Popular Radicalism in the 1930s
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- Published on Wednesday, 16 September 2020 03:06
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2194 ... September 16, 2020
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Popular Radicalism in the 1930s:
The History of the Workers’ Unemployment Insurance Bill
Chris Wright
At a time when unemployment is skyrocketing in the US and millions of out-of-work Americans have been abandoned by the federal government, it may be of interest to consider how an earlier generation responded to an even greater crisis, the Great Depression (1929-1936). In particular, we might draw inspiration from the remarkable story of the now-forgotten Workers’ Unemployment Insurance Bill that was introduced in Congress in 1934, 1935, and 1936.
Despite essentially no press coverage and extreme hostility from the business community and the Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) administration, a popular movement developed in support of this bill that had been written by the Communist Party. The mass pressure that was brought to bear on Congress secured a stunning victory in the spring of 1935, when the bill became the first unemployment insurance plan in US history to be recommended by a congressional committee (the House Labor Committee). It was defeated in the House -- by a vote of 204... to 52 -- but the widespread support for the bill was likely a factor in the easy passage later in 1935 of the relatively conservative Social Security Act, which laid the foundation for the American welfare state.
Aside from its direct legislative importance, the Workers’ Bill is of interest in that it shows just how left-wing vast swathes of the US population were in the 1930s and can become when a political force emerges to articulate their grievances. This bill, which was far more radical than provisions in the Soviet Union for social insurance, was endorsed by over 3,500 local unions (and the regular conventions of several International unions and state bodies of the American Federation of Labor), as well as practically every unemployed organization in the country, fraternal lodges, governmental bodies in over seventy cities and counties, and groups representing veterans, farmers, Blacks, women, the youth, and churches. In the West, the South, the Midwest, and the East, millions of citizens signed petitions and postcards in support of it. And this was all despite the active hostility of every sector of society with substantial resources.