John Corson III

John J. Corson. SSA History Archives

Brief biographical sketch of John Corson.

Editor's Notes: The material which follows is from two distinct sources. In 1952, an unknown SSA official interviewed John Corson and produced a brief set of notes of this interview. These notes follow immediately. In March 1967 the SSA Historian, Abe Bortz, conducted a formal oral history interview with Mr. Corson. Unfortunately, the first reel of tape from that conversation was ruined and the material was lost. Consequently, the oral history fragment which remains is incomplete and begins in mid-stream. It also ends abruptly at what may not have been the conclusion of the interviewing sessions.

Murray Latimer was the first Director of the Bureau-from December 15, 1935 to September 1, 1936. (Note: The record I have which may not be too reliable makes Latimer Acting Director, RCP) Latimer divided his time between OASI and RRB which was then located in Washington. Alvin David was one of his assistants.

Joe Fay and Frank Fleener were in the first operating unit--the beginning records division. The original idea was to have two operating units--a Records Division and a Claims Division. Way was to be Chief of the Records Division, Beach originally was the number 2 man and Fay was in third place. It became apparent very soon that Fay was the operating man that the Bureau needed. Corson talked about his difficulty in getting him in the first place. Way was shelved and Beach was transferred to the Field organization which was probably a blow for him at the time. The first members of the Board were J. G. Winant, Chairman, Altmeyer and Vincent Miles. The resignation of Winant created a Republican vacancy. Latimer was proposed as a Republican from Mississippi. His appointment was turned down because "there were no Republicans from Mississippi." Henry P. Seidemann was either Director or Acting Director following Latimer. (Note: The records say Director from September 2, 1936 to February 28, 1937. May be questionable. RCP) Not the type of man the Bureau needed at the time. Appointment made in order for a E. J. McCormick to become Assistant or Deputy Director.

Winant wanted to have Corson appointed Bureau Director in 1937. Miles voted against it and the appointment was not made to keep the Board from being split. Leroy Hodges became Director instead. He was being considered at the time for the position of Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization. He would have been a good Commissioner. He was not the type of man to run the Bureau in its fluid state at this time. Corson in the meantime served as Assistant Executive Director of the Board (Frank Bane was Executive Director) and was also assistant to Hodges.

Hodges served from March 1, 1937 to February 8, 1938 when he was very glad to leave the Bureau, becoming the Virginia State Comptroller.

Rodger Evans was the Assistant Director who opened up the field offices. He was with the Bureau on a contract basis. G. R. Parker took over the job when he left.

Corson became Director in March 1938 and served to December 19th when he became Director of the U.S.E.S; returned to the Bureau in May 1943 to May 1944.

He considered the John Doe episode an interesting one. It broke in a column by Drew Pearson while Corson was in San Francisco. One of the first Director's Bulletins was on John Does and somehow or other a copy was slipped to Pearson. For about two months Pearson pounded that subject at least once a week. Congressional committees were becoming interesting. McNutt, newly appointed head of FSA, was worried and the Advisory Council considering social security amendments very possibly might have been influenced by this evidence of administrative problems.

Another time when Corson was on the West coast, Baltimore newspapers published a story about an American Legion Post Party of Candler employees which was raided by the police. Reaction in Baltimore was bad and several suspensions were necessary to Corson's regret.

Corson mentioned the troubles in the early days with the union grievance committee. The chairman was a girl whom Fay probably remembers because of all the trouble she caused him. This committee made representations to Congressional committees, and to the Board, and created quite a stir.

Looking back on the 1939 amendments Corson recalled no particular problems but the Bureau must have looked upon them as big at the time but they were taken in stride.

The difficult years were the early years involving the establishment of the records operation and the field office organization. There were a number of squabbles with the machine companies when the system was being devised and purchased--Remmington Rand in particular.

The Bureau opposed the change to quarterly reporting. It was BIR that forced it through.

In the early recruitment days a lot of deadwood came from the first field office registers. Some of these people remained with the Bureau for a long time. However, many very good people, a lot of them college graduates, were brought in at grade 3, some of them as personnel assistants. They grew up and developed with the Bureau. Some of them were Ross, Murray, Branham, and Ball.

The big OASI problem is its tendency because of its tremendous size to routinize until it becomes inflexible. It is like a locomotive when once it gets started it can't get shifted. Management has to find some way to keep it a flexible instrument.

Corson suggests that we might do something with Bureau romances he also suggests that we also do something pictorially about Washington headquarter office buildings. There were 4 locations before move to the Equitable Building: 1712 G Street, 1724 T Street, the Potomac Park Apartments and 19th and Pa. Avenue. Corson talked a little about his personal difficulties in obtaining staff. Pogge was reluctant to come to the Bureau from Accounts and Audits, so was Mike Shortly, who was finally practically ordered by the Board. McKenna was persuaded to be Assistant Director with somewhat less difficulty. Bartlett was in General Counsel and had to be persuaded to be a Bureau administrator.

Another Episode Corson recalls is a question from the Senate Appropriation Committee (Jimmy Byrnes) as to why we "hired 17 Pinks". He wanted them dismissed. On investigation we found that the 17 people had worked for the FBI as finger print classifiers, had organized a union and had been fired for this. There was nothing wrong with them and the Bureau kept them.

Corson often kids Jim Tully about the time the Union insisted that he be fired as Chief of the Claims Section because he was unreasonable and discriminated against members.

March 3, 1967

By: Abe Bortz, Historian

Interviewer:

We were still on some of the organizational problems of an organization of this nature beginning with a new program. Were there any others that you recall in this period as Executive Director? Perhaps it was in a major or minor crises, I mean was the election, for example, anything?

Mr. Corson:

As I think back, let me just enumerate, I think I can enumerate four problems that were more or less significant. One was the problem of Vince Miles and this was closely related to the second problem of the relationship with the Congress, which grew in considerable part out of the problem of civil service status being required for appointments to the Board. This was related in part also to the organizational problems. An this came a little later, in the sense when we established the field offices of the Bureau of Old-Age benefits then, this meant that in every Congressman's district, or many Congressmen's districts, office were being established, appointments were being made, and they were interested.

Interviewer:

Naturally.

Mr. Corson:

This gave us an added dimension of this congressional relations problem.

I remember one incident in this connection. I had a good deal to do with the appointments to the original field offices--this was while I was still Assistant Executive Director--because the Board was approving all of those appointments and I was receiving the recommendations from the Bureau and I was taking them to the Board and getting the Board's approval. I remember one day I went to see John Winant with a list of recommendations for the New Hampshire field offices--he having been Governor of New Hampshire and having been the Republican Governor of New Hampshire. He looked at the list and he said somewhat in frustration after looking at them, "I don't know any of those fellows; I don't know how good they are." And he thought for a moment and he said, "I'll tell you what you do. He said, "You go up and see Fred Brown and if he says they are all right, they are all right with me."

Now the significant part of that was that Fred Brown was the Democratic Senator from New Hampshire who had been the preceding Governor to Winant in New Hampshire. Well, I always thought this was an illustration of Winant's tactic. There was no partisan politics in him. There he was as the Republican Governor. It had never entered his mind for a moment to build up Republican support in New Hampshire for himself personally by these appointments. It just never entered his mind. He wanted to know if they were good people. He liked Fred Brown as an individual; he had confidence in his judgment. And his advice to me was, "you go up and see Fred Brown."

