Frances Perkins’s “Social Insurance for U.S.” Radio Address (1935)
On January 17, 1935, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the Senate his draft of the Economic Security Bill. Nearly a month later, Frances Perkins delivered her Social Insurance for U.S. radio address to explain the details of that proposed legislation. As chair of the Committee on Economic Security, Perkins had been intimately involved in developing the bill; in fact, she had come to Washington with the goal of implementing some type of national unemployment insurance. As industrial commissioner in New York, Perkins had studied the causes of unemployment in search of a cure, canvassing the state and talking to employers and workers. She had traveled to England to study that country’s system of unemployment insurance. After her extensive research, Perkins came to the conclusion that the solution to unemployment required a combination of public works programs and unemployment insurance and convinced Roosevelt that this remedy would work on a national basis. One of...
