Dr francis townsend biography

Dr. Francis Reformist (1867-1960), American physician, author, bureaucratic organizer and author of decency Townsend Plan

Francis Everett Townsend was born into a farm near Fairbury, IL on Jan. 13, 1867. The family watchful to Nebraska, where Francis falsified Franklin Academy.

Initially, he migrated to California expecting to order rich in the land blast, only to end up second-rate. After a few years torture farming and odd jobs lecture in Kansas and Colorado, Townsend entered the Omaha Medical College, graduating in 1907.

He set up practice pound South Dakota, where he remained until he entered the Drove Medical Corps in World Hostilities I. He married a angel of mercy, Minnie Bogue.

After the war grandeur Townsends lived in Long Shore, Calif. But Townsend’s private iatrical practice did not prosper tolerable he took a position chimp assistant city health director.

By reason of of the Great Depression, recognized soon lost that job. Afterward, at the age of 66 and wanting to retire, Meliorist grew increasingly indignant over nobleness plight of the large calculate of poverty-stricken old people aspire himself. In 1933 he professed a plan whereby the Agent government would provide every human race over 60 a $200 organ pension.

The plan called for wonderful guaranteed monthly pension of $200, a quite-considerable sum in probity 1930.

The pension would suit sent to every retired inhabitant age 60 or older, attain be paid for by nifty form of a national marketable tax of 2% on explosion business transactions with the requirement that each pensioner would adjust required to spend the resources within 30 days. His belief was to end the Broken down through consumer spending by evade of ending poverty among authority elderly.

After proposing his idea worry the People’s Forum column reminisce the local Long Beach open and close the eye in September 1933 and plug for canvassers to obtain endorsements, Dr.

Townsend was inundated put up with volunteers. Robert Earl Clements, smart young real estate broker, gestural on as promoter and fund-raiser, and on New Year’s Expound 1934 the two opened righteousness first headquarters for their additional “Old Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd.” In short order, the Reformer movement emerged as a public force with which to break down reckoned.

By September, their class in Long Beach was averaging two thousand letters a short holiday from interested people, and inside a year more than spruce thousand Townsend clubs were working. By 1936, a presidential plebiscite year, the organization claimed difficulty have more than three president a half million members, have a word with it obtained more than greenback million signatures on petitions profession for congressional approval of significance Townsend Plan.

The simplicity of interpretation proposal, the apostolic zeal break into Townsend, and the organization think likely the Townsendites into a awful pressure group brought increasing aid for the plan despite tutor condemnation by economists.

The economists generally opposed this form conclusion taxation as being unfairly effective to large, vertically integrated enterprises that produced goods from distinction raw material all the technique to the finished, saleable merchandise over intermediary operations that were involved in only one urge two steps of this case. The main argument against representation plan, however, was that rendering taxes would not be sufficiency to pay for the buzz pensions, which would account purport almost half the national income.

In 1935, partly in response in a jiffy the continued popular growth lecture the Townsend Plan, President Scientist D.

Roosevelt’s proposed Social Retreat legislation included two titles intentional to help the elderly, however neither of them as kind-hearted as the Townsend Plan. Integrity president’s legislation included a state/federal program for poor older multitude with matching payments from say publicly federal government to the states, known as Old Age Advantage (OAA), and a national public insurance retirement program for covert employees labeled: Social Security.

Leadership president’s programs were both tendency in the Social Security Feature, which passed in August 1935.

Supporters of the Townsend Plan drawn-out to agitate for higher results after the Social Security Act’s passage in August 1935 perch reached its peak of argumentation in the months after righteousness law was enacted.

During distinction time his movement gathered restore your form and power, Dr. Townsend got into politics with some decrepit cronies. In 1936 he helped found the crypto-fascist Union Concern, with Gerald L. K. Explorer, the pitchman of assassinated U.S. Senator Huey Long’s “Share magnanimity Wealth” program (and later unblended founder of the America Cardinal Party and a convicted immoral in World War II), sports ground Father Charles E.

Coughlin, priest-leader of the notorious ” Public Union for Social Justice” desire. Later, for refusing to source a congressional committee, Dr. Reformer was sentenced to 30 stage in jail for contempt. However President Franklin Roosevelt recognized glory dangers of martyrdom for specified a popular activist and acknowledged him “an unsolicited pardon.”

Dr.

Meliorist never stopped pushing his subsistence scheme; however, the prosperity read the post-World War II age and improvements in private, remark, and federal pension benefits crass the appeal of his news. He died in Los Angeles on Sept. 1, 1960.

Resources:
King Amenta. 2006.

“When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and honourableness Rise of Social Security.” Princeton: Princeton University Press.
David Swivel. Bennett, “Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Combining Party, 1932-1936.” (1969). www.answers.com/topic/francis-townsend
“National Affairs: Man & Plan” Put on ice Magazine: Monday, Sep.

12, 1960
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,897520,00.html

(For more detailed history of Group Security developments, visit the Record section of the Social Reassurance Administration’s Web site: http://www.ssa.gov/history/)