Interviewer:

That certainly speaks well of Winant.

Mr. Corson:

Well, Winant was a superior person.

Interviewer:

I think you had mentioned something about . . . was the election any sort of a problem?

Mr. Corson:

The election was a problem. But the election was a problem that was related to still another and that was the Supreme Court problem. Both the election and the fact that the Social Security Act, both the provisions with respect to unemployment compensation and with respect to old-age benefits were being tested before the Supreme Court, gave a great uncertainty to the Social Security Board. It was difficult to recruit people at a time when you didn't know whether the Act was going to be held constitutional and whether the agency, hence, would survive. Particularly, this came at a time after the National Recovery Administration had been declared unconstitutional, and an agency which employed several thousands of people had been disbanded in a very great hurry as a consequence of this declaration of unconstitutionality. Well, those of us who were in the Social Security Board wondered if our fate would be the same. And when we were trying to recruit people, those who had jobs thought a second time--as to whether they would come with the Social Security Board. It was an uncertain thing at that time.

Interviewer:

I suppose Bennett was one of those, wasn't he?

Mr. Corson:

No, Jim Bennett was on leave at the time. Jim was on leave from the Bureau of Prisons. He had not uncertainty. I don't know, Jim might have stayed with the Board and transferred permanently--although I don't recall there ever being any talk even of his doing this. We didn't really, as we look back, didn't need Jim Bennett. He was awfully good and I think he is a great civil servant as he's proved in later years; but Bill Mitchell was Jim Bennett's really right arm at that time and Bill Mitchell proved himself quite capable of following on when Jim went back to the Bureau of Prisons. The one other-

Interviewer:

Yes, you mentioned other-

Mr. Corson:

The election. During the election of '36--that's really between March of '36 when I came there, and November--there was great uncertainty as to whether if a Republican candidate was successful social security wouldn't be repealed and repealed promptly. Alfred Landon who was the Republican candidate, had said that that's exactly what he proposed to do if he were elected. Well, this again added to the uncertainty of all of us. As I look back, I think that really we were so enthusiastic really about what we were doing. We thought it was so important that while we at times had some concern, we never really let it bother us much.

Interviewer:

Was the problem that of the bureau field office representatives and the region a major problem or was this something to come when you moved over to the Bureau?

Mr. Corson:

Oh no, it was a problem before I moved over to the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance. It was a problem that I was much involved in as Assistant Executive Director for the reason I stated earlier, that in my relationship both having to prepare materials for the Board and having to see to it after the Board acted that there was action in accordance with what the Board had directed, I was involved in most of those appointments in one way or another. I was involved earlier in the definition of the regional boundaries, for example, the setting up of the regional offices. I was involved in all of those administrative actions. I say involved, I wasn't the person who was making the decision; I was just preparing some of the recommendations and presenting the pros and cons to the Board members--usually in meetings, but often in discussion with them as they wished. I was involved in most of them, but that was well before I went to the Bureau of Old-Age Insurance, as it was called by the time I went there.

Interviewer:

Is that a built-in inevitable problem? I mean particularly technical lines that supposedly go between the Bureau and its representatives in the field and the fact that you have regions where the representatives from various bureaus and the problems of who really supervises whom? And--

Mr. Corson:

Well, let's make two points. The first point would be that I thought you were saying you said was this a built-in problem; was my participation in it a built-in problem? My participation in those decisions was the greater because the Board in these years never really had confidence in the people who successfully headed that Bureau. And as a consequence they were really relying on the Executive Director's Office, of which I was part, to exercise a close surveillance and give them some assurance that things were going the way they should go. That is an unfortunate administrative situation whenever it exists. Now, what was needed was someone in the Bureau Director's job who had the confidence of the Board, and that was lacking for that period of years.

The second problem of the organizational problem of when they established the regional offices, as to the organizational lines of responsibility from the headquarters, from the Executive Director to the Regional Office, and from each of the Bureaus--Unemployment Compensation, Public Assistance, and Old-Age Insurance--to the Regional Offices; this is a very typical organizational problem. Being very typical makes it none the simpler. The Regional Director was established with the thought that he was the representative in the field of the Board itself, and the Board as communicated through the Executive Director, that the Regional Director was essentially the equivalent of the Executive Director in his whole region. Each of the Bureaus had their Regional Representative in the field and each of the Bureaus, naturally enough, felt that they had a specialized enough set of problems out there that they must have their own person to take care of the matter and that that person should not be interfered with by the Regional Director who was not a specialist in that particular field.

Interviewer:

Now where is the conflict?

Mr. Corson:

The conflict is between the specialized Regional Representative of the Bureau and the Regional Director who was a generalist and who at times not having much to do at times, tended to involve himself in each of the areas. Now the Regional Director, as I think time has shown, was more useful in the programs where you had Federal-State relationships, as for Unemployment Compensation and Public Assistance; and he was often helpful in the dealings with the State governments, and particularly with the Governors. Now, in part, this was what the Regional Directors were chosen for. They were more often people who had had some political orientation and some political acquaintanceship in their regions--notably, Judge Dill in Philadelphia who had been a candidate for Governor in New Jersey. Ed McDonald, who was Regional Director in Oklahoma City--yes, in the Middle West region, I forgot where the headquarters was in those days-- he had come from Arkansas. Yes, I guess the headquarters were in Kansas City.

In the very beginning days most of us--the other typically political Regional Director was Anna Rosenberg im New York City. In the very early days in 1936 and early '37 many of us looked down our nose on these politicians that had been brought in as Regional Directors. We tended to discount their capabilities. And we tended to place more confidence in those Regional Directors who had some professional association in one way or another with social security. Well, as you look back, perhaps the most effective Regional Director of all was Ed McDonald who was an avowed politician and very effective as a politician. He was very helpful to the Board in his capacity to deal with the Governors and to get concurrence on the things that we felt needed to be done in those days. It was illustrative of the kind of function the Regional Director could and did perform.

Interviewer:

So that well, then, of course, some of the others I guess--were the lines as clearly drawn?

Mr. Corson:

No, the lines were never clearly drawn and it was a good deal of working relationship that varied from one region to another. It was a working relationship between the Bureau Director and the Regional Director and the Bureau's representative in the region; and then the third piece of that triangle was the relationship between the Bureau Director and his Regional Representative. It depended a good deal on the willingness of the Bureau Director and the Regional Director to work effectively together.

Interviewer:

So, it wasn't an organization at one time really. It was-

Mr. Corson:

It's a very traditional organizational problem. You have it in many, many organizations. It's primarily one of personal relationships in the end as how it works. We had a Regional Director later in Boston who was intolerable. John Hardy was a cruel politician. We was a very small man and he wanted to be a big man. He wanted to be a Regional Director in every measure of the position; and as a consequence, he felt he had to interfere in the activities of each Bureau. He had to substitute his own judgment no matter what the decision was. Well, as a consequence, I don't believe any of the Bureau Directors got along with him. I think I could claim that while I was a Bureau Director I got along with the Regional Directors reasonably well--in fact, at times very well. I never could get along with John Hardy he was in my mind a very small man that one couldn't deal with. He simply had to have a position of power that no one challenged. If anyone wanted to do anything without getting his particular approval, why he had trouble.

Interviewer:

Anything else in that period you would like to go to or shall we go on from there?

