Louis Brandeis, the progressive cabal and Social Security

Was Social Security the result of some sort of cabal? 

According to the US government Social Security website:

Some historians date the beginning of the health insurance movement in this country from a speech by Louis D. Brandeis (later a Supreme Court Justice) in 1911. Others point either to the Progressive Party's platform in 1912, to the establishment of the AALL's Social-Insurance Committee that same year, or to the First American Conference on Social Insurance (under AALL sponsorship) in Chicago in 1913. The debate did not begin in earnest, however, until 1915.

In any case, there seems to have been an alliance of progressive organizations that lead up to the establishment of Social Security. According to "American Economics Becomes a Policy Discipline:Economic Expertise during The Progressive Era" by Thomas C. Leonard:

The economic reform organizations formed a tight network; they shared personnel as well as common causes and methods. John R. Commons, for example, later served as NCL president, from 1923 to 1935. Henry R. Seager, A.B. Wolfe of Oberlin College, and Arthur Holcombe of Harvard were members of the NCL minimum-wage committee as early as 1909 (Hart 1994, 209 n. 94). Ely and Father John Ryan of Catholic University, author of A Living Wage and drafter of the 1913 Minnesota minimum wage legislation, were also active NCL advisers. Josephine Goldmark, sister-in-law to Louis Brandeis, was active in the NCL leadership. She supervised the production of the famous Brandeis Brief, an annotated compilation of social science reports defending maximum-hours (and in later versions, minimum-wage) legislation for women, which was completed with AALL assistance. Alice Goldmark Brandeis, another NCL stalwart, secretly paid the expenses of its Washington office (Bary 1972).

The NCL worked out of the United Charities Building in New York City, a Progressive Era symbol of the overlapping and interlocking network of progressive reformers. The Charities Building, also housed the National Child Labor Committee, the Charity Organization Service, the New York School of Philanthropy and two prominent reform journals, Outlook, edited by Lyman Abbott, and Paul Kellogg’s The Survey.27 The Russell Sage foundation, established in 1907, and funder of the landmark Pittsburgh Survey directed by Kellogg, tried, unsuccessfully, to locate its headquarters in the Charities Building. Josephine Goldmark, in her memoir of Florence Kelly, recalled the quip of a friendly visitor in 1906, “what’s this bunch calling itself today?” That day the bunch was being addressed by John R. Commons, who had traveled from Wisconsin to introduce the newly formed AALL.