National Affairs: Hustling Homeward

At the end of a long voyage through a long fog, there comes a time when visibility improves, when men can again take a sight on the sun and calculate their day of making port. Last week, after nearly six months in a legislative pea soup. Congress suddenly reached the fringes of the murk. The gentleman from Texas said to the gentleman from Oregon and the gentleman from Oregon said to the gentleman from Maine: "It looks like we might go home about the 15th of July." Then they all said to one another: "But if we're finishing by then, we've got to get a hustle on." So last week Congress was hustling as it had not hustled since it first sat in January.

Social Security. In five days the Senate polished up, passed and sent to conference one of the great omnibus measures of the session—the Social Security Bill. Besides appropriating a few (50) millions for poor mothers, crippled children, the blind and public health work, it combined four major schemes, meaning much to many millions of citizens:

1) To impoverished oldsters it promised pensions. Beginning July 1 a person of 65 or more who lives in one of the 33 states which gives him an old age pension, instead of sending him to the poorhouse, will receive from the Federal Government a second pension, the same size as that given by the state, but not more than $15 a month. By a special Senate amendment poor oldsters who live in the 15 states which have no old age pension laws will get a Federal pension up to $15 a month for two years. By that time the Government expects every state in the Union to have caught up with the old age pension procession.

2) Beginning Jan. 1, 1942 any worker* who retires at the age of 65 will be paid an annuity by the Government if he has earned $2,000 in wages during five or more years after 1936. If he earns $100 per month and has worked five years under the plan, he will get $17.50 a month; if he has worked 15 years, $27.50; if he has worked 25 years, $37.50; if he has worked 45 years (that cannot be before 1982), $53.75. The top figure for anyone at any time will be $85 a month. If he dies before he is due for an annuity, the Government will pay his estate an amount equal to 32% of the wages he has earned after 1936. No matter how high a man's salary may be, he will get these annuities provided he retires at 65, but only the first $3,000 of his annual earnings will be treated as wages in calculating his annuity. One exception to this annuity system was provided by the Senate: Employes of firms which have approved pension systems may continue under them instead of under the Government plan.