Mr. Corson:

Well, in the early period while I was Assistant Executive Director, I think there is one note I would like to add. Looking back there were two people in minor positions--not so minor--but who were most influential and who contributed a great deal. One was Maurine Mulliner who served as Secretary of the Board, and was a most efficient Secretary, and who had the confidence of the Board members implicitly. They thought very highly of her abilities and she worked very effectively with everyone. I have never seen a Board secretary that was really both understanding, got along very well with the Bureaus, but also had the confidence at all times of the Board members. She was a great influence--a very steadying and balancing influence in those days.

Interviewer:

I notice she kept informal notes which are quite helpful because the Board minutes are very, very brief and hers are very helpful. You were going to mention somebody else?

Mr. Corson:

The other person was, of course, Wilbur Cohen. Wilbur Cohen when I first went to work there was about 24 years of age and was a very young and already-informed fellow. He was assistant to Altmeyer in a position ranking well down in the hierarchy in those days--probably receiving a salary, I would venture to guess, that was maybe $3,800 or $3,200 a year.

Interviewer:

That's pretty close I think.

Mr. Corson:

His influence was from even the earliest days way beyond whatever rank he held. His influence was great for several reasons. He was a keenly intelligent person, but personally was just so liked and effective in his dealings with people throughout that whole agency, that he had an influence way beyond most of the people at higher ranks. It was never an influence that was built on his closeness to the Board members; it was just out of his own personal qualities. He had a great influence from the very early times.

Interviewer:

I can--shall we then go on to the--how did you happen to move over to be the Director of the Bureau?

Mr. Corson:

I have said that for a period of time the Board did not have confidence in the Director of the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance. There was a time after Murray Latimer left when Henry Seidemann was Acting Director and they still didn't have confidence in the effectiveness of the management of that Bureau. I have said that I was drawn into the problem by virtue of the fact that much of the materials that came to the Board for decision came through me, and I was supposed to inquire into them to satisfy the Board, so that they had a full understanding of what they were approving. At the time in 1937 when Harry Seidemann-

Interviewer:

He left, that's right

Mr. Corson:

When Henry Seidemann left.

Interviewer:

Then Hodges came.

Mr. Corson:

In looking back it was an interesting little incident. The Board met--Vince Miles was still a member of the Board- met and elected me Director of the Bureau and I was told that this subsequently was a 2-to-1 vote because Vince Miles was proposing that they should appoint as Director a fellow named Edward J. McCormick, who was a political protégé of Senator McKeller. Ed McCormick was a capable enough guy, sort of a heavy-handed fellow. His military title of Colonel was reflected in the way he dealt with people. He was an authoritarian of sorts, but he did not have the confidence of either Winant or Altmeyer and they could not accept him; and Vince Miles could not accept me. It was essentially an impasse. But at one particular moment in time, the Board did elect me Director of the Bureau and they communicated this news to me and I was, of course, delighted. I was very young and this was a very big job and I was very proud. For about a week the matter stood that I was to become Bureau Director as of a certain time in the future when Mr. Seidemann left. He finally left. I was in that week John Winant called me in and, literally with tears in his eyes, explained that they felt that they would have to withdraw this offer to me of becoming Bureau Director---that political repercussions as a result if Mr. Mile's opposition were such that they just didn't think they could go ahead with it. And Winant actually broke down and cried about it. I was so sorry for him that I--well, it was a great disappointment but I was more concerned about him at the moment than I was about myself.

But, then they found Leroy Hughes. This is interesting little incident in that during this time when they left they had to look somewhere else. And they weren't having much luck finding someone that they were willing to appoint. And one evening, John Winant went to a dinner party where he sat with Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor, and Frances Perkins told him that she had just succeeded in getting a very able man from Virginia to accept the job as Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization. John Winant said, "Well, who is that?" She told him of a fellow named Leroy Hodges who had been prominent in Virginia. The next morning Winant came in to see Frank Bane. I happened to be there at the time, and he said to Frank Bane--he told him what Miss Perkins told him the evening before--and he said, "Why haven't you told me about this fellow? If he's good enough to be Commissioner of Immigration, he's good enough to be Director of the Bureau of Old-Age Benefits, and we've been trying so hard to find someone." Frank Bane said, "yes, I know him well." As indeed, both Frank Bane and I knew him personally and both respected him highly. Frank Bane's reaction was that, "Certainly I knew him, but I don't recommend my personal friend just because they're my personal friends." If he's this good why shouldn't we have him instead of Miss Perkins? The net of it all was that John Winant asked Miss Perkins if she would forego appointing him as Commissioner of Immigration, if he could come as Director of the Bureau of Old-Age Benefits. And he did agree to come as Director of the Bureau of Old-Age Benefits, and I guess in about March of '37 he came up. It was an unfortunate appointment as it turned out. Leroy Hodges was a fine person, but Leroy Hodges was not a successful Director of the Bureau. I served for a time--which again looking back was an unfortunate circumstance. Leroy Hodges asked Frank bane if I could serve as his (Hodges) Assistant in the Bureau, and I served part time as his Assistant and part time as Franks Bane's Assistant.

Interviewer:

That's certainly anomalous.

Mr. Corson:

It was an anomalous arrangement and it was unwise as I look back. It put me in a very embarrassing position that if I sat in a meeting, as often happened, with the Bureau of Old-Age Insurance and we talked about problems and we talked about what we could decide and I was convinced then that this was an unwise choice; that this was a choice that the Board would not look with favor on, then I was put in the position of going back on the other side of the street. Actually, their offices were behind us on F Street when the Board's offices were on Q Street. And receiving the recommendation in which I had participated in the Bureau and recommending against it to the Board and this was a very unfortunate position. We should have known it but we didn't. I think in conscience I can say I was trying to be helpful by working with Hodges, but after a time I lost Hodge's confidence because I was in the position of turning down some of his recommendations in my position as Assistant Executive Director, or, recommending to the Executive Director that they turn them down. It was a very unpleasant period the latter part of that year. Leroy Hodges, who was a fine person and a capable man, I'm sure did not enjoy the year. He did not do well as Director, and I think he was very happy when he was appointed State Comptroller in Virginia and went back to Virginia in that job. Then I was elected by the Board as Director of the Bureau.

Interviewer:

By that time Mr. Miles was gone.

Mr. Corson:

By that time Mr. Miles was gone and Miss Dewson was on the Board. There is an interesting letter--I don't know where it is any more, but Molly Dewson--I think Arthur Altmeyer gave me this letter. At this particular time-

Interviewer:

I know she had high praise for you as Director.

Mr. Corson:

Well, this was the thing I sent you.

Interviewer:

Which came from part of her sort of autobiography which she had deposited at the FDR Library.

Mr. Corson:

Was this the letter in which she wrote to Senator McKellar?

Interviewer:

No. No.

Mr. Corson:

Well, there was a letter that she wrote to Senator McKellar. I think it might have been another Senator, but there's some Senator who objected to the Board appointing this young and inexperienced man as Director. And, she wrote a letter in which she said something to the effect that "Sure he's young, but he's got more ideas than any 10 men that you'll recommend." She really stood up to her guns. Maybe it was to Franklin Roosevelt. A memorandum to Mr. Roosevelt responding to complaints that he had gotten because they had elected me Director of the Bureau.

Interviewer:

She had rather good relations with F.D.R.

