the 1950s is missing a crucial component: massive letter-writing campaigns by ordinary Americans. Americans’ letters to Congress—and the responses of members and their aides in public debates and constituent correspondence—reflect a more vibrant, more democratic, and messier policy-making process than scholars have previously recognized. In the 1950s, Congress voted to amend the Social Security Act of 1935 repeatedly, expanding both the number of occupations covered by the Old Age and Survivors Insurance program and the level of benefits individuals received. Scholars have depicted this expansion as the work of planners within the Social Security bureaucracy. Yet, the letters in congressional records reveal that the process of amending Social Security resulted from—and helped create—constituencies of Americans who felt entitled to make claims on the federal state apparatus.

Keywords

Social Security Act of 19351950s politicscongressional constituentsCongressthe statewomengray lobbyU.S. Welfare policy
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , pp. 161 - 190
Copyright
© Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press, 2024

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Footnotes

For their supportive readings of early drafts, I thank Chris Florio, Pippa Holloway, and Nicole Sackley. Research grants from the Dirksen Congressional Center and the University of Richmond allowed for crucial time in the National Archives. I also thank two very generous readers for JPH who made this article stronger.

References

NOTES

1. William Ruitenbeck to Walter George, May 18, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E7, Committee on Finance, box 35, National Archives Building, Washington, DC (Hereafter NAB).

2. Ellen S. Patten to Walter George, January 18, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E, Committee on Finance, box 15, NAB.

3. Berkowitz, Edward D., America’s Welfare State: From Roosevelt to Reagan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 66–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Derthick, Martha, Agency under Stress: The Social Security Administration in American Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990)Google Scholar; Kruse, Kevin M. and Zelizer, Julian E., Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), 114–16Google Scholar; Campbell, Andrea Louise, How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 79, 84–85 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Derthick, Martha, Policymaking for Social Security (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1979), 12, 183, 202n26, 239–40Google Scholar; Sam Roberts, “Martha A. Derthick, Analyst Who Untangled Public Policy, Dies at 81,” New York Times, January 29, 2015.

5. Edward Berkowitz’s “Note on the Sources” instructs readers interested in Social Security to “start and finish” with Derthick. Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State, 200. Skocpol, Theda and Ikenberry, John, “The Political Formation of the American Welfare State in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Comparative Social Research: The Welfare State, 1883-1983, vol. 6, ed. Tomasson, Richard F. (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1983), 87–148 Google Scholar; Ikenberry, John and Skocpol, Theda, “Expanding Social Benefits: The Role of Social Security,” Political Science Quarterly 102, no. 3 (1987): 389–416 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freeman, Gary P., “Voters, Bureaucrats, and the State: On the Autonomy of Social Security Policymaking,” in Social Security: The First Half-Century, ed. Nash, Gerald D. et al. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 145–79Google Scholar; Quadagno, Jill S., The Color of Welfare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Henry Pratt’s 1976 work on the “gray lobby” offers a similar assessment of organized social action, quoted and affirmed in 2003 by Campbell. Pratt does acknowledge that “less structured” mobilization occurred among seniors but locates even those rumblings in the late 1950s. Day, Christine L., What Older Americans Think: Interest Group and Aging Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 22–24 Google Scholar; Pratt, Henry J., The Gray Lobby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 26, 49Google Scholar; Campbell, 84–85.

8. Author discussion with archivist Eric DeLisle, May 22, 2019, Social Security History Archives, Social Security Administration, Baltimore, MD (Hereafter SSHA).

9. Shapiro, Robert Y. and Smith, Tom W., “The Polls: Social Security,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 49, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 561 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Page, Benjamin I. and Shapiro, Robert Y., The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trend in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 118–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Schiltz, Michael E., Public Attitudes toward Social Security 1935-1965 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970)Google Scholar.

10. Chappell, Marisa, “ Protecting Soldiers and Mothers Twenty-Five Years Later: Theda Skocpol’s Legacy and American Welfare State Historiography, 1992–2017,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17 (2018): 562 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; See also, Achenbaum, W. Andrew, “The History of Federal Policies toward the Aged,” in Federal Social Policy: The Historical Dimension, ed. Critchlow, Donald T. and Hawley, Ellis W. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 47 Google Scholar.

11. Wilbur J. Cohen and Fedele F. Fauri, “The Social Security Amendments of 1956,” Public Welfare (October 1956), 16.

12. As political scientist John Kingdon has argued, elected officials, including members of Congress, have typically been the crucial policy “agenda setters,” not bureaucrats. Kingdon, John W., Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Longman, 2011), 21–44 Google Scholar.

