Paul Raushenbush served as director of the Employment Compensation Division from 1934 until his retirement in January 1967. His association with Wisconsin unemployment compensation pre-dated this, however, as he and his wife, University of Wisconsin economic professor Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush, were intimately involved in drafting the legislation which became the Wisconsin unemployment compensation law in 1931, the first such law in the United States.
Paul, the son of turn-of-the-century Social gospeler Walter Rauschenbusch, and Elizabeth, the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, published a joint autobiography, Our U.C. Story (1930-1967), in 1979. This autobiography, based in large part on oral history interviews conducted by Columbia University, traces their involvement in drafting Wisconsin's unemployment compensation law, their involvement in drafting the federal Social Security Act, and also Paul's career as Wisconsin Unemployment Compensation director, particularly the recurring battle against federalization of unemployment compensation.
