FDR Signs the Social Security Act

On August 14, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in the Cabinet Room of the White House. The photograph taken that afternoon has been treated ever since as the birth of American social insurance. The reality is more complicated. The idea was already fifty years old, Germany and Britain had run versions of it for decades, and most of the important fights had already been lost. A retired California doctor, a Louisiana senator, and a hostile Supreme Court all shaped what the law became and what it left out.Send me a text!Support the show