Mr. Corson:

She had very good relations with F.D.R. She was a close friend of Mrs. Roosevelt. She knew them both and had known them. Molly Dewson had been interested for a long period of time in causes. Long before the Roosevelt administration she had been interested in problems of juvenile delinquency and problems of mental retardation and she had been actively interested in the National Consumers' League and things of this sort. In these associations she had gotten to know the Roosevelts personally long before the administration, and she was always active in Democratic politics. She just loved Democratic politics. She enjoyed it immensely. She was a wonderful person.

Interviewer:

When you took this job on, I presume you knew what a--

Mr. Corson:

No, I can't say I did.

Interviewer:

Really? You had been associated--

Mr. Corson:

I had been too close to it. I had been close enough to it so that I knew pretty well some of the headaches, but I was also I guess so young that I wasn't smart enough to think it was such a big job that I should get scared by it. I really wasn't, looking back, I sometimes think to myself, "Why didn't I really get scared?" but I must admit it must have been youthful naivete that I didn't have that reaction.

Interviewer:

But looking at those about 3 years--'38, '39, '40, and '41--4 years. What would you say were the major problems that you faced and had to overcome?

Mr. Corson:

Well, basically, they were administrative problems. We were in bad shape when I went into the Bureau. I say we were, I mean the Bureau was in bad shape. It was in bad shape in the sense that it was way behind in a number of operating problems. We were in bad shape in Baltimore in the sense that we had this John Doe problem.

Interviewer:

Yes, I wanted to ask about that.

Mr. Corson:

This was a very serious problem. We recognized we had it. It became much more serious later when Drew Pearson attracted attention to it and tried to--I say tried to, but indirectly at least, he destroyed the confidence of a good many Americans in the integrity with which we were maintaining those records. Actually, they were being done as well as they humanly could be done. But there were, in those days, employers who were simply not accustomed to reporting social security account numbers, and then many of them reported the wages of individuals who worked for them without the account numbers. And as diligently as we tried, we couldn't get the account number.

Interviewer:

We were talking about the John Doe and the Mary Turner Doe problems.

Mr. Corson:

That was a major problem in the Accounting Operations Division of the Bureau when I came in. We were behind, I was saying, and that was an illustration of it. We were also behind at this stage in the claims activity; we had gotten badly behind.

The Bureau was located in the Potomac Park Apartment Building in Washington. And there was time when we had claims that had been received in the field offices that had been sent into Washington and they were piled on top of file cabinets 3 feet deep that we hadn't been able to keep up with. This was really a problem of just administrative ineffectiveness. We simply hadn't--as the job had grown, we hadn't been able to build the procedures in the organization fast enough and well enough to keep up with them. Our problem was to catch up and at the same time so improve our organizational arrangements and our procedures that we could do these kinds of things, like processing a claim, more promptly, more efficiently, we could get our production up, up substantially, and so catch up even as the load of the number of claims received each day was increasing. The problems that we had in those days were predominantly these administrative problems--organizational and procedure problems.

Simultaneously, the third problem was the building or our field organization. This meant opening additional offices as the volume of claims increased and of staffing those offices, but particularly as we talked earlier, of training these people so that we had some assurance that the field offices in California were doing essentially the same task as the field offices in Pennsylvania and that they were doing equally well. We spent a great deal of money on training.

Interviewer:

Was this because you lacked personnel in part?

Mr. Corson:

No. We were able to keep up with the recruitment of personnel because, after all, in those days personnel was not scarce. There was still a great volume of unemployment. But it was the problem of getting competent and trained personnel that could really do the job more effectively because the load was gradually increasing. And our task-

Interviewer:

Did you anticipate that?

Mr. Corson:

Yes, we knew pretty well that it would increase and we had our estimates developed pretty exactingly as to what we should expect. But it simply was a problem of administrative effectiveness in the whole Bureau. My task really, from March of '38 well up to 1940, was one simply of improving bit by bit and piece by piece the administrative practices of the Bureau, and we worked hard at it. That was the particular contribution I think I could claim during those times was the emphasis on the administration.

Now during that time there also came the 1939 Advisory Council. And the 1939 Advisory Council came at a time when one of the big issues was, "Should we commence the payment of the benefits earlier?" because there was a certain impatience growing up in the country. They had heard about social security and social security was a good thing, but the only benefits that were being paid in 1938 were very minimal benefits to people who died and had made contributions and essentially there was a return of their contributions. We weren't really providing security in any fashion at all. And that benefits which were the monthly benefits that might be expected to give security to people who retired weren't scheduled to commence until January 1, 1942. As a consequence, in the Social Security Advisory Council of 1939 the big issue was "Should we pay benefits earlier?"-- the public demand for some production. Social security was a nice dream but it wasn't doing anything. Here we'd been talking about it now for 3 years but, moreover, we'd been collecting contributions for 3 years and there was great debate as to "Can't you get going, can't we actually start paying benefits?" That was related to the administrative effectiveness of the Bureau, as the Bureau has now gotten to a point that it can start paying benefits, that it's got its machinery in such shape. And my task between March of '38 and the fall of '39 when this Council was (meeting) was to get this Bureau in such shape that we could say with assurance, "Yes, we can handle it. We can handle it January 1, 1940," which was really quite early.

I remember appearing before the Advisory Council on more than one occasion, two or three occasions, in which I would be quizzed very exactingly, "Why are you so sure you can do this?" They were influenced by the publicity that had come out about the John Doe accounts, and they were questioning whether we were capable of doing it. We had to prove that the organization and machinery of the Bureau was adequate now to take this job on.

Interviewer:

Where was the whole problem of decentralization which followed that earlier Hopf report? You were delaying it all this period.

Mr. Corson:

Well the Harry Hopf report was a report that really had to do with the Accounting Operations Division. We had regional offices and we had to centralize the process of the receipt of claims and to a degree the processing of the claim in the field, but we were still handling all of the keeping of the records in Baltimore and, at that time, we were planning to handle all of the processing of the claims once the claim had completed in the sense that all of the proofs were assembled in the field. Then it was sent to Washington for adjudication and for the actual certification of payment. That was our contemplation in all of '39. Harry Hopf came along with the recommendation that this would be so big a job that it would be too big to do centrally. He proposed that we decentralize the Accounting Operations Division into 12 separate record-keeping processes. There were many of us that never could agree to this idea. Hopf was quite experienced and well-respected management engineer but there were many of us, including myself, that never thought this was a feasible idea. The problem was that a worker who might live in one region for a couple of years and move to another region and then move still to a third region, how would you keep his record up-to-date? We might have three records for him and never know that we had three separate records for him and never know that we had three separate records for a man now living in a fourth region. We felt that the centralization of the record-keeping system was essential. Harry Hopf prevailed to a degree in that it was agreed that they would set up within the Candler Building a number--I forgot whether they set up all 12 or whether they set up sample regions--in which they kept the records separately for separate regions. Then there was at one stage a proposal--and I suspect this was the only matter on which Frank Bane and I ever disagreed vigorously--at one stage after these regional operations had continued within the Candler Building for a period of some months, Mr. Parker, who was the Regional Director in Region IV, located in Washington, went in to see Frank Bane without telling any of the rest of us he was proposing to do this and convinced Frank Bane that we should take the regional operation for Region IV from the Candler Building in Baltimore, and we should establish it in Washington under the direction of the Regional Director. Frank Bane simply wrote me a memorandum telling me as Director of the Bureau to see to it that this was done. This was the one time we really had a very unpleasant difference of opinion. I felt this was quite premature; I thought that the evidence was strongly opposed to this; and in the end I prevailed. I have forgotten precisely how, but-

Interviewer:

I think they kept delaying the effective date of the change until finally it was just dissolved.

