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The 2-million-strong Townsend Plan — with 8,000 clubs across the country — placed intense pressure on Congress.

The clubs declared the tests successful, and, in 1937, Washington state joined California in formally asking Congress to adopt the Townsend Plan.

After voting down the Townsend Plan in June 1939, Congress amended the Social Security Act, making it more generous to the poorer elderly and speeding up payments for Social Security.

That year the Townsend Plan was mentioned more than a thousand times in national newspapers.

It’s a direct echo of the Townsend Plan, the brainchild of another political novice who also believed that the solution to economic disruption and automation almost a century ago was to guarantee an income.