Social Security Act
Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Roosevelt signed with five pens, and Frances Perkins was the only woman in the room. Nobody got a retirement check that day — under the original schedule, nobody would until 1942.
14 August 1935, about half past three
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed H.R. 7260 at the White House at approximately 3:30 p.m. on 14 August 1935, making it Public Law 74-271. Congress had approved the final conference report and sent him the enrolled bill five days earlier.
He used five pens. Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor who had chaired the Committee on Economic Security, attended; the Social Security Administration identifies her as the ceremony's only woman.
Eleven titles
The act created federal old-age benefits, a federal-state unemployment-compensation framework, grants for old-age assistance and for dependent children, public-health and welfare grants, and a Social Security Board.
In his signing statement Roosevelt described the law as an incomplete “cornerstone” and said it would give at least some protection to 30 million citizens.
Nothing paid out, nothing collected
The old-age insurance taxes and benefits did not begin at the signing. Payroll taxes were scheduled for 1937 — 1 percent of covered wages from employees and 1 percent from employers, on up to $3,000 annually — and monthly old-age benefits for 1942.
About half the jobs in the economy fell outside contributory coverage, agricultural and domestic workers among the excluded groups.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 8 sources 2 audit passes
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- August 14 is confirmed by the enrolled act, SSA chronology, signing statement, and contemporary imagery.
- A National Archives narrative sentence incorrectly says August 15, but its document citation and transcript identify August 14; the independent SSA records resolve the discrepancy.
Checked against
- Social Security Act (1935)—enrolled act and transcript
- SSA chronology of the 1930s
- Roosevelt's signing statement, August 14, 1935
- Legislative history of the Social Security Act
- Index to the eleven titles of the 1935 act
- The Decision to Exclude Agricultural and Domestic Workers
- Operation of state old-age pension laws in 1934
- Social Security signing-ceremony history