August 14 · This Day in America
In the depths of the Great Depression, with bank lines and breadlines and old people genuinely afraid of dying poor and alone, Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law. It is a plain idea with enormous reach: that a working life should not end in destitution, that the country itself will help carry its old, its unemployed, its widowed, its disabled. "We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards," Roosevelt says, "but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection." Workers pay in; retirees draw out; the chain holds across generations. It is among the most consequential laws in American history — a promise that growing old in America would not have to mean being abandoned. Nearly a century later, that check still arrives. The signature on this August afternoon is the reason.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1945
At 7 p.m. Washington time, President Truman steps before reporters and announces Japan's unconditional surrender. The Second World War, the deadliest in human history, is over. The news rolls outward by radio and word of mouth, and the country comes apart at the seams with relief — strangers kissing in Times Square, church bells, car horns, weeping in kitchens. Sixteen million Americans had served. Many would now, finally, be coming home.
Source: www.trumanlibrary.gov
“We have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family.”Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935