In this insightful analysis, we find the need not only for governmental reform, but also a challenging of deeply embedded assumptions (myths) regarding the need only for personal initiatives (on the part of the male head-of-household). As Anonymous pointed out almost a century earlier, men and their families need “protection” if their own interests are to be honored. Perkins had faith that underlying these individualistic assumptions regarding no need for protection, was the even more deeply held commitment to a coherent and caring community that had been identified in the 19th Century by de Tocqueville (and reinterpreted in the the 1960s by Bellah and colleagues). Perkins seems to believe, like Berne Weiss’ Professor Brichacek, that there is an “inner voice” that can still be heard midst all the declarations regarding “rugged individualism” and the primary role of leadership played by the male head-of-household.
I turn again to Richardson’s (2021) account:
“When asked to describe the origins of the Social Security Act, Perkins mused that its roots came from the very beginning of the nation. When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America in 1835, she noted, he thought Americans were uniquely ‘so generous, so kind, so charitably disposed.’ ‘Well, I don’t know anything about the times in which De Tocqueville visited America,’ she said, but ‘I do know that at the time I came into the field of social work, these feelings were real.'”
I would suggest that De Tocqueville was essentially correct among American culture; however, we do need to add Anonymous’ correction regarding protection of mutual interests. Perkins, Roosevelt and the US Congress were aware, like Anonymous, of the need to reinforce American generosity with carefully crafted, but strongly enacted social security for all of the American citizens. Secular coherence requires that government not sit on the sidelines, while a small number of powerful actors sit without opposition at the table.
American Roots: An Organizational Story of Harmony and Secular Coherence
It is timely as I am writing this essay that not only Heather Cox Richardson write about Francis Perkins and the Social Security Act of 1935, but also that Downeast (a magazine about Maine) published an article (Stade, 2020) concerning a new “mill” in Maine, called American Roots. It is this second narrative that provides us with an example of secular coherence operating at the level of an individual organization.
