Marjorie O. Shearon papers

Marjorie O’Connell Shearon was a paleontologist and employee of the Social Security Board who later shifted careers to become a lecturer, author, editor, publisher, legislative consultant, and opponent of nationalized medicine.

Marjorie O’Connell Shearon was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 15, 1890, the daughter of Phebe Slater and James Jay O’Connell. She attended the Ethical Culture School in New York from 1893 through 1908, received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and geology from Barnard College in 1911, and her master’s (1912) and doctoral (1916) degrees in paleontology from Columbia University. From 1914 to 1916, she was a lecturer and curator in paleontology at Columbia University. In 1917, her doctoral thesis won the Sarah Berliner Fellowship in Science in a world competition among women, offering her the opportunity of a year of postdoctoral research at the American Museum of Natural History, where she remained for five years. During this time, she named several new fossils and worked with ammonite fossils sent back from Cuba by paleontologist Barnum Brown. From 1912-1922, Shearon had two books and several articles related to paleontology and geology published.

In 1922, Shearon left the field of paleontology and embarked on a solo hiking trip across much of the United States. She arrived penniless a few months later in St. Louis, Missouri. From 1922 to 1936, Shearon held various positions at corporations, charitable organizations, and government agencies in St. Louis, New York City, and Washington, D.C., including the Salvation Army, Macy’s, the New York Opera Comique, Inc., the Emergency Relief Bureau of New York City, and the Works Progress Administration.

In 1936, Shearon became part of the original staff of the Social Security Board’s Bureau of Research and Statistics. On assignment to the Office of the General Council of the Social Security Board, Shearon wrote an economic brief, Economic Insecurity in Old Age, for the defense of the Social Security Act before the Supreme Court. Shearon’s brief was instrumental in the Social Security Act being upheld by the Supreme Court. While at the Bureau of Research and Statistics, Shearon became an expert on and opponent of compulsory health insurance. In 1941, Shearon left the Social Security Board to work for the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Services. Becoming increasingly disillusioned by what she perceived as “socialist brainwashing” within the government and welfare system, Shearon resigned from government service in 1945.

Shearon was quickly employed by Senator Robert A. Taft as a consultant to help him defeat the Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, which proposed a national medical and hospitalization program. Shearon served as a consultant to Senator Taft for three years. She was also a consultant to the Senate Republican Policy Committee, the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, and several other congressional special committees.

In July of 1947, Shearon and her husband, William Shearon, whom she had met in St. Louis and married in 1927, began publishing American Medicine and the Political Scene, a weekly analysis of Social Security legislation. In 1950, the publication was renamed Challenge to Socialism. The publication was discontinued in 1966 due to financial problems. In 1967, Shearon published her book Wilbur J. Cohen: The Pursuit of Power. She also planned to write a book on the history of the movement to nationalize medicine, but it never came to fruition.

Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, Shearon continued to advocate against nationalized medicine, compulsory health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, socialism, and communism while working as a publisher, legislative consultant, traveling lecturer, and observer of national health systems. Notably, Shearon was influential in the passage of the Alaska Mental Health Bill of 1956.

Throughout her life, Shearon had several close relationships with prominent scientists and doctors, including Amadeus William Grabau and Rufus B. Robins. Shearon died in 1974.