R. Nathan, 92; Helped Devise Social Security

Robert R. Nathan, an economist who helped President Franklin D. Roosevelt craft Social Security and crank up America’s phenomenal factory production to wage World War II, has died at the age of 92.

Nathan, who joined Roosevelt’s Commerce Department in 1934 and headed the nation’s War Production Board planning committee, died Sept. 4 in a group facility in Bethesda, Md.

A wunderkind who later pioneered economic consulting, Nathan became instrumental in drafting several New Deal programs to bootstrap the United States out of the Depression.

Chief among those was Social Security, which Nathan described in a 1993 National Public Radio broadcast as “revolutionary . . . a major innovation, a new concept of individual security.” It had been Nathan’s earlier assignment to track unemployment--one-third of the work force in the mid-1930s--and workers’ income, and he knew about the security of putting bread and milk on the table.

“It was new,” he said six decades after Social Security’s inception, “and there’s no question, the concept of a national system embodying all the workers in terms of getting a pension was very new, and the conservatives didn’t like it and the liberals weren’t too sure. So it was a major, major undertaking.

“[But] Social Security came in a deep, deep Depression,” he added, “and one of the ways to get out of the Depression was to spend. . . . [As] soon as the benefits started, you were generating buying power and so it was helping the economy come up.”

Nathan had an even greater impact on national economic policy, however, as war clouds shifted to the United States. Labeled by Life magazine as “one of the earliest, ablest and loudest advocates of all-out production,” Nathan attached himself to the National Defense Advisory Commission in the summer of 1940. He began urging the Army to increase orders for war materiel, and within a year--long before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor bringing the U.S. officially into war on Dec. 7, 1941, he had designed his “Victor Program.” That December, the program became official government policy with few revisions.

War Production chief Donald M. Nelson named the 33-year-old Nathan to head what he called his “thinking department” to build America’s colossal war machine.

Praised by Life magazine as a world-class “needler,” Nathan dutifully lit into a government order enabling refrigerator manufacturers to continue building electric boxes for cooling beer. A waste of steel and a waste of production plants that could be churning out gun mounts, scolded the erudite economist who liked to use such words as “fathead” or “deadwood” or “moron” to get the job done.

His official avocation may have been deep-sea fishing, but he also liked to relax on a Sunday afternoon by driving around the nation’s capital in his red convertible yelling at sluggish truck drivers he thought were tying up traffic.

But the brawny, 6-foot, 270-pound Nathan with a face often compared to prizefighter Primo Carnera made few enemies on city streets or in factories.

Gearing up for war was all about timing, the blunt Nathan told newsmen in 1942: “Guns are of little use without ammunition and planes without trained pilots are of limited value. Tanks and airplanes are not complete until every essential component is complete. An airplane factory is of little use if aluminum and other essential raw materials are not available. Guns and explosives can’t be fired unless there is zinc and copper for the cartridge cases.”

A few disgruntled manufacturers may have suggested that the youthful economist never had to meet a payroll. But he could parry even those complaints.

He started with a paper route in his native Dayton, Ohio, he could say, and sold pretzels and flags at circuses, then ran a newspaper distribution group with 30 newsboys and at 16 ran a haberdashery with three clerks. He worked his way through bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania by selling silk stockings, memo pads and orangeade, tutoring and working in a factory at night and the post office at Christmas. By the time he joined the Commerce Department, he knew how to earn a buck and pay employees who earned it for him.

In 1943, with War Production up and running smoothly, Nathan asked that his draft deferment for government service be canceled and was inducted into the Army.

At war’s end, he left government service to found his innovative Washington-based Robert R. Nathan Associates Inc., one of the nation’s oldest and largest economic consulting firms, specializing in custom projects for developing countries.

Among his clients over the years have been about 35 nations, including Israel in its infancy, France after the war, South Korea, Burma, Vietnam, Colombia, Nigeria, Taiwan, Honduras, Indonesia, Venezuela, Thailand, Western Samoa, Mariana Islands, Bangladesh, Bolivia, the Philippines, Egypt and Lebanon.

Nathan stepped down as president of his firm in 1978 but remained a consultant and board chairman until a few weeks ago.

He is survived by his wife, Mary, of Bethesda, Md.; two sons, Richard of Burbank and David of Coatesville, Pa.; a daughter, Ann Nathan of Clarksburg, Md., and one granddaughter.