13. As Campbell puts it, “Letters inform Congress about constituent concerns and prompt casework (where members try to solve constituent problems), both of which contribute to members’ reelection efforts.” Campbell, 26.

14. On the long history of petitions and letters to elected officials, and systematic analysis showing that Congress has taken them seriously, particularly in the nineteenth century; see Maggie Blackhawk et al., “Congressional Representation by Petition: Assessing the Voices of the Voteless in a Comprehensive New Database, 1789-1949,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 46, no. 3 (July 2021), 817–49. Daniel Carpenter’s subject is the first century of US politics, but his basic insights that petitioning is more democratic than it may appear and that it has shaped American government are useful here too. Carpenter, Daniel, Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790-1870 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Here, I mean “agenda” in the terms of Kingdon’s classic definition: “the list of subjects or problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time.” Kingdon, 3.

16. For an analysis arguing that constituent mail reflects public opinion and “political awareness,” see Taeku Lee’s examination of letters to US presidents during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Lee, Taeku, Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar, chap. 4–6.

17. In many ways, my findings about the importance of contacting elected officials in Social Security policy making echo Campbell’s, but my study diverges in two critical ways: First, I looked at constituent letters in congressional files—Campbell uses mass polling to show that people reported contacting elected officials. Second, I argue that letter-writing activity was meaningful in the 1950s, even before the 1970s, when Campbell locates an effective “participation-policy cycle.” Campbell, 2, 79, 87–92.

18. Lieberman, Robert C., Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 109 Google Scholar.

19. Cong. Rec. S8895 (daily ed. June 20, 1950).

20. Grisinger, Joanna L., The Unwieldy American State: Administrative Politics since the New Deal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Menand, Louis, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021), 43–54 Google Scholar; Zelizer, Julian, ed., The American Congress: The Building of American Democracy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2004), 120, 312–18Google Scholar.

21. The most thorough accounting of the pivotal careers of social welfare policy makers can be found in the work of public policy scholar Edward D. Berkowitz, including Mr. Social Security: The Life of Wilbur J. Cohen (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995) and Robert Ball and the Politics of Social Security (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). For the career of an unusually technocratic politician, see Zelizer, Julian, Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945-1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

22. Carpenter notes that “petition democracy was always partial,” never granting “equal voice.” Coll, Blanche D., Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security 1929-1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 94 Google Scholar; Burks, Jaynes Burress, “Economic Crises for Women: Aging and Retirement Years” (1977), in Quadagno, Jill S., ed., Aging, the Individual and Society: Readings in Social Gerontology (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 451 Google Scholar; Michelmore, Molly C., Tax and Spend: The Welfare State, Tax Politics, and the Limits of American Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carpenter, Democracy by Petition, 476

23. Historically, African Americans have been less likely to write elected officials than other members of the general public. Lee, 97.

24. Analysis Division, “Agricultural Workers and Household Employees,” Program for Development of Old Age and Survivors Insurance, Report 1 (BOASI, Social Security Board, 1945), p. 16, in Folder: Program for Development of Old Age and Survivors Insurance 1945-1947, SSHA; Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, 116–17, 69, 106.

25. Carpenter offers a theoretical grounding for seeing petitioning as both potentially democratizing (by giving voice to some left out of electoral processes) and undemocratic (by giving elites chances to set agendas) in Carpenter, Daniel, “Agenda Democracy,” Annual Review of Political Science 26, no 8 (2023): 1–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Daniel A. Reed to Howard C. Seaman, May 6, 1954, RG233, Records of the United States House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, HR 83A-F17.12, Committee on Ways & Means, box 2097, NAB.

27. Historian Scott Sandage shows how the phrasing and tropes of epistolary pleas reveal broader cultural themes and individual experience. Studies of letter writing in England under the Poor Laws have also noted the importance of the rhetorical strategies in letters from and on behalf of poor people. Sandage, Scott A., Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; King, Steven A. and Jones, Peter, “Testifying for the Poor: Epistolary Advocates for the Poor in Nineteenth Century England and Wales,” Journal of Social History 49 (2016), 784–807 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carpenter, Democracy by Petition, xi–xii.

28. “Commissioner’s Correspondence, 1936-1969,” Social Security Administration, Office of the Commissioner, RG 47, Entry 40, National Archives II, College Park, MD.