Mr. Corson:

Eventually, I think I succeeded in getting the Board to approve a recommendation that we abandon the regional setups and merge them again into a centralized setup, as it is even to this day. I have forgotten the sequence there, but it seems to me after a period of maybe a year while I was there as Director, we continued on these regional setups and then probably some time in 1939 we took the bull by the horns and faced up to the Board and made the recommendation that we abandon this. And by this time we had gained the confidence of the Board, and I think it is the answer to the question why they accepted it. We had sufficiently gained the confidence of the Board that we knew our business. I'm talking now about the Bureau staff because in those days we had a first-rate top staff there, and they had confidence in the group of us. There was Oscar Pogge, by this time, and Mike Shortly was Assistant Director for Field Operations, and Joe Fay was, of course, Assistant Director for Accounting Operations, even as he is now, and there was Merrill Murray. I guess I've forgotten who the fifth one was.

Interviewer:

Division of Program Analysis.

Mr. Corson:

Well, we called it the Analysis Division in those times. But, in any event, we had built up a sufficient confidence on the Board in our administrative practices that they were accepting our judgments pretty regularly then. It was then that we were able to get rid if these old Accounting Operations regional setup.

Interviewer:

How were your dealings with other Bureaus or with other agencies, Government agencies?

Mr. Corson:

Over the years, and even before I became Director of the Bureau, I was involved in the relationships with the IRS. It was then known as the Bureau of Internal Revenue. And the Bureau of Internal Revenue received the tax returns and we were always dependent upon getting the tax returns through the collectors' offices, the Collectors of Internal Revenue in the several regions of Internal Revenue. This was difficult. In the early days there were some Collectors' offices that were efficient and processed returns relatively promptly. There were others in which they would be greatly delayed and we would have a very uneven flow of work in the Accounting Operations Division--and it was quite irksome. I was often in the position of going to the Bureau of Internal Revenue and talking with--there was an Assistant Commissioner named George Schoeneman who subsequently was an assistant to President Roosevelt in the White House, a capable operator. But, after all, the Bureau of Internal Revenue was an old established governmental agency and we were a young upstart; and when we said it was urgent that they do something, they might or might not do it. They had other important problems to deal with and they didn't always pay attention to us. It was a frustrating experience, but gradually this became better and we worked on it for a long period of time. That was the principal relationship. Our relationships within the social Security Board--we had with the Bureau of Unemployment Compensation, the Bureau of Public Assistance--we had relatively few relationships. There were not a great deal that came in the way of the common problems, but we got along very well with them. I suppose at times we had problems with the Bureau of Business Management that had the personnel problem and we were the big client for them because we were dong most of the recruitment. After all, by this time the Bureau of Old-Age Insurance had represented almost 80 percent of all the personnel.

Interviewer:

Did that pose any additional problems, being really the giant in that?

Mr. Corson:

It did, it posed a real problem. I guess it posed a problem psychologically for us because we thought we should have preferred attention. But also we were many times asked to conform with practices that really fit the other Bureaus better. Moreover, ours was a different kind of an operation and this was the problem that we were confronted with in the regional offices. Ours was an operating problem. It went to the question of the detailed procedures, about how you fill in a particular form in a field office in let's say Worcester, Massachusetts. This was a very different problem than the relationships with the State government in Public Assistance. The Regional Director, who was a generalist and who knew relatively little of the detail in any of the programs, could deal with the Governor better than he knew anything about the handling of this detailed procedural problem. We felt that often he got his fingers in the machinery.

Interviewer:

How about with the Board or with Congress programs, how were you relations?

Mr. Corson:

Our relationships with the Board during my day I think were almost ideal.

Interviewer:

Do you think this was because of your own previous experience?

Mr. Corson:

I had known the Board and I had worked more closely with them then most of the Bureau Directors, so I had gotten to know them very well; but during this particular period of time my personal relationships with Arthur Altmeyer, and to a degree with Molly Dewson, to a lesser degree with George Bigge who are close, were friendly, and I think there was always a great deal of mutual confidence.

Of Course, Arthur Altmeyer was the greatest influence in the whole of the social security program, and he and I had worked together by this time now in three agencies. Ours was, in those days, a relationship in which I clearly looked up to him as a superior whom I greatly admired. In more recent days we've become very close personal friends, more since--and partly before I left because we lived not far apart. We used to play golf together; my wife and I played golf with him a great deal. But in the days when I was Director of that Bureau, our relationship was more of one of a younger man looking up to an older man with a great respect rather than close personal friends of more equal status. In later years we became much closer personally and saw a great deal of each other, but that was much after I really left the Bureau. In those days, though, I think I had his confidence and he put a great deal of confidence in me, and this made for an almost ideal working relationship. If I came into the Board with a recommendation, it was usually assumed that it was a considered recommendation and they usually approved it. They'd make me justify it and they'd make me argue for it, and there were times when they didn't agree with me; but I think the relationship was almost ideal in those years because of this mutual confidence that we had.

Interviewer:

As the Bureau grew and became so much a portion of the whole Board and with the organization of the Federal Security Agency, was there a tendency too for the Bureau to become much more autonomous in many of it's---or is that due also to the experience that you acquired to--

Mr. Corson:

There were at least three factors. One was the experience I acquired as an individual and the confidence I think I built with the Board. That tended to make me operate a little more autonomously. Secondly, there was the location--this was in the latter part of the tenure as Director, after I came back from the Bureau of Employment Service, or the Bureau of Employment Security. At that time the Bureau was located in Baltimore. The headquarters of the Bureau was in Baltimore, I actually lived in Washington, and had an office in Washington, but also had an office in Baltimore and spent about at least half my time in Baltimore, commuting back and forth.

Interviewer:

Earlier, you'd always been-

Mr. Corson:

Earlier, the headquarters of the Bureau had been in Washington. Up until the time I went to the Bureau of Employment Security, the headquarters was in Washington. The separation, the movement over to Baltimore, tended to make us autonomous. A third factor was a personality problem which was when Frank Bane left--which was in 1939, some time after I'd been Director of the Bureau about a year I guess. Yes it was about--well, even more than a year-

Interviewer:

1938.

Mr. Corson:

Did he leave in '38?

Interviewer:

I think in 1938.

Mr. Corson:

I thought it was in '39. Well, you're probably right. I remember I was in Cape May, New Jersey, on vacation when he called me up and told me he was going to leave. I thought it was in '39--but in any event, when Oscar Powell came in as Executive Director, I guess it was partly a personality friction between him and me, but I had no respect for him. I'm not sure he had a great deal for me, but I had none for him; and I found it very difficult and unpleasant to work with him.

Interviewer:

So you kept more and more to-

Mr. Corson: It made for more and more autonomy. I just

insisted upon taking problems directly to the Board and I wasn't going to be governed by what Oscar Powell had to say about them. I didn't think he had much to contribute to them and I simply--I'm sure I made it difficult for him, but I thought he was making it difficult for me. It wasn't at all a pleasant working relationship. This was particularly true the year I came back from the Bureau of Employment security, and I suspect was a significant factor in my eventually leaving there and going to U.N.N.R.A. I found it difficult and unpleasant to work with him.

