Edwin E. Witte
Edwin Emil Witte (January 4, 1887 – May 20, 1960) was an economist who focused on social insurance issues for the state of Wisconsin and for the Committee on Economic Security.
His adviser, Frederick Jackson Turner, left Madison in 1910 for Harvard, but recommended that Witte continue studying history under John R. Commons of the economics department.
Witte wrote Nelson's minority report opposing approval of the Clayton Act because its language did not provide a strong anti-injunction clause favored by Samuel Gompers and organized labor.
Witte's views were validated in Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering (254 U.S. 443 [1921]) which struck down the labor protection clauses of the act.
By the time he published this research, he was noted as the foremost authority on the anti-labor injunction and served as an adviser (along with Felix Frankfurter, Donald Richberg, Francis Sayre, and Herman Oliphant) to the Senate Judiciary Committee drafting the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932.
In January 1917, he was appointed the executive secretary of the Wisconsin Industrial Commission., where he added labor and safety regulatory policies to his list of progressive social insurance concerns.
Working closely with legislators at both the state and national level, Witte had a keen sense for the process.
Rather he was a facilitator, a creative draftsman of public programs, a compromiser, and a tireless mediator who devoted his efforts towards bringing divergent sides together and to working out mutually acceptable solutions".
[4] Joining the faculty at Wisconsin, he worked with Commons, and Selig Perlman, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., Robert M. La Follette, Jr., E. A. Ross, and Arthur J. Altmeyer (who became the chairman of the Social Security Board) who were developing the Wisconsin progressive movement and working on public policy issues of the day.
He was appointed in late July and President Roosevelt wanted legislative proposals to hand the new congress when it convened in January 1935.
He and his staff (which included one of his undergraduate students Wilbur J. Cohen) had a set of legislative proposals that covered unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, disability compensation, aid to families with dependent children.
[6] When hearings began in January 1935, Witte as the principal author of the Social Security Act of 1935 was questioned for four days before the House Ways and Means Committee explaining the operation of the bill, its costs and benefits, and using his research to make a persuasive case.
In addition to guiding the Social Security Act through the United States Congress, Witte also worked on other labor legislation including (with George William Norris and Fiorello H. La Guardia) the Norris La Guardia anti-injunction act.
He was also involved with the National Association of Arbiters, the Atomic Energy Labor Relations Panel as well as continuing to advise Wisconsin legislators.
Witte retired in 1957, and like millions of other Americans, received Social Security benefits, while he continued to teach regularly as a visiting professor.
