Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 82, number 1, autumn, 1998

              The "Government Man":
Edw^in E. Witte ofthe University of Wisconsin
By David B. fohnson
EDWIN E. 'WITTE, professor of econom¬ ics at the University ofWlsconsin from 1933 to 1957, is often called "the Father of Social Security." He himself disavowed this characterization, even though he did play the key role in coordinating the effort to enact the Social Security Act of 1935. Witte was uniquely qualified to perform that role because of his administrative and legis¬ lative experience, his storehouse of social- insurance knowledge, his patience, his me¬ diation skills, and his equanimity in the face of vigorous expressions of discord. He applied these skills in many other public- sector roles as well: at the state level as an administrator and legislative authority, at the federal level as a mediator and arbitra¬ tor in labor-management agencies, and at the university level as a teacher, productive scholar, and administrator.
Author's ncjte: This is a substantially revised version of an earlier essay, "Edwin E. Witte's Years on the Fac¬ ulty, 1933-1957," published in Robert J. Lampman, ed., tlconomists at Wisconsin, 1892-1992 (Madison, 1993), 105-117. Both papers are based largely upon the Edwin E. Witte Papers in the Wisconsin State Archives, State Historical Society ofWlsconsin. I am grateful to Frederic Zimmerman for his assistance in reviewing Witte's papers, and to the late Professor Lampman, who offered encouragement and helpful criticism and who, like this atithor, did his doctoral research tinder the guidance of Professor Witte.
Witte's varied career presents many paradoxes. For example, although he was a university professor for twenty-five years, he continued to refer to himself as "a gov¬ ernment man."' Although he had spent most ofthe first two decades of his profes¬ sional life as a civil servant for the state of Wisconsin, he, unlike most government employees, had established a national rep¬ utation as a research scholar before be¬ coming a university professor in 1933. Al¬ though he was a professor of economics, he rejected and considered irrelevant much ofthe methodology and many ofthe tenets of mainstream economics.- Al¬ though he acknowledged his teacher, John R. (]ommons, as the principal influence on his own career and defined himself as an institutional economist, he seemed to dis¬ miss Commons' magnum opus, the book Institutional Economics, as ineffectual the-
' See Wilbur J. Cohen and Robert J. Lampman's introduction to Witte's own account of his work on the Social Security Act, published two years after his death, in Edwin E. Witte, The Development of the Social Security Act (Madison, 1962), xv.
^ Perhaps the most focused expression of W'itte's point of view is to be fotmd in his presidential ad¬ dress to the American Economic Association: "Eco¬ nomics and Public Policv," in the American Economic Review, 47-.VI-U (March, 1957).
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