Kirk v. Berryhill

Donald C. Coggins, Jr., United States District Judge

Following the First World War, "a primarily agrarian American society had become a primarily urban, industrialized one." Commissioner Martha A. McSteen, Fifty Years of Social Security , Social Security Bulletin 36 (1985).1 This led to a greatly increased reliance on cash wages, which became problematic as the Great Depression ravaged the nation during the early 1930s. Catastrophic economic losses occurred throughout the country, and, "[b]y the mid-1930's, the lifetime savings of millions of people had been wiped out." Id. at 37. Faced with…