Public Assistance

ONLY BY LOOKING BACK to the years before the Social Security Act became law is it possible to assess the great progress made in the past decade in providing for needy aged and blind persons and dependent children. The public assistance titles of the Social Security Act were only par t of a comprehensive legislative program enacted by Congress in 1935 to supply work, insurance protection, or as sistance to persons affected by various hazards. In 1935, in addition to the Social Security Act—which provided for unemployment compensation and old-age insurance as well as for assistance to special groups—Congress established the Works Progress Administration (later called the Work Projects Administration) and the National Youth Administration to supply useful work to the needy unemployed. In the years of deep depression from 1933 to 1935, Federal grants for general assistance were made to States through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which was then the major provision for people who lacked means of support. These grants were discontinued in 1935, when the Federal Government undertook to provide work for the needy unemployed and to share with the States the cost of the special types of public assistance for those who were relatively unemployable. The States and localities again assumed full re sponsibility for financing general assistance, which became a much smaller segment in the broad s t ructure of social security. As wartime demand for labor opened up opportunities to earn, the Federal work and other emergency programs insti tuted in the 1930's decreased in importance. By the middle of 1943, all these emergency programs had been liquidated, and in the last 2 years of the decade during which the Social Security Act has been in existence the special types of public assistance and general assistance have been the only forms of public aid under which payments have been made generally to needy persons.