The Decision To excluDe AgriculTurAl AnD DomesTic Workers from The 1935 sociAl securiTy AcT by Larry DeWitt* The Social Security Act of 1935 excluded from coverage about half the workers in the American economy. Among the excluded groups were agricultural and domestic workers—a large percentage of whom were African Ameri- cans. This has led some scholars to conclude that policymakers in 1935 deliberately excluded African Americans from the Social Security system because of prevailing racial biases during that period. This article examines both the logic of this thesis and the available empirical evidence on the origins of the coverage exclusions. The author concludes that the racial-bias thesis is both conceptually flawed and unsupported by the existing empirical evidence. The exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from the early program was due to considerations of administrative feasibility involving tax-collection procedures. The author finds no evidence of any other policy motive involving racial bias. Introduction in the new Social Security program and that this was the reason for the provision excluding farm and In recent years, some scholars have argued that the domestic labor (Gordon 1994; Brown 1999; Lieberman U.S. Social Security program—like some other social 1995; Williams 2003; Poole 2006). institutions—is biased against women and African Americans. One major contention along these lines The Race Explanation involves the original coverage exclusions of the Social Security Act of 1935. The description of Social Security’s restrictive cover- age policy has become so epigrammatic that it has The 1935 act limited its provisions to workers in passed over from historical narrative to background commerce and industry (this is what is known as the historical fact; it has been assumed and repeated as a program’s “coverage”). This meant that the new social basic datum about the program’s origin. insurance program applied to about half the jobs in the economy. Among those left out were farm and For example, one recent labor-history text summed domestic workers. Contemporary scholars have looked up the issue of Social Security and race this way: at this provision of the 1935 act, realized that a dis- The Social Security Act was also racially proportionate number of African Americans were in coded—in part because of the power of these two occupational groups, and concluded that the Southern Democrats in the New Deal disproportionate impact is evidence of a racial bias as coalition. Southern politicians, reported one the motive for this coverage exclusion. architect of the new law, were determined An important key to the argument is the additional to block any ‘entering wedge’ for federal assumption that Southern Democrats in Congress were interference with the handling of the Negro the agents who engineered this restrictive coverage question. Southern employers worried that policy. Thus, the full argument is that Southern Demo- federal benefits would discourage black crats in Congress—motivated by racial animus— workers from taking low-paying jobs in moved to block African Americans from participation their fields, factories, and kitchens. Thus * Larry DeWitt is a public historian with the Office of Publications and Logistics Management, Social Security Administration. Note: Contents of this publication are not copyrighted; any items may be reprinted, but citation of the Social Security Bulletin as the source is requested. To view the Bulletin online, visit our Web site at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/policy. The findings and conclusions presented in the Bulletin are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Social Security Administration. Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 70, No. 4, 2010 49 neither agricultural laborers nor domestic population so that a national program was sure to be a servants—a pool of workers that included at segregated one” (39). At another point he summarized least 60 percent of the nation’s black popula- the history this way: “In order to pass national old-age tion—were covered by old-age insurance. and unemployment insurance plans, the Roosevelt (Lichtenstein and others 2000, 429) administration had to compromise inclusiveness and One of the strongest early statements of the thesis accept the exclusion of agricultural and domestic was given by Robert C. Lieberman (1995, 514–515), employees from the program, with notably imbalanced who asserted, “The Old Age Insurance provisions of racial consequences” (25). the Social Security Act were founded on racial exclu- As we will see, these kinds of generalizations sion. In order to make a national program of old-age overlook the degree to which members of the Roos- benefits palatable to powerful Southern congressional evelt administration were the principal advocates of barons, the Roosevelt administration acceded to a the coverage exclusions—the administration did not Southern amendment excluding agricultural and have to “accept” the exclusions; it was the source of domestic employees from OAI coverage.” the idea. Linda Gordon (1994, 514–515) in her influential This thesis has worked its way, unquestioned, study of the welfare state, merged a discussion of the into general-interest and survey-history texts. Mat- public assistance titles of the 1935 Social Security ters have reached such a state that if a survey-history Act with the contributory social insurance title and text makes three or four general observations about offered a misleading critique of both: “Social Security Social Security, one of them will often be that African excluded the most needy groups from all its programs, Americans were excluded from participation via the even the inferior ones. These exclusions were deliber- coverage exclusions owing to racist motivations on ate and mainly racially motivated, as Congress was the part of Southern members of Congress. This thesis then controlled by wealthy southern Democrats who thus becomes one of the few “facts” that beginning were determined to block the possibility of a welfare students of history learn about the Social Security system allowing blacks freedom to reject extremely program. low-wage and exploitive jobs as agricultural laborers Typical of the treatment the subject receives in and domestic servants.” some general history books is Gordon and Paterson’s Alston and Ferrie (1999, chapter 3), in their book Major Problems in American History 1920–1945. The Southern Paternalism and the American Welfare State, authors introduced their selections on Social Security offered a variation on this account. They argued that with this summing up: class—in the form of racially based landlord/tenant Before and after 1935, the New Deal was paternalism—played a stronger role than simple always dependent upon the votes of conser- race prejudice or other factors, such as federalism, vative Southern Democrats … but Southern- in shaping the programs under the Social Security ers saw the labor and welfare legislation Act in general and relative to the coverage exclusions of 1935 as a clear threat to Southern race in particular. relations and economic competitiveness. In Probably the best detailed look at the exclusion many respects, Southern legislators were issue in the academic literature is provided by Lieber- able to shape federal law (winning both man (1998)—Shifting the Color Line. Lieberman did the exemption of agricultural and domestic not suggest that any members of Congress were the workers from Social Security and local direct agents of the coverage exclusions, although he control over its administration, for example). did imply that the coverage exclusions were some-how (1999, 304) engineered by Southern members of Congress. Here, Gordon and Paterson (1999, 304–305) then provided for example, is one way he described the exclusions: as their underlying source document an excerpt from “the CES’s [Committee on Economic Security] deci- Edwin Witte’s (1962) memoir of the development of sion that all workers should be covered came under the Social Security Act.1 In this document, according immediate and persistent question at the hearings … to the authors, “one of the drafters of the Social Secu- In the end, an important step behind congressional rity Act explains how both political and administrative acceptance of a national program of old-age insurance considerations led to the exemption of agricultural and was the racial manipulation of the program’s target domestic workers.” 50 http://www.socialsecurity.gov/policy Gareth Davies and Martha Derthick (1997, 217–235) standard that the welfare payments under Title I examined some key aspects of the racial-bias thesis should be sufficient to provide “a reasonable subsis- and put the decisions made in the 1935 Social Security tence compatible with decency and health.” Some Act in comparative international perspective; they Southern legislators found this language potentially gave an overview of how the coverage exclusions came threatening to economic and social arrangements in about, as well as a differing explanation of how and their region. Much of this concern may well have been where racial concerns were in play in the Congress (in racially motivated, but this issue had nothing to do the welfare provisions of the 1935 act). The authors with the Title II program, in which such policy con- argued that race was relevant in shaping the welfare structions had no role. provisions; but they also argued that nonracial fac- It is important to make these distinctions because, tors—such as federalism and state-specific economic as it turns out, many of the claims of racial bias in the considerations—were more significant determinants. coverage decisions involve confusion regarding these Perhaps the most pertinent contribution of Davies programs—or if not outright confusion, oblique argu- and Derthick was to make clear the distinction ments that political factors known to have influenced between the contributory Social Security program one of the other programs could somehow be pre- and the various public assistance provisions and to sumed to have also been active in shaping the Title II point out that Southern Democrats in the Congress program.