Managing Security: The Business of American Social Policy, 1910-1960

Abstract

Today, the notion of economic security is in eclipse, but at mid-century it occupied a central place in American cultural and political life as a right of citizenship and employment. The enactment in the New Dealera of federalmortgage assistance, deposit insurance, minimum wages, Social Security, and laws bolstering the right to organize created a social entitlement to a minimum standard of living—if not for all workers, then as a model to which the nation should aspire. Workers, too, created this entitlement in the workplace, community, and polity, redefining the terms of citizenship. When local and private welfare programs failed in the Great Depression, workers turned to the national government for relief. The positive response of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration fundamentally changed American political culture: Americans now expected the state to guarantee a minimal level of social well-being.