29. “The Bureau of Hearings and Appeals,” Oasis (September 1963), 12–14, 19; Social Security Board, Federal Security Agency, “Basic Provisions Adopted by the Social Security Board for the Hearing and Review of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Claims, with a Discussion of Certain Administrative Problems and Legal Considerations,” 1940, SSHA.

30. Grisinger, Unwieldy American State, esp. chap. 3 and 4.

31. Mrs. Leroy C. Arnold to Walter George, March 11, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E7, Committee on Finance, box 16, Social Security Acknowledgment #7, NAB.

32. RG 46, Records of the US Senate, Finance, SEN 83A-F6, box 58, NAB.

33. In fact, growth in the workforce during the war actually meant that the percentage covered under the social insurance program decreased between 1939 and 1949; Coll, Safety Net, 158.

34. For one example, H. O. Lytle to Robert Doughton, May 22, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 816, NAB.

35. Igo, Sarah E., The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 58 Google Scholar.

36. Eleanor L. Strong to Walter George, March 8, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E, Committee on Finance, box 15, NAB.

37. E. V. Pease to Senate Finance Committee, February 22, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E7, Committee on Finance, box 16, Social Security Acknowledgment #7, NAB.

38. “We are very interested in the changes to be made in the Social Security Act” began a clutch of postcards from women in Atlantic City, addressed to Ways and Means in June 1956. See RG 233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 84th Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 84A-F17.3, box 940, Social Security Correspondence Pursuant to newspaper articles, NAB.

39. Mrs. F. E. Sampson to Congress of United States, December 10, 1935, Pensions—Old Age, Miscellaneous Subject Files 1933-1946, A. Willis Robertson Papers, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA; Herbert R. Beaty to Charles C. Diggs, March 28, 1960, Charles Diggs Collection, box 40, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.

40. Miss J. Snyder to Walter George, December 29, 1952, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 82nd Congress, SEN 82A-F7, Committee on Finance, box 166, Social Security Eligibility Requirements, NAB.

41. Floyd Snyder to Edward R. Stettenius Jr., April 24, 1948, RG46, Committee on Finance, S. Res. 141, SEN 80A-F8, box 4, Benefits Increase-OASI Inquiries, NAB.

42. Harry J. Davenport to Robert Doughton, February 8, 1949, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB; “Social Security Revision: Proceedings in Executive Session before the Committee on Finance United States Senate, 81st Congress, Second Session, on H.R. 6000, January 12, 1950” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1950), RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E7, Committee on Finance, box 34, NAB.

43. Ways & Means Committee counsels Leo H. Irwin and Charles W. Davis exerted a particularly strong influence on constituents’ understanding of Social Security by being the principal respondents on behalf of the committee in the 1950s. Both were hired by Robert Doughton in 1949. Irwin stayed on the committee’s staff until he was appointed to the US Tax Court in 1968. Davis clerked for Ways & Means until being nominated by Truman to serve as counsel to the Internal Revenue Bureau in 1952. In the Senate, Robert Ball, director of the Senate’s Advisory Council on Social Security, was asked to respond to letters to senators and to council chairman Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. See United States Tax Court, “Opening Remarks of Chief Judge Lapsley W. Hamblen, Jr. at the Memorial Service for Judge Leo H. Irwin on December 1, 1995,” United States Tax Court Reports 105 (1995): ix—xx; Kenan Heise, “Charles W. Davis, 69, Prominent Tax Lawyer,” Chicago Tribune, February 19, 1987.

44. On petitions as standard congressional work and the “participatory state” built to handle them, see Maggie McKinley, “Petitioning and the Making of the Administrative State,” Yale Law Journal 127, no. 6 (April 2018): 1558–66.

45. John F. Kennedy to Robert Doughton, January 17, 1949, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 171, NAB; Leonard Irving to Robert Doughton, March 19, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 814, NAB.

46. For example, Social Security subcommittee chair Carl T. Curtis (R-NE) wrote Robert Barker of Rochester, New York, in 1953 to let him know his letter would be part of the hearings. Carl T. Curtis to Robert J. Barker, October 28, 1953, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 83A-F17.12, box 2091, NAB.

47. Undated document “Benefit Situations—(Letters illustrating), RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 83A-F17.22, box 2137, NAB; Robert M. Ball to August H. Andresen, February 8, 1954, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 83A-F17.22, box 2137, NAB; James G. Fulton to Janet L. Storrie, June 16, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 816, Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Ins. Coverage Domestic Employees, Ministers, Professionals, NAB; Leo H. Irwin to James G. Fulton, June 28, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 816, Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Ins. Coverage Domestic Employees, Ministers, Professionals, NAB.

