| Harry Lloyd Hopkins, social worker and President Franklin Roosevelt's relief administrator during the Great Depression played a key role in shaping the nation's welfare system that was launched in 1935. As the president's close friend and advisor, he participated in the formulation of the social policies that culminated in the Social Security Act of 1935, the bedrock of the American welfare state. An investigation into the forces that shaped Hopkins' social philosophy can provide important insight into the initiatives that motivated New Deal social welfare policy and tells us much about the evolution of America's welfare system. Hopkins' involvement with work relief and widows' pension programs during the Progressive Era is especially significant because the political, economic, and social issues pertinent to these early attempts to alleviate unemployment and poverty reverberated throughout the New Deal during the debates surrounding the creation of a system of social insurance and public assistance. The present controversy over the efficacy of welfare is rooted in this history.;Hopkins, convinced that poverty could be prevented through prudent strategies of intervention, that unemployment was a permanent problem of an industrial society, that America had the economic capability to ensure everyone of a minimum standard of living, and that the federal government had the ultimate responsibility for the well-being of Americans, wielded significant influence on America's welfare policy. In the 1930s, his government jobs programs became the centerpiece of the administration's efforts to ameliorate the effects of the Great Depression. He consistently argued that his work programs sustained democracy, free enterprise and the work ethic and that unemployables, including single mothers, should receive cash assistance as their rightful entitlement. Yet, despite his close alliance with President Roosevelt, he was unable to alter the political culture that spurned a paternalist welfare state.;Hopkins' legacy remains an expanded role for the federal government in the administration of relief, yet his goal, a humane and federally-sponsored welfare state, has never been achieved. |