Interviewer:

I was saying that I noticed when the Federal Security Agency set up, it took the major portion of the personnel office. At the same time did that permit you a little more leeway in the recruitment and selection of personnel?

Mr. Corson:

I don't think so. In those early days when the Federal Security Agency was first set up, we found it a handicapping problem. We mistrusted, or we distrusted, Paul McNutt. When he first came in, we were satisfied that he was a politician and he was going to use our office for political ends, and we lacked confidence in him. We felt that in the relationship with the offices around him that we had no particular confidence. It was a matter of divided loyalties. We were loyal to the Social Security Board and the Social Security Board still existed, but in a degree it had been superseded by Paul McNutt. Paul McNutt, as a consequence, was claiming authority to make some of the decisions that we had been accustomed that the Board would make. Well, suppose in part it was growing pains, but it was an unpleasant period. There was one particular incident, a very minor incident in retrospect, but illustrative. One of Merrill Murray's staff members, a fellow named Willard Smith, who was a vital statistician really, he had a plan for reporting death notices as a basis for our getting forward knowledge of claims we should pay. He wanted to appoint to his immediate staff within the Analysis Division of the Bureau a fellow who was a registrar of vital statistics in Kansas. This matter was considered -- it was brought up to me by Merrill Murray as a proposal, and I was not at all convinced that we should do it. In the meantime, without my knowledge, Willard Smith had been invited over to the Secretary of War's office - then Woodring, George Woodring, I think his name was - from Kansas. George Woodring had been in politics in Kansas and he knew this registrar of vital statistics and he invited Willard Smith over there to tell him what a fine person he was and how much he'd appreciate it if he was appointed. Willard Smith had, I guess with the best of intentions, made something of a commitment. Then, by chance, or I guess by political design, Woodring had called Paul McNutt and told him that he (Woodring) was interested in this appointment he was glad they were going to appoint. Paul McNutt had essentially said over the telephone, I gather as I look back, "Sure, I'll see to it that this is done." In the meantime, this was brought up to me without my knowledge of this political background and I was just convinced -- I didn't know the man and it wasn't a question of I liked or disliked the man - it was a question of I didn't think this particular activity warranted the adding of a member to our staff. So, I denied it, - I would not approve it. Well, with this I was encountered with a major political crisis because Mr. McNutt interpreted this as meaning that I was personally affronting him and when he had made a commitment to the Secretary of War that I was refusing to make the appointment. There was a period at this particular time in which Mr. McNutt directed Arthur Altmeyer to dismiss me as Director and it was only because Altmeyer again was a man of such stature and such backbone, he simply said he wouldn't do it. I never knew this again until long afterward. Altmeyer wasn't the sort of person who would tell me that this was what he was doing, but he did; otherwise, I would have been out of a job.

McNutt was in the difficult position of a man who was running for the presidency, and a man who's running for the presidency when he is in public office is vulnerable to all sorts of political pressure. He has to accede to the favors that are wanted by the politician from Kansas. He needs the support of anyone who's prominent in Kansas and can possibly carry that State for him. So, McNutt was in a difficult position.

McNutt had a deputy in Wayne Coy who was a man of much greater capabilities than McNutt, a man of much broader and much greater integrity than McNutt. McNutt, it must be said, was not a man of integrity; McNutt was petty in many ways. I worked right closely with him and at later times, he personally asked me to be Director of the United States Employment Service. Then after I'd been there a year or so, he personally asked me to stay there when I refused and left and went back to the Bureau of Old-Age Insurance.

So after a bad start, I gained his confidence to that extent as reflected by those actions and I came to know him pretty well. I saw a good deal of him, worked pretty directly with him particularly when he was the War Manpower Commissioner and I was Director of the United States Employment Service. But I never respected him. He was a politician and not a great one. When I say politician, I don't mean to deprecate all politicians. He was one who allowed his selfish political interests to guide his policy determinations and his administrative actions to a degree that I just don't think is befitting in a public official.

Interviewer:

In that connection, Mr. Corson, were there other pressures of a similar nature as you were making important - either -

Mr. Corson:

In the early days in the Bureau of Old-Age - that is, in my experience, '38, '39 and '40, but I guess particularly '39 when we knew that benefits were to be paid as of January 1, 1940, then we were increasing our field offices and building up our field staff pretty rapidly. In this days there were political pressures. They were not great though. By and large and moreover, the Social Security Board met them with integrity, they stood up. When the Congressman or the Senator would insist upon our appointing a person that we thought was not qualified, if I recommended against it, the Board would usually back me up. There were two States in which we had great difficulty, in which the political pressures were greater and to which we succumbed more often than anywhere else. They were Tennessee and Mississippi. In Tennessee, we had the difficulty that in the House Ways and Means Committee - Jere Cooper, who was a very prominent member of the Committee in those days and a very influential member of the House Ways and Means Committee that passed on our legislation. He took a quite possessive attitude toward the appointments in Tennessee, meaning that he really took the position that, "Well, these are my offices and I'll tell you who'll work in these offices." We had to make a number of appointments in Tennessee that we didn't want to make. In Mississippi, we had somewhat the same problem because Pat Harrison, the Senator from Mississippi, was then our Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Interviewer:

Was this under Mrs. Ellen Woodward, too?

Mr. Corson:

Yeah - she was -

Interviewer:

I was thinking--(Intermission indicated here - nothing on tape.)

Mr. Corson:

He's gotten to become a very distinguished fellow with his white moustache, and -

Interviewer:

I think we were talking about the two States that gave you the most difficulty.

Mr. Corson:

In Mississippi we had difficulty because Senator Harrison was the Chairman of the Finance Committee and he expected a certain consideration of his recommendation in Mississippi. This was reinforced by the fact that Mrs. Woodward, when she became a member of the Board, was in a position to enforce his request, but she had her own. She expected the right to really approve the appointments even in the clerical grades in the Mississippi field offices. This made it difficult. We were trying hard in those days to develop what we thought was truly a career service in which people would be promoted sheerly on the basis of their own demonstrated competence. We were trying to promote people when vacancies occurred from one office to the other on the basis of their competence, and this meant often times moving a person from one State to another. It was very difficult ever to move anyone into the State of Mississippi or the State of Tennessee, because if there was a vacancy in either of those States, the political forces insisted that we promote people from within Tennessee or appoint new people that were residents in the State of Tennessee.

Interviewer:

Was confidentiality much of a problem in those days - that is, agencies asking for information - or even outsiders -

Mr. Corson:

This is the confidentiality of the data on the application for a social security number. Well, we started out with the origin of the problem which lay in the fact that when we went through the process of registering everybody and giving them a social security number, we promised by all that was holy that this data would be used for no purpose other than the administration of the Social Security Act. There were reasons for doing that at that time. There were fears that we would make this information available to employers and that employers would blacklist certain employees -- maybe even for no more severe reason than their age, that employers would refuse to employ them because they found out from their social security records that the person was over 45 years of age. For these reasons and others, we promised by all that was holy that we would never reveal any of the data given on the social security record. There was an order issued by the Board in the very early years, Administrative Order No. 1, in which we promised that this should never be revealed under any circumstances.

