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Show AID REACHES MILLIONTH FAMILY The Federal Social Security system in which men and women contribute, by way of a reduction in their pay envelope, is proving to be one of the finest aids to humanity. It has been functioning for several years now and as time goes on there is a desire to broaden its benefits to more classes of employment and services. serv-ices. The board just last month started payment of its one-millionth claim. It was in behalf of Mr. John Robert Rob-ert Thompson, recording secretary of the International Molders' Union of Clevelond, Ohio. An article covering the case was printed in the September issue of "The International Teamster." We quote in part the following: "Thompson died in June, leaving a widow and two small children. Under the Hoover system of free enterprise, en-terprise, Mrs. Thompson could have taken in washing. She could have put the children in an orphanage or let them run wild. She could have done anything she wanted as long as she didn't cost the taxpayers anything. any-thing. That's what "free enterprise" would have meant to her. Under the laws of the Roosevelt administration, however, Mrs. Thompson and her children are protected. pro-tected. She can keep her family together and raise her children. In return for the money deducted from Thompson's pay for social security, Mrs. Thompson will receive monthly checks for -$58.49 $25.07 for herself and $16.71 each for the children, aged four and one. The money will keep coming in until the children are 18. . Then the checks will stop. When Mrs. Thompson is 65, however, she will begin receiving hers again unless she has remarried or is working on a job which comes under the insurance system. Thompson had been paying social security premiums for iy2 years. The money was taken out of his pay and perhaps he sometimes wondered what good it would ever do him. Mrs. Thompson can answer that. Altogether Thompson had paid in $145. 'And for that $145 his family will receive $11,271 by the time his youngest child is 18. Mrs. Thompson lives with her husband's parents, Mr. and Mrs. William E. Thompson. The senior Thompson Thomp-son is also a molder on a job that comes under the Social So-cial Security Act. He is getting old. Under the Hoover system it would be up to the old man to support his son's widow and children. Hoover said . the victims of economic accident were a charge upon local charity. The federal government had no responsibility for raising rais-ing the children into useful, healthy citizens. This was a local responsibility, according to Hoover. The old states' rights stuff! However, if the children became hungry and stole food, it was then the duty of the government to step in and send them to an institution, according to the Free Enterprise philosophy. The government couldn't feed a child in his home, according to Hoover. It had to lock him up first. But under the New Deal and its "bureaucrats," one million, American families have received regular checks from the federal government. These are families" where the bread winner has been incapacitated by accident ac-cident or age. These families include 288,000 children! They include 167,000 widows! They include 418,500 workers who have retired because be-cause of age! . ; They include 122,000 wives above 65, of retired workers! They include 4,500 dependent parents over 65 of. insured workers who died leaving no widows or ' children I What would these people do without the Social Security Act?" |