Bleeding Hearts From The 1930s

''Gentlemen of the House,we are at the crossroads of history...We are developing a new class in America. It is those men and women who at 45 years of age have reached the age limit of employability. They are turned away on the basis of their age. I christen them 'America's untouchables!'...Even under slavery, the slave owner did not fail to feed and clothe and doctor the slaves no matter what might happen to crops or to markets...Fellow members of the American House of Commons . . . the world does not owe a man a living, I grant you, but as sure as God rules the heavens, it does owe him a chance to earn a living...This measure is only a small effort to give the disemployed equality before the law."

David John Lewis
House of Representatives
During the debate over the Social Security Bill in 1935

"...Fifty years ago when David John Lewis was an undersized boy of 16 working in a Pennsylvania coal mine, he could, like many another, neither read nor write.

Last week the House of Representatives gave David John Lewis an ovation worthy of one of its most erudite and social-minded members.

Though illiterate, young "Dave" Lewis learned the gift of eloquence from his father, a Welsh coal miner who was a Baptist preacher by avocation. At 20, Son Lewis went to a labor meeting and spoke so stirringly that a newshawk said to him: " Boy, you ought to be a lawyer." At 23, Lewis was. And ten years later, having settled at Cumberland. Md., he began a political career, long, thorny, courageous..."

Read more of Bleeding Hearts in Time