There was continuing pressure. The most notable cases, or the ones that stick in my mind, are the ones in which a local police department would seek information as to the whereabouts of someone whose social security number had been found and was thought to have been involved in some crime. In those days there were, as I recall, one or two instances of actual murder where somebody was suspected of murder; and one clue that the police department claimed they had was the social security number, and we were supposed to reveal all we knew about him from the records. The FBI itself pressed this kind of claim on us at times and, and for a period of years, we withheld any divulging of data.

There came an instance, as I recall, in which the State welfare Agency sought such information and there, as I recall, we accepted the policy that where it was for the administration of the Social Security Act, the public assistance provisions of the Social Security Act, we were consistent in the interpretation of our pledge if we made available the information to the State Welfare Agency. I gather really that since my day this has been relaxed considerably but this was a persistent problem - not a major problem I would say in those days, but a persistent problem.

Interviewer:

What about internal problems such as union problems on the race issue?

Mr. Corson:

We had them. We had such problems, but they were not major. We had a very active CIO Union among our employees in the Accounting Operations Division in Baltimore, and there was a period of time - I suppose it was in 1939 - when they were very aggressive and were making substantial demands as to employment practices. For example, one that I recall was they were demanding that we dismiss all employees when the temperature got over a certain degree. We debated whether it should be measured by the wet bulb thermometer or a dry bulb thermometer. These were very vigorous debates. There were times when the Union would appeal from Joe Fay's decisions, and on one or two occasions they insisted upon taking their issues directly to the Social Security Board. But there were not many as such. In looking back, it was an irritant at the time but not of major consequence.

The racial issue was one that grew out of these Union discussions. The question as to - not whether we should appoint Negroes to positions because we always did this. We had a good many Negroes on the staff of the Accounting Operations Division from very early days. As I recall, we had a good Negro Economist on the staff of the Analysis Division quite early in the history of the Bureau. We had a number in the Adjudication Staff of Adjudication. The Adjudication Staff when it grew up it, too, offered some problem of employee relations. There were, as I recall, a Union mayor that - they were concerned about such as issues as the number of claims they were expected to handle in the day's time - the workload. There were a number of fellows that were quite active in the Union who were aggressive Unionists and, subsequently, we were confronted with the fact after World War II came on - the concern about Communists in Government started to show up. We were confronted with the fact that a few of these - I emphasize a few of them - had turned out to be card-carrying Communists. But this didn't really bother us at the time. They were irritants but they were not problems of major moment.

Interviewer:

What else? What others would you consider looking back that we haven't mentioned? How about with the public? Very much of it -

Mr. Corson:

The problem of the public was a continuing one. We had to continually build up an understanding on the part of the public. Bear in mind we haven't talked much about it because I think it is fair to say that in this particular period the building of the administrative structure and the administrative organization was important. But this was the period during which also we were preparing the amendments that did start benefits in 1940, and that was a major step forward and that was the period in which survivors insurance benefits were designed, and that was a major step forward. So that we weren't just concerned with administration. When those amendments came through, a major element in the decision of the Advisory Council for recommending those and then the acceptance by the congressional committees was the ability of the Bureau to administer; because it must not be forgotten that throughout all of this period, from the time the Bureau was first started, there were grave doubts that you could administer a system like this, - that it was too big. It required too massive an operation of hundreds of thousands of detailed actions. There is a notable memorandum somewhere, in which Harry Hopf wrote, the Board would just be flooded by little pieces of paper that would inundate the Board. Have you seen this one? Well, this was illustrative. There was a strong feeling and it was quite doubtful that an administrative organization could be build that could handle this job.

Interviewer:

It didn't have much of the precedent here -

Mr. Corson:

There wasn't much of a precedent. We brought Sir Henry Davidson over from Britain. He was a friend of John Winant's and John Winant had known him at the ILO. He was asked to study the problem and he advised that this was a problem that just couldn't be administered; it was too complicated; that the individual wage records for each of the millions and millions of people couldn't be kept. There was a substantial doubt as to whether it really could be effectively administered. The early years went through the periods of Latimer, Seidemann, and Hodges when there were considerable administrative difficulties. And in the first year I was there, we had our problems. I think we were making progress in those days, but we still had our problems. It was in 1939 that we had to prove that we could administer a program of this sort. We really had to prove it first to the Advisory Council and then to the Congress.

Interviewer:

Did you appear yourself before the Congress?

Mr. Corson:

Yes as I recall I did. I recall more clearly having appeared before the Advisory Council on a succession of occasions. Arthur Altmeyer always carried in his day the legislative burden. He was the one who did the bulk of the testimony before Congress, but I'm pretty sure as I recall that I appeared as well in those days.

Interviewer:

Did you have any sort of a job trying to inspire confidence by going out and making speeches and meeting with business groups and other organizations.

Mr. Corson:

Yes, by 1939 I guess I was doing a good deal of this. But we were also bringing a lot of people in - particularly some of the insurance people, some of the business comptrollers. We brought them down and showed them through the operations, and convinced them by showing them that we had really developed a capability for administering the Act. And this was why we had a good many salesman working for us as a consequence.

Reinhard Hohaus of the Metropolitan who had a great following in the insurance industry. We had convinced him by bringing him down and taking him around and showing him that really we had the thing under control. He was a great evangelist for us from then on. He was a very complimentary spokesman in our behalf.

Interviewer:

Were there any others that we haven't covered?

Mr. Corson:

I'm sure that there are, but I don't remember what they are. How much more time do you think you've got?

Interviewer:

It's up to you. Are you almost finished? You tell me when you want to quit.

Mr. Corson:

I've got to dictate one note before my secretary gets away because I'm not going to be here tomorrow.

Interviewer:

I don't think we have much more.

Mr. Corson:

(Could you come in and let me dictate one note that you could get out tomorrow.

Interviewer:

The only other problem I thought may be you could have some - that is, it would be when you returned and that of the turnover you had in the Bureau during the wartime. Since the program probably was certainly not of the -

Mr. Corson:

During the war we lost a goodly number of people. It never was serious as you look back. We were more concerned about it at the time because it is always hard to lose people that you really thought were very good. But as I look back, I don't really think it was serious. It was costly in this sense, that during the years 1939, '40 and '41 we had recruited a very considerable number - I would say in the magnitude of 250 maybe-- college graduates. We had an extra effort to get able young college graduates and we'd invested a lot of money in training them, because in those days we used to bring them in from our field offices - these people were recruited as what we called Claims Clerks and they went to work in the field office at Grade 3. Bob Ball, the present Commissioner, was one of them. Then we would bring these people to Baltimore for, as I recall, 3 weeks training. This was part of the problem of trying to take a group of disparate people brought from all sorts of backgrounds and give them a common understanding of what social security was. We invested time and money in recruiting and training these people, and then the war came along in 1941 and '42 and just took those people, right and left. They were young, they were right at the vulnerable age for the draft, and we lost a great many of them. This was costly at the time and many of them never did come back but we had to expect that; and while we thought it hurt at the time, as I look back, I don't really think it was quite as major as we then thought. When I came back from the Bureau of Employment Security, I think it was in May of 1943 - April? - well, I had been in Mexico for a period of several weeks or a couple of months helping the Mexican Government set up their social security system.

