Arthur Joseph Altmeyer was an American politician. He served as the United States Commissioner for Social Security, and chairman of the Social Security Board.
Background
Arthur Joseph Altmeyer was born on May 8, 1891 in De Pere, Wisconsin, United States. He was the son of Carrie A. Smith and John G. Altmeyer. As an adult, Altmeyer did not talk of his early life; thus, little is known of his parents other than that his father was of German descent and his mother of Dutch heritage. After his parents divorced when Arthur was fourteen, he went to live with grandparents, working as an office boy in the law office of a grandfather and uncle to pay for his support.
Education
Altmeyer did not complete high school until he was nineteen years old and then worked a year to save toward college expenses. In 1911 he read a pamphlet on workmen's compensation that motivated him to enroll at the University of Wisconsin to study under John R. Commons. He completed the undergraduate program in three years, working as Commons's research assistant and graduating in 1914 with Phi Beta Kappa honors. In 1918 he returned to the university and received the Master of Arts degree in 1921 and the Doctor of Philosophy in 1931, both under Commons.
Career
Altmeyer worked in the offices of the Wisconsin State Tax and Industrial commissions during his years as a graduate student. In 1920 he began a long and productive career in the administration of various forms of social insurance. For two years he was the chief statistician to the Wisconsin Industrial Commission and then secretary of the commission from 1922 to 1933. In that capacity he was involved with deliberations that led to the Wisconsin Unemployment Reserves and Compensation Act, the first such act passed in the United States to provide for both workmen's and unemployment compensation.
In 1931, when the Wisconsin Industrial Commission was given the responsibility to administer unemployment relief throughout the state, Altmeyer pioneered in yet another field of social welfare. In 1933 Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins asked Altmeyer to come to Washington to direct the Labor Compliance Division of the National Recovery Administration; in June 1934 he became the Second Assistant Secretary of Labor, serving until November 1935.
Within a month of becoming Perkins's assistant, he was named chairman of the technical board President Franklin Roosevelt created to assist the new Committee on Economic Security. In 1935, after Congress passed the Social Security Act drafted by the Committee, Roosevelt appointed Altmeyer a member of the new three-member Social Security Board. He was board chairman from 1937 until its abolition in July 1946.
At that time, as Commissioner for Social Security under the new Federal Security Agency (FSA), he assumed most of the powers of the former board. During seventeen years as head of the vast Social Security program, Altmeyer was responsible for Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance; Unemployment Compensation; Old Age Assistance; Aid to the Blind; Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled; Aid to Dependent Children; and child health and welfare services.
As the leading champion of expanded coverage for farmers, domestic workers, and other groups, Altmeyer directed the successful efforts to have Congress broaden the program by major amendments in 1939 and 1950, and he indicated the new directions that would be taken after he had left the agency. Associates credited to Altmeyer's tactical skills the generally favorable reaction of Congress and the public to the administration of Social Security in the early years.
During World War II, Altmeyer was for seven months in 1942 the executive director of the War Manpower Commission. In the postwar period he was the United States representative on the Social Commission of the United Nations, one of several appointments he held in the administration of international social insurance and labor welfare. He assiduously lobbied for a worldwide charter of social security principles. In April 1953, executive reorganization under President Dwight Eisenhower replaced the FSA with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and forced Altmeyer into an early retirement.
In 1953, he returned to Madison, where he lived for nineteen years except for two years he spent in Washington, D. C. (1964-1966), in an advisory capacity for private pension funds. He was president of the National Conference of Social Work (1954-1955), was a consultant to many social planners, both in the United States and abroad, and was a visiting lecturer at five universities. In 1958 Wisconsin Democratic leaders urged him to run for the U. S. Senate, but he declined to seek elective office. He did, however, chair the Social Security Committee of the Democratic Advisory Council during the 1960 presidential campaign.
After 1966, unstable health caused Altmeyer gradually to reduce his activities, although he maintained close contact with many associates from his lifetime of social welfare endeavors, and he was an occasional consultant to Near Eastern and Latin American governments seeking to establish social security systems. He died in Madison and was survived by his wife; they had no children.
Achievements
Altmeyer was a key figure in the design and implementation of the U. S. Social Security system during his many years of federal service. He was widely known as "Mr. Social Security" and as one of the nation's most respected leaders in the field of public welfare. With Edwin E. Witte and Wilbur J. Cohen, he formed a trio of John R. Commons-trained social economists whose intellectual prowess and administrative skills had a profound influence upon the acceptance by the federal government of the responsibility to provide economic and social security to a broad range of citizens.
Altmeyer was studious, serious, and reticent. He was not noted for personal magnetism or humor, but co-workers revered him for his humanitarianism, his knowledge of the field of social insurance, and his calm, impartial administration of his offices.
Connections
On July 3, 1916, Altmeyer married a teacher, Ethel May Thomas of Superior, also a University of Wisconsin graduate. They didn't have children.
