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Show CATO JOURNAL tional, repealed, and amended. Prior to the Depression, the rate of county participation and the number of pensioners remained very low. Under the new laws, the localities were empowered to collect and dispense public funds for the care of the elderly poor; they were not required to set up assistance programs and generally were not subsidized to do so. Nevertheless, a structure was in place to handle the cash needs of the elderly, a structure that would be put to the test during the Depression. Old-age assistance was an idea whose time had come. Social reformers had gained the support of the fraternal societies and trade unions, two long-time opponents of government action, in the push for old-age assistance. Most of the states investigating the problems of the aged concluded that old-age assistance was pre ferable to prevailing public arrangements for the poor. On the Eve of the Great Depression As the 1920s drew to a close, the family and voluntary associations remained the bulwark of support for the needy of all ages. Yet, political sentiments were crystallizing around proposals for direct cash assistance for the elderly poor. Old-age assistance laws had been passed by a quarter of the states and legislation was under consideration in most others. Very likely, the trend toward cash assistance provided by state and local governments would have continued even in the absence of the Depression. Proposals for compulsory social insurance, by contrast, were unable to generate any popular support. By and large, the elderly who were poor tended to have been poor or to have had low incomes as younger people; workers who had sufficient resources to save for retirement found outlets for their savings in a well-developed market for life insurance, a developing market for private pensions, and a variety of other financial arrangements. The available evidence suggests that private financial institutions, in combination with public and private assistance for the poor, accommodated the retirement income needs of the elderly. As those needs changed, private institutions were responding and the basis for compulsory insurance was weakening. References Abbott, Edith. Public Assistance: American Principles and Policies. 1940: reissued in 2 vols. New York : Russell and Russell, 1966. Achenbaum, Andrew. Old Age in the New Land. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1978. Armstrong, Barbara. Insuring the Essentials : Minimum Wage Plus Social Insurance-A Living Wage Program. New York: Macmillan , 1932. 522 SUPPORT OF THE ELDERLY Bureau of Census . Benevolent Institutions : 1904. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905. Bureau of Census. Summary of State Laws Relating to the Dependent Classes: 1913. Washington, D .C. : Government Printing Office, 1914. Bureau of Census . 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Monthly Labor Review 28, no . 3 (March 1929a): 1-21 , 34. "Care of the Aged in the United States." Monthly Labor Review 29, no. 1 (July 1929b): 1-30. "Care of the Aged." Monthly Labor Review 30, no. 4 (April 1930): 9-13. Clarke, Helen 1. Social Legislation: American I~aws Dealing with Family, Child and Dependent. New York : D . Appleton-Century, 1940. "Cost and Conduct of American Almshouses." Bulletin of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics no. 439 (June 1927): 445-54. "The Cost of American Almshouses." Bulletin of the U.S . Bureau of Labor Statistics no. 386 (June 1925): 1-51. "The Cost of Existing Retirement Systems." Congressional Digest 15 (March 1935): 73 . Darby, Michae l. The Effects of Social Security on Income and the Capital Stock. Washington, D.C .: American Enterprise Institute, 1979. Davis, M. E. Industrial Life Insurance in the United States. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1944. Douglas, Paul. Social Security in the United States. New York : McGrawHill , 1939. Epstein , Abraham . Insecurity: A Challenge to America. New York : Random HOllse, 1938. "Extent and Distribution of Old Age Dependency in the United States." Monthly Labor Review 38, no. 1 (January 1934): 1-17. Glasson, William H. History of Military Pension Legislation in the United States . 1900: reissued. New York : AMS Press, 1968. Goldsmith, R. W. A Study of Saving in the United States. 2 vols. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969. Gompers, Samuel. "Not Even Compulsory Benevolence will Do. " The American Federalist 23 (1917) : 198. 523 |