48. 81 Cong. Rec. H13955 (daily ed. October 5, 1949) (statement of Rep. Elliot).

49. 81 Cong. Rec. S8817 (daily ed. June 19, 1950) (statement of Sen. Pepper).

50. 81 Cong. Rec. 8493 (daily ed. June 13, 1950) (statement of Sen. George).

51. 81 Cong. Rec. S8587 (daily ed. June 14, 1950) (statement of Sen. Taft).

52. Hahamovitch, Cindy, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 92–93 Google Scholar.

53. Tani, Karen M., “Flemming v. Nestor: Anticommunism, the Welfare State, and the Making of ‘New Property,’” Law and History Review 26, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 379–414 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen and Fauri, “The Social Security Amendments of 1956,” 6. Storrs, Landon R. Y., The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 14 Google Scholar.

54. Donald L. Davis, “Growing Old Black” (1971) in Quadagno, Aging, 365; on the meaning of “universalism” in welfare policy, see Quadagno, Color of Welfare, 156–57; on the conservative foundations of reducing of social welfare, see Mittelstadt, Jennifer, From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform 1945-1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

55. Eloise Lyman Palmer to Walter George, January 30, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E7, Committee on Finance, box 16, Social Security Acknowledgment #7, NAB.

56. Lee, 94–95; McElvaine, Robert S., ed., Down & Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the ‘Forgotten Man’ (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 6Google Scholar; for a typical example, see E. M. Nelson to Franklin D. Roosevelt, July 14, 1933, Folder: CES-Correspondance—(Old Age Pensions), SSHA.

57. Coll, Safety Net, 82, 92–93; Brinkley, Alan, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Knopf, 1982)Google Scholar. For letters endorsing Townsend to Congress, see for example, RG 46, U.S. Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E7, boxes 32–33, NAB. On the ways social movements can lead to cultural shifts with policy-making implications, see Amenta, Edwin and Polletta, Francesca, “The Cultural Impacts of Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 45 (2019): 289–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the origins of Social Security specifically within this framing, see Amenta, Edwin, When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58. The age 65 was chosen because it was common in other pension programs and seemed actuarially feasible, as remaining life expectancy was about 12–14 more years. Dewitt, Larry, “The Development of Social Security in America,” Social Security Bulletin 70, no. 3 (2010): 6–7 Google ScholarPubMed; Coll, Safety Net, 52.

59. Berkowitz, America’s Welfare State, 26; Dewitt, “The Development of Social Security in America,” 4.

60. Quadagno, Color of Welfare, 157–58.

61. “A Program for the Development of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance” was begun by the Analysis Division of the the Bureau in 1941 and revised repeateadly until 1949. The so-called Calhoun Report, named for Chief of Social Security Technical Staff Leonard J. Calhoun, was ordered by Congress in 1945. United States, “Issues in Social Security: A Report to the Committee on Ways & Means of the House of Representatives by the Committee’s Social Security Technical Staff Established Pursuant to H. Res. 204 (79th Congress, 1st Session)” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946).

62. In response to the accusations of conservatives that liberals were willing to pass anything “that Altmeyer wants to put over on you,” congressional leaders repeatedly insisted that legislation was their job. 81 Cong. Rec. H13811 (daily ed. October 4, 1949).

63. 81 Cong. Rec. H13907 (daily ed. October 5, 1949) (statement of Rep. Mills).

64. 81 Cong. Rec. S8498 (daily ed. June 13, 1950). (statement of Sen. Millikin).

65. Arthur J. Altmeyer, “Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance,” Social Security Bulletin (April 1949).

66. US House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means Report, H.R. Rep. No. 81-1300 (August 22, 1949).

67. Cohen, “The Social Security Act Amendments of 1950,” 60.

68. Cohen, “The Social Security Act Amendments of 1950,” 37n48.

69. Mrs. S. T. Williams to Robert Doughton, April 10, 1949, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB.

70. H. W. Duckworth to C. W. Bishop, April 8, 1949, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB.

71. Charles W. Davis to H. W. Duckworth, April 20, 1949, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB.

72. K. S. Mummert to James F. Lind, June 9, 1949, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB.

73. 81 Cong. Rec. H13963 (daily ed. October 5, 1949) (statement of Rep. White).

74. Glen Stegall to Lyndon B. Johnson, June 18, 1949, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB.

75. Henry Hausen to Walter George, February 19, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E, Committee on Finance, box 15, NAB.

