Showing papers by "Elizabeth Fee published in 1997"

Isaac Max Rubinow: Advocate for Social Insurance

Abstract: A pioneer of the American social security movement, Isaac Max Rubinow (1875–1936) emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1893. A member of a relatively comfortable Jewish family, he was able to attend and graduate from Columbia University and New York University Medical School. He then practiced medicine for 5 years among poor immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side, an experience that taught him about the effects of poverty on health and turned his attention to the field of social insurance. In 1900, while still in medical practice, Rubinow began part-time graduate study at Columbia University in economics, statistics, and sociology. In 1903 he left medicine for full-time employment in Washington, DC, in a succession of federal bureaus and agencies. Rubinow soon emerged as America’s leading authority on social insurance and the expert author of comprehensive studies on current practices in Europe. A 1904 article in the Journal of Political Economy1 was “the first publication by an American to call unequivocally for social insurance.”2 A few years later, Rubinow contributed to a major study undertaken by the US Department of Commerce and Labor on “Workmen’s Insurance and Compensation Systems in Europe.” This well-over-2000-page study was published in 2 large volumes as the Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor 1909.3 In 1913, Rubinow published Social Insurance, With Special Reference to American Conditions, the first and definitive American textbook on the subject.4 Figure Courtesy of the Isaac M. Rubinow Papers, Kheel Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Also active in various political and reform movements during America’s Progressive Era, Rubinow was a member of the American Association of Labor Legislation (AALL) from its formation in 1906. In the early 1910s, he was one of the most effective advocates for workmen’s compensation legislation. Inspired by the success of that movement, in 1913 he turned with other AALL leaders to what Dr Rupert Blue, president of the American Medical Association (AMA), called “health insurance—the next great step in social legislation.”5 The AMA joined the campaign and appointed Rubinow executive secretary of its newly created Committee on Social Insurance. Rubinow worked tirelessly in this position until, in early 1917, the AMA, in a sharp reversal, cut off funds to the committee. After several short-term positions and a 4-year stint as head of the American Zionist Medical Unit in Palestine, Rubinow returned to the United States in 1923 and made a new career in the world of Jewish philanthropy and social service.6 Between 1925 and 1929, he also edited the Jewish Social Service Quarterly and in 1927 became vice president of the American Association for Old-Age Security.7 In this position and others, he led efforts in the late 1920s and early 1930s to create unemployment and old age insurance. In 1931, Rubinow chaired an important conference in Chicago whose purpose was to draw up a unified program of legislation for old age. Early in the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Rubinow to express “great interest” in his suggestions. When the president appointed the Committee on Economic Security in the summer of 1934 to advise on drafting the Social Security Act, Rubinow served as a consultant.8