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When Social Security rolled out, there were staffed offices located in cities and towns throughout the US where people could go for support.

When Social Security rolled out, there wasn't any other choice. (Well, paper mail.)



Response-by-mail, yes, though the latency is a drag.

Phone support might have been an option. Even if household phones were rare, most people could get to a location which had a phone. However 1-800 (toll-free) lines didn't exist yet (though you could reverse charges with operator assistance). Hrm ... I'd heard a tale that 800 toll-free service began as the result of a request from President Ford for some way for the White House to accept calls from citizens, though Wikipedia's history of toll-free service doesn't make any mention, might just be a red herring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll-free_telephone_number#Hist...

More to the point: the idea of individually staffing offices is now pretty much a non-starter. Though I wonder what the real economics are compared with creating a national-scale Web infrastructure.




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