Witte, Edwin E.

A native of Jefferson County, Wisconsin, Edwin Emil Witte was born January 4, 1387, the son of Emil and Anna (Yaeck) Witte. The farm boy "early formed the ambition to become a distinguished scholar," and upon his graduation from the Watertown High School entered the University of Wisconsin in 1905. He received the B.A. degree in 1909, winning as well membership in Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Sigma Rho, and Artus (an honorary scholastic ecomonics fraternity), and immediately began his graduate work. In June 1912 he interrupted his studies to assume the position of senior statistician to the Wisconsin Industrial Commission. Shortly afterward young Witte became secretary to Congressman John M. Nelson, and in 1914 special investigator of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. The following year he returned to the university as instructor, and completed the work toward his doctorate in 1916. The Wisconsin Industrial Commission again called for his . services, and from 1917 to 1922 he served on its staff as secretary. It was in 1920 that he began part-time lecturing on economics and related social sciences at the alma mater.

Although lacking the technical training of the librarian, in 1922 Witte was placed in charge of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library, the pioneer in the field of legislative reference. He remained there for eleven years. During this period he served as secretary of the Wisconsin Committee on a Retirement System for State Employees (1929-31); and he began the writing of his numerous articles for legal and other periodicals, mainly on the subjects of trade union law, social insurance, and labor legislation. In 1932 his treatise The Government in Labor Disputes appeared; said to be the first book which covered the entire field, it dealt with every aspect of Governmental intervention in labor disputes and the social economic, and legal phases of industrial troubles. It was during his librarian ship, too, that Witte made an intensive study of the use and effect of injunctions in labor disputes. This report was in part responsible for the passage of the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act in 1932, which ruled that "yellow-dog" contracts were not enforceable in the Federal courts and limited the power of those courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes.

Then, while a member of the Wisconsin Interim Commission on Taxation (1933-34), the economist was appointed full professor at the university to teach courses not only in economics, but in political science, sociology, and lav. His favorite subject was the relations of Government to business. Although Witte preferred to teach, he liked to feel, that he had a "part in solving practical problems and shaping practical developments." Thus time and again he had left the university and served the Government as mediator and arbitrator, administrator, and member of a considerable number of advisory and policy-making boards. "In finding workable solutions of labor difficulties and in advising and assisting public officials with concrete problems in my field of competence," Witte had written, "I am interested above all else in trying to help employers and employees to get along with each other in this day and age of organization and collective bargaining and to ... minimize the conflicts between Government and business."

Witte considered his most important work his part in the formulation of the Federal Social Security Act of 1935, of which he is often called the author. After more than . twenty years had elapsed since the first proposal for compulsory unemployment insurance had been made, on June 29, 1934, President Roosevelt created the Committee on Economic Security to study and report to him on methods of carrying out the Administration's plans for "the security of the men, women and children of the nation." Witte was named secretary and executive director of the committee, of which other members were Secretary of Labor Perkins, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, Attorney-General Cummings, Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, and Federal Emergency Belief Administrator Hopkins. The following January, President Roosevelt forwarded the committee's full report to Congress, which on August 14, 1935, finally passed a bill known as the Social Security Act of 1935, to provide for old-age insurance and unemploy­ment compensation, as well as health, welfare, and rehabilit­ation service to the States.

The economist's next Washington posts were as staff member of the President's Committee on Administration Management (1936-37), and then as member of the United States Social Security Advisory Council (1937-38). Witte was meanwhile serving in his home state on the Wisconsin State Planning Board (1935-38), the Wisconsin Citizens' Committee on Public Welfare (1936-37), and on the Wisconsin labor Relations Board (1937-39). In addition to these activities and his teaching duties, Witte completed the writing of The Preparation of Pro­posed Legislative Measures by Administrative Department, (1937).

In 1941 Witte accepted membership on the Federal Advisory Council for Unemployment Security and also became special agent of the National Defence Mediation Board. The National War Labor Board named the Professor chairman of the Regional War Labor Board for Detroit in January 1943. The knotty problems of the biggest war plants in the nation came under Witte's jurisdiction here, until his appointment as public member of the National War Labor Board (1944-45). In January 1946 Witte was appointed by Labor Secretary Schwellenback to head a three-man fact-finding panel to hasten settle­ment of the dispute of the two hundred and fifty thousand striking employees of the meat-packing companies, during which the nation's output was reduced about 75 per cent. Calling the industry "a low-wage industry in which the straight-time hourly wage rates are sub­stantially below the average for all manufacturing industries," the Board on February 7 recommended a l6-cent hourly increase for the workers. Back at the Wisconsin University, after devoting the war years to the adjustment of labor disputes, Witte in 1946 was working on a comprehensive history of social security in the United States, as well as on textbooks on social insurance and on the relations of Government and business.

The specialist in labor relation was a member of the Council of the American Economics Association, the Council of the American Association for Labor Legislation, and of the American Association for Social Security. In September 19l6 Witte was married to Florence E. Rimsnider; the couple had a son and two daughters. He listed his religion as Methodist, and his favorite hobby as gardening. Witte gave the credit for his concepts in the labor field to his college teachers and to the contacts and experiences of his government assignments. He belonged to no political party and seldom cast a straight party vote: "I have had appointments from politicians of all political faiths and have gotten along well with them," he said of himself. "In my entire life I have never been an applicant for any Job and have turned down most of the Jobs offered me. I am a hard-working man, but not a flashy or brilliant fellow."

• 1912: Senior Statistician - Wisconsin Industrial Commission
• 1914: U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations
• 1917 - 1922 : Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library
• 1921 - 1931 : Wisconsin Commission on a Retirement System for State Employees
• 1932: The government in Labor Dispute; Injunctions in Labor Disputes (Norris-La Guardia)
• 1933 - 1934 : Wisconsin Intern Commission on Taxation
• 1934: Commission on Economic Security
• 1936 - 1937 : Presidents' Commission on Administrative Management
• 1937 - 1938 : U.S. Social Security Advisory Council
• 1941: Federal Advisory Council for Unemployment Security
• 1943: National War Labor Board
• 1948 - 1953 : Presidents' Commission on Labor Relations in Atomic Energy
• 1953 - 1954 : Visiting Professor at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell

From the guide to the Edwin E. Witte reports and articles, 1914-1960., (Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library)