Pierre Epstein

Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2007
Opinion Piece

MY DAD, A FATHER OF SOCIAL SECURITY
BY PIERRE EPSTEIN

It was the roaring 20's , the Jazz Age, the era of Calvin Coolidge -- a decade that had, in the words of one historian, "the Lorelei of possibility": an obsessive vision of limitless prosperity. But for most Americans the truth was sadly different. An average wage earner got $26 for a 50 hour week. And he would work as many years as he was able. As historian David Kennedy put it, "Retirement was an elusive fantasy for the average American worker."
That reality was abundantly clear to my father, Abraham Epstein, a poor Jewish immigrant from Russia who became one of the primary architects of Social Security. He came to America in 1910 because he wanted an education. To get it, he worked in a garment factory, taught Hebrew, talked his way into a private high school, won a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with a master's degree in economics in 1917.
So, although he land of opportunity had served him well, Abe also saw firsthand how the elderly, unemployed and sick were being left by the wayside. In 1918, there was almost no old-age insurance, private pensions or retirement plans. The prevailing wisdom was that it was your own fault if you hadn't saved for life's vicissitudes.
Abe was an intense little man with a high-pitched voice, heavy accent and thick spectacles. His first job was with the Pennsylvania Commission on Old Age Pensions, which did the earliest studies on the problem. He did pioneering research, visiting private charity homes, the indigent scraping by at home and, the worst off, those in county poorhouses. He knew then that if the government was going to help the poor, it had to start with the most vulnerable, the indigent aged.
In addition to state reports, in 1922 he published a book, "Facing Old Age." But Pennsylvania didn't move fast enough for the fiery and impatient Abe. When the state's Supreme Court threw out the old-age insurance law that he'd help craft, he was fed up. He went out on his own.
He founded an advocacy group, the American Association for Old Age Security, and on July 22, 1927 he set off in his new car, his wife in tow, to cross he United States. He wanted to tour the land like Johnny Appleseed and sow the seeds of old-age security. Always obstreperous, he fired off letters, set up meetings and made speeches wherever he could. He consulted with reformer Jane Addams in Chicago and harangued old cowboys in South Dakota. In Montana, he barged into a county commissioner's meeting to demand they utilize the state's optional old-age pension plan.
It was when he got to California that he realized how acute the old age crisis was. The Goilden State had lured multitudes west, and by the 1920's the number of people over 65 in the state was twice the national average. California was ripe for change. In fact many crackpot schemes to help the aged surfaced in the 1930's: activist-novelist Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California, the $30 every Thursday "Ham and Eggs" Plan, and the most popular, the bank-breaking $200 a month Townsend Plan promoted by a doctor in Long Beach.
On his return to New York, Abe made his report to the Association "Why only old-age security? I think everyone in this hall would stand with you and say, 'Well if we can everything, let us have everything.' I think none is limiting hiomself to old-age security. We are emphasizing it because old-age security -- and that is the strange but true history of every European country -- is always the first step in social insurance. In the United States, old-age insurance will come ahead of healh insurance and unemployment insurance."
His vision was set far into the future. In 1933, he changed the name of his group to the American Association for Social Security (he was the first to use those words) to explain his concept of social insurance that would include old-age, unemployment and medical help. The Roosevelt administration called its version of this the Economic Security Act in the New Deal legislation of 1935. But before passing it , congressmen who had heard Abe testify many times renamed it the Social Security Act.
Now, as California prepares to join Massachusetts in passing a sweeping health insurance law, it is wise to remember another of Abe Epstein's insights: The states have to act before the federal government will do anything.
In 1927, only two states had some minimal form of old-age pensions. By the time of the Social Security Act in 1935, every state but one had an old age security law on the books.
With California on the move, it is only a matter of time until other states join in, and the federal government will be forced to create a national health plan. Just as in 1935.
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PIERRE EPSTEIN is the author of the new book, "Abraham Epstein: The Forgotten Father of Social Security." (University of Missouri Press)