After I left the Bureau of Employment Security, I went to Mexico; and then when I came back, I went back to work with the Bureau. We had a psychological problem in part. All of those fellows, by that I mean the Assistant Directors, had sort of moved up and filled in for me while I was gone, and then I moved back in and sort of subordinated them all again. We got along well; we got along famously because it was a very agreeable working group in those days, I think the others thought so as I did. But I was essentially, and Oscar Pogge particularly who had carried the responsibility on his own shoulders for over a year - I was subordinating him to a second role so that a year later, little more than a year I guess, when I was invited to go to the UNRRA and I was essentially stepping out again and asking Oscar to take over and each of the other fellows to move up in turn. When I had been in UNNRA a while, I just didn't feel that I could, in clear conscience, come back and ask them all to stop back again. That was another major reason why I didn't go back to the Bureau; it was for no disaffection with the Bureau because I never enjoyed anything any more than the years I spent there.

Interviewer:

Well, looking at that other period briefly, the service that you had with Employment Security. How would you summarize that?

Mr. Corson:

Well, it was a much less satisfying experience.

Interviewer:

You still have some of the carry-overs from the change? Persons-

Mr. Corson:

Some of it was a very trying job. I became Director of the Bureau of Employment Security on December 1, 1941. December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor. December 19, as I recall the date, the President of the United States sent a telegram to every Governor asking him to turn over his State employment service to the United States Employment Service for - he did not say the duration of the war; he left that quite indefinite, but for the effective prosecution of the war. The only reason that the Governors were willing to do it was because in the pressure of this emergency, within two weeks after Pearl Harbor, they couldn't very well refuse. They didn't like the idea, but within the period from December 19 until shortly after January 1, we made arrangements to transfer 35,000 people from 48 different State payrolls over on to the Federal payroll. And in January of 1942 we were not operating well, but we were operating as a Federal agency; and it was an awful tough job because we had a group of people of divided loyalties, despite the fact they were now getting their check from the Federal Government; whereas they had previously gotten their check from the State government. It didn't change their loyalties that quickly, and they were really part and parcel to the old State unemployment compensation agency in each State. While we were trying our best to mobilize them into an effective and integrated national employment service, we had our difficulties doing it. We worked awful hard at it as I look back; moreover, we were going through a period when the demands of the war were growing by leaps and bounds.

Our problem was in terms of; we had shipyards in Portland, Oregon, and we had aluminum plants in the State of Washington, and we had shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia, and we had defense plants here, there, and everywhere; and they were just screaming for more workers. While the employer can say he doesn't need the employment service in time of peace, when there is a surplus of labor, he needs it badly in time of war when there is a scarcity of labor. And we were being criticized, and criticized partially for failing to produce the workers that were needed for defense plants. We were handicapped in the war effort because of our ineffectiveness. This was a very trying situation.

Interviewer:

How did you happen to come to take over this job? I know you mentioned earlier some of your dissatisfaction with the existing situation there, but how did you happen to move over to Employment Security?

Mr. Corson:

It has a very simple answer - by the insistence of one person--Arthur Altmeyer. We had gotten -

Interviewer:

He was the Assistant -- wasn't he?

Mr. Corson:

Well, it was still under the Social Security Board, and despite the fact that the War Manpower Commission had grown up and the Employment Service was also working very closely with what was then known as the Office of Production Management. This was the predecessor of the War Production Board - and Sidney Hillman. The Office of Production Management was headed by two men, not one, two, William Knudson of General Motors fame and Sidney Hillman. The Employment Service was essentially Hillman's operating arm, and Hillman was being quite critical of the management of the Employment Service. And Ewan Clague who was then Director, was being criticized for not being an effective administrator. Ewan Clague is very able and he is basically a statistician, as he has been for years, and now in the Bureau of Labor Statistics and very successful as Commissioner of Labor Statistics. He never was a very effective administrator. And the Employment Service was being criticized; and the Social Security Board indirectly, since it was under its leadership, was being criticized and, hence, Altmeyer was in the position of having to find some solution for this problem. Altmeyer talked with me a succession of times saying that the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance now is in pretty good shape, that it was operating smoothly, and that I should move over and become Director of the Bureau of Employment Security. I was in the position of saying, "Yes, I can understand that the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance is operating smoothly enough; but we still have our problems and, moreover, why am I the guy that has to go into the Bureau of Employment Security?" He kept pressing and eventually McNutt himself, as I mentioned earlier, reinforced him. He asked me to do this and I acceded to an assignment that I never was enthusiastic about.

It was a very difficult assignment. I think we made some progress in the --- about 18 months that I was there, but I never got the satisfaction out of it that I got out of the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance. It is in many ways a much more difficult administrative job, difficult primarily in the sense that in Old-Age and Survivors Insurance in my day there was very little interference from the constituent groups. Oh yes, organized labor was interested and would support us if we turned to them for support. But nobody bothered us. They weren't prying into our affairs and insisting that we take actions of one sort or another. And we were quite free to develop our plans and go about our business with considerable freedom, particularly when we were over in Baltimore separated from the Federal Security Agency and separated from the Social Security Board. We gained a freedom that was quite substantial and I think very desirable. This is a philosophy of organization. I would say you always break up any organization into small component parts and give each part as much freedom as you can. That is substantially what we had in OASI in the period of the particularly 1940, when we had really gotten to the point where we were accepted in the sense that we had now gotten our administrative problems pretty well under control and we gained a confidence of people.

Interviewer:

Of course, with B.E.S -

Mr. Corson:

With B.E.S. we didn't have any of this, we had to earn it all over again. And moreover, with the State agencies that were not really loyal to the Federal agency, I spent a good portion of the year 1942 tramping all over this country bringing together local employment office managers and the regional people - sitting down day by day talking about, in a whole series of conferences what we were trying to do, why we were trying to do it, --trying to gain a certain acceptance of the Federal leadership and acceptance of the program that we were trying to carry out. We are simply saying to them, "Now, here's what our plans are and we want you to react; tell us, are these practicable?" We were trying to build up their participation, their confidence. And we made progress, but we had to do it another 5 years before we had really gotten it to the point where OASI was in 1941.

Moreover, the times were so tough. The pressure of the war problems were so great that you didn't have time to build a nice, clean, pure administrative machine. You just had to do the job and work on this problem of integration when you could. It was real tough, and then on top of that, with the development of the War Manpower Commission. The War Manpower Commission was supposed to mobilize all of the agencies of the Federal Government that were concerned with manpower, but the principal one was the Employment Service. This was a little bit like the problem that you spoke of earlier when the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance was 80 percent of all the Social Security Board. Well, the United States Employment Services was 80 percent of all of the War Manpower Commission. If the War Manpower Commission wanted to get anything done, they got it done through the Employment Service. So this meant another pressure, but the War Manpower Commission also tended to disintegrate the Employment Service, tended to tear it apart in pieces. Here was a specialized division concerned with agricultural problems; here was another division concerned with industrial problems; and here was another division concerned with training. It tended to disintegrate the Employment Service. But when they built the War Manpower Commission all around and on top of the Employment Service, it offered me the opportunity to go back to OASI that I welcomed. I was asked to stay. Mr. McNutt made a personal request that I stay and as I see now, he even offered to dismiss my superior those days, and as quickly as he could, if I would stay. He was never explicit on that but I now recognize that that's what he was saying; and eventually he did dismiss him and had to find somebody else. I was getting no particular satisfaction out of it and I was perfectly happy to leave it to others and go back to OASI.