Thomas H. Eliot, 84; Helped Draft Social Security Act

Thomas H. Eliot, who helped draft the nation’s Social Security laws, has died at the age of 84.

Eliot, who was also a former U.S. congressman and a chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, died Monday at his home in Cambridge after a long illness.

He was the grandson of Charles W. Eliot, the president of Harvard University for 40 years, and a fifth cousin of the poet T.S. Eliot.

A Democrat who ardently supported President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Eliot helped draft the Social Security Act and steered it through Congress in the 1930s.

He then spent two years as director of the New England regional office of the Wage and Hour Division before being elected to Congress in 1941. He served only one term before losing the Democratic nomination to James Michael Curley.

During World War II, Eliot held various government posts, including chief of the London office of the Office of Wartime Information and special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain.

After the war, he practiced law in Boston and taught government. He went to Washington University in 1952 to teach political science. In 1962, he was named the university’s 12th chancellor.

In 1971, he stepped down to head the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, a post he held until 1976.

He was the author of a textbook, “Governing America: The Politics of a Free People,” and was co-author of “State Politics and the Public Schools.”