76. John Burke to Walter George, January 9, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E, Committee on Finance, box 15, NAB; For another example, see also C. C. Burns to Walter George, March 18, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E7, Committee on Finance, box 16, Social Security Acknowledgment #7, NAB.

77. For example, Nellie Speer to Walter George, February 9, 1950, RG46, US Senate, 81st Congress, SEN 81A-E, Committee on Finance, box 15, NAB. For another example, see. Bess Norton Cobb to Wright Patman, January 7, 1950, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB.

78. On the state’s ability to create “kinds” of Americans through legislative inclusion and exclusion from social policy programs, see Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

79. Cohen, “The Social Security Act Amendments of 1950,” 10n21.

80. Wilbur J. Cohen, “Social Security Act Amendments of 1952,” Social Security Bulletin (September 1952).

81. G. A. Connor to Walter George, June 4, 1951, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 82nd Congress, SEN 82A-F7, box 165, NAB; Walter George to G. A. Connor, June 7, 1951, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 82nd Congress, SEN 82A-F7, Committee on Finance, box 165, NAB.

82. Cohen, “Social Security Act Amendments of 1952.”

83. 82 Cong. Rec. H5471–5472 (daily ed. May 19, 1952) (statement of Rep. Reed).

84. 82 Cong. Rec. H5474 (daily ed. May 19, 1952); Isaac Kirsner to Robert Doughton, May 20, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 814, NAB.

85. 81 Cong. Rec. S8802 (daily ed. June 19, 1950).

86. Cohen, “Social Security Act Amendments of 1952.”

87. Katznelson, Ira, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013), 260 Google Scholar; Quadagno, Color of Welfare, 20–21; Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, 102–3; Deborah E. Ward, The White Welfare State: The Racialization of U.S. Welfare Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). Historian Mary Poole nuances this picture a bit but does not totally overturn the basic responsibility of racist southern congressmen. Mary Poole, The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

88. 81 Cong. Rec. H13900 (daily ed. October 5, 1949) (statement of Rep, Cooper). Vermont Senator George Aiken believed a general will to be included did exist, but farmers needed more details. 81 Cong. Rec. S8587 (daily ed. June 14, 1950).

89. Cohen, “The Social Security Act Amendments of 1950,” 13–14.

90. Edward Rees to Charles W. Davis, January 30, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 814, NAB; Leo H. Irwin to Edward Rees, January 30, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 814, NAB.

91. J. P. Warrick to Carl B. Albert, June 5, 1952, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 813, Social Security Old Age Assistance, NAB.

92. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, 115; Wilbur J. Cohen, Robert M. Ball, and Robert J. Myers, “Social Security Act Amendments of 1954: A Summary and Legislative History,” Social Security Bulletin (September 1954).

93. Nelson Cruikshank to George Meany, October 19, 1953, AFL, CIO, AFL-CIO Office of the President. RG1-027 President’s Files: George Meany, 1944–1960 Series 6: Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1946–1960, box, 39, folder 7, Social Security, 1952–1954, The George Meany Memorial Archives, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Maryland Libraries, College Park, MD (Hereafter GMMA-UMD).

94. Mrs. C. H. Terry to Harold Ostertag, January 12, 1953, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 83A-F17.12, box 2091, NAB.

95. Edwin D. Wertzler to Harold, January 9, 1953, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 83A-F17.12, box 2091, NAB.

96. L. V. Hughes to Harold [O]stertag, January 8, 1953, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 83A-F17.12, box 2091, NAB.

97. 83 Cong. Rec. H7458 (daily ed. June 1, 1954).

98. 83 Cong. Rec. H7441 (June 1, 1954).

99. Social Security bureaucrats saw letters from constituents in need of disability insurance as an important way to influence Congress. For example, Wilbur Cohen forwarded letters to Georgia congressman Sidney Camp, who sat on Ways and Means. Cohen and Fauri, “The Social Security Amendments of 1956,” 16; Edward D. Berkowitz and Wendy Wolff, “Disability Insurance and the Limits of American History,” The Public Historian 8, no. 2 (Spring 1986): 65–82; Wilbur J. Cohen to A. Sidney Camp, n.d [1950?], RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 172, NAB.

100. Cary Franklin, “The Anti-Stereotyping Principle in Constitutional Sex Discrimination Law,” NYU Law Review 85 (April 2010): 83–173.

101. I was not able to identify letters from Black women regarding Social Security in congressional correspondence in this period. But scholars have been wrong before about advocacy by African Americans, and so I am loathe to rule it out. For women’s limited citizenship, see Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Igo, The Known Citizen, 94; Canaday, The Straight State, 152.

