> Bouk, Dan. How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual (pp. 232-233). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
> In the case of Lange’s unemployed lumber worker, we find a man who might have opted for a tattoo because it could identify him in the case of an accident. After all, he did dangerous work. Or, as he paid money into the Social Security system, he may have wanted to ensure he’d one day be able to redeem his annuity, that he would not forget his number. Neither explanation, however, encompasses his evident pride in his number, his willingness to show off for Lange (who undoubtedly encouraged him, maybe posed him).
> Was he proud to have been, as the New York Times had put it, a “holder” of a Social Security number? Possessing such a number meant a promise of future income, protection for himself, and— after the just-completed 1939 amendments that included expanded support for families— protection for his wife and future children against his old age or death. 76 Maybe he felt pride in the New Deal, in a government committed to him and his family, and advertised that pride on his bicep. Or perhaps, his tattoo displayed a workingman’s pride in his gender and class identities. Possessing such a number signaled his status as an industrial worker. Such status mattered in a bean-picking camp where most pickers had been excluded from eligibility for Social Security. Possessing an account set this unemployed lumber worker apart, probably even from his bean-picking wife.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b15572/
Context:
> Bouk, Dan. How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual (pp. 232-233). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
> In the case of Lange’s unemployed lumber worker, we find a man who might have opted for a tattoo because it could identify him in the case of an accident. After all, he did dangerous work. Or, as he paid money into the Social Security system, he may have wanted to ensure he’d one day be able to redeem his annuity, that he would not forget his number. Neither explanation, however, encompasses his evident pride in his number, his willingness to show off for Lange (who undoubtedly encouraged him, maybe posed him).
> Was he proud to have been, as the New York Times had put it, a “holder” of a Social Security number? Possessing such a number meant a promise of future income, protection for himself, and— after the just-completed 1939 amendments that included expanded support for families— protection for his wife and future children against his old age or death. 76 Maybe he felt pride in the New Deal, in a government committed to him and his family, and advertised that pride on his bicep. Or perhaps, his tattoo displayed a workingman’s pride in his gender and class identities. Possessing such a number signaled his status as an industrial worker. Such status mattered in a bean-picking camp where most pickers had been excluded from eligibility for Social Security. Possessing an account set this unemployed lumber worker apart, probably even from his bean-picking wife.