102. Blackhawk et al. show that women made their voices heard in Congress through petitioning even before the Nineteenth Amendment brought them into the electoral process. Blackhawk et al., 834–39.

103. On conservative women’s response to Social Security, see Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 153–54. Examples of letters from self-identified conservative white women include, Celeste Clemens to Mr. Mahan, July 31, 1951, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 816, Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Ins. Coverage Domestic Employees, Ministers, Professionals, NAB; Esther Jordan to Robert Doughton, August 6, 1951, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 816, Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Ins. Coverage Domestic Employees, Ministers, Professionals, NAB; Ethel Berard to Robert Doughton, August 6, 1951, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 82nd Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 82A-F17.1, box 816, Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Ins. Coverage Domestic Employees, Ministers, Professionals, NAB; Petition to Estes Kefauver, August 28, 1951, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 82nd Congress, SEN 82A-F7, Committee on Finance, box 168, NAB.

104. 81 Cong. Rec. S8890 (June 20, 1950); Leo Irwin to Wright Patman, January 21, 1950, RG233, Records of the US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 81A-F17.1, box 170, OASI-Benefits for Married Women and husbands, NAB.

105. Cobb to Patman, January 7, 1950.

106. For an example, among many, in committee files: Anna Huffman to Walter George, October 14, 1952, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 82nd Congress, SEN 82A-F7, Committee on Finance, box 166, Social Security Eligibility Requirements, NAB.

107. Vaughn quoted in W. Kerr Scott to Harry F. Byrd, July 11, 1956, RG46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 84th Congress, Committee on Finance, Sen 84A-F6, box 821, NAB.

108. Mrs. Newton A. Wiggins to Harry Byrd, December 27, 1956, RG46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 84th Congress, Committee on Finance, Sen 84A-F6, box 821, NAB.

109. Hazel Hayden to Jere Cooper, May 26, 1955, RG233, Records of the United States House of Representatives, 84th Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 84A-F17.3, box 947, NAB.

110. The letters can all be found in RG233, Records of the United States House of Representatives, 84th Congress, Committee on Ways & Means, HR 84A-F17.3, box 947, “Social Security Age—Women 1 of 2,” NAB.

111. Statement by Oveta Culp Hobby, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Before the Senate Committee on Finance, July 26, 1955. Attached to Victor Christgau, OASI Director’s Bulletin No. 222, (July 29, 1955), SSHA, https://www.ssa.gov/history/legislativehistory.html; “News from the AFL-CIO,” March 22, 1956, AFL, CIO, AFL-CIO Office of the President. RG1-027 President’s Files: George Meany, 1944–1960 Series 6: Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1946–1960 box 39, Folder 8 Social Security, 1956–1960, GMMA-UMD.

112. Madeline Denton to Harry F. Byrd, July 15, 1956, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 84th Congress, Committee on Finance, SEN 84A-F6, box 821, NAB.

113. Edna Kraft to Harry F. Byrd, July 13, 1956, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 84th Congress, Committee on Finance, SEN 84A-F6, box 821, NAB.

114. Lillian J. Brady to Harry F. Byrd, July 13, 1956, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 84th Congress, Committee on Finance, SEN 84A-F6, box 821, NAB.

115. For example, the office files of conservative congressmen, such as Virginians A. Willis Robertson and Watkins Abbitt, show the same responsiveness to constituents regarding Social Security benefits as those of liberals who publicly supported the program. See A. Willis Robertson Papers, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA; Watkins Abbitt Papers, University of Richmond Library, Richmond, VA.

116. Mary T. Collins to Harry F. Byrd, July 31, 1956, RG46, Records of the US Senate, 84th Congress, Committee on Finance, SEN 84A-F6, box 821, NAB.

117. 84 Cong. Rec. S13042 (daily ed. July 17, 1956).

118. 84 Cong. Rec S13065 (daily ed. July 17, 1956).

119. Cohen and Fauri, “The Social Security Amendments of 1956,” 2.

120. Balogh, Brian, “Securing Support: The Emergence of the Social Security Board as a Political Actor, 1935-1939,” in Federal Social Policy: The Historical Dimension, ed. Critchlow, Donald T. and Hawley, Ellis W. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 55–78 Google Scholar.

121. Arnold M. Rose, “The Subculture of the Aging: A Framework for Research in Social Gerontology” (1965) in Quadagno, Aging, 75.

122. Quadagno, Color of Welfare, 157.