Rexford Guy Tugwell (July 10, 1891 – July 21, 1979) was an American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...
who became part of
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As th ...
's first "
Brain Trust
Brain trust was a term that originally described a group of close advisers to a political candidate or incumbent; these were often academics who were prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of ad ...
", a group of
Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations leading up to Roosevelt's
New Deal. Tugwell served in FDR's administration until he was forced out in 1936. He was a specialist on planning and believed the government should have large-scale plans to move the economy out of the
Great Depression because private businesses were too frozen in place to do the job. He helped design the New Deal farm program and the
Resettlement Administration
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm S ...
that moved subsistence farmers into small rented farms under close supervision. His ideas on suburban planning resulted in the construction of
Greenbelt, Maryland, with low-cost rents for relief families. He was denounced by conservatives for advocating state-directed economic planning to overcome the Great Depression.
Roosevelt appointed Tugwell as the
governor of Puerto Rico during
World War II (1941–1946). He became a professor at various universities, with lengthy service at the
University of Chicago and the
University of California at Santa Barbara. He wrote twenty books, covering the politics of the New Deal, biographies of major politicians, issues in planning, and memoirs of his experiences.
Early life and education
Rexford Tugwell was born in 1891 in
Sinclairville, New York
Sinclairville is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 578 at the 2020 census. The village is named after Major Samuel Sinclear, its founder. Sinclairville is north of Jamestown and is on the border of the t ...
. In his youth, he gained an appreciation for workers’ rights and liberal politics from the works of
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in seve ...
,
James Bryce,
Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy (March 26, 1850 – May 22, 1898) was an American author, journalist, and political activist most famous for his utopian novel ''Looking Backward''. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of numerou ...
,
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer. He was widely known for his methods to improve industrial efficiency. He was one of the first management consultants. In 1909, Taylor summed up h ...
, and
Charles Richard van Hise
Charles Richard Van Hise (May 29, 1857 – November 19, 1918) was an American geologist, academic and progressive. He served as president of the University of Wisconsin (UW) in Madison, Wisconsin, from 1903 to 1918.
Early life and education
Charl ...
. Tugwell began studying economics in graduate work at the
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his doctorate at
Columbia University. At university, he was influenced by the teaching of
Scott Nearing
Scott Nearing (August 6, 1883 – August 24, 1983) was an American radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, pacifist, vegetarian and advocate of simple living.
Biography
Early years
Nearing was born in Morris Run, Tioga County, ...
and
Simon Patten
Simon Nelson Patten (May 1, 1852 – July 24, 1922) was an economist and the chair of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Patten was one of the first economists to posit a shift from an 'economics of scarcity' to ...
, as well as the writings of
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the fi ...
in philosophy.
Career
Academic economist
After graduation, Tugwell served as junior faculty at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle ...
,
American University in Paris
The American University of Paris (AUP) is a private, independent, and accredited liberal arts university in Paris, France. Founded in 1962, the university is one of the oldest American institutions of higher education in Europe, and the first ...
, and
Columbia University. At Columbia University he taught economics from 1920 to 1932.
Tugwell's approach to economics was experimentalist, and he viewed the industrial planning of
World War I as a successful experiment. He advocated agricultural planning (led by industry) to stop the rural poverty that had become prevalent due to a crop surplus after the
First World War. This method of controlling production, prices, and costs was especially relevant as the
Great Depression began.
Roosevelt administration
In 1932 Tugwell was invited to join President
Franklin Roosevelt's team of advisers known as the
Brain Trust
Brain trust was a term that originally described a group of close advisers to a political candidate or incumbent; these were often academics who were prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of ad ...
. After Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933, Tugwell was appointed first as Assistant Secretary and then in 1934 as Undersecretary of the
United States Department of Agriculture. He helped create the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part o ...
(AAA) and served as its director. The AAA included a domestic allotment program, which paid farmers to voluntarily reduce their production by roughly 30% so that reduced supply would increase the price they received. It was funded with a tax on processing companies that used farm commodities. Tugwell's department managed the production of key crops by adjusting the subsidies for non-production. The act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1936 in ''
United States v. Butler'', and had to be replaced in 1938.
Tugwell was also instrumental in creating the
Soil Conservation Service
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that provides technical assistance to farmers and other private landowners and ...
in 1933, to restrict cultivation, restore poor-quality land, and introduce better agricultural practices to farmers to conserve the soil. This was especially necessary given the widespread damage of the 1930s'
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors (severe drought) an ...
s. He additionally played a key role in crafting the 1938
Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
In April 1935 Tugwell and Roosevelt created the
Resettlement Administration
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm S ...
(RA), a unit of the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Admi ...
. Directed by Tugwell, the RA sought to create healthy communities for the rural unemployed by relocating them to new communities for access to urban opportunities. Some of the RA's activities dealt with land conservation and rural aid, but the construction of new suburban satellite cities was the most prominent. In her book, ''
The Death and Life of Great American Cities,'' the author
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book ''The Death and Life of Great American Cities'' ...
critically quotes Tugwell on the program: "My idea is to go just outside centers of population, pick up cheap land, build a whole community and entice people into it. Then go back into the cities and tear down whole slums and make parks of them." She believed that he underestimated the strengths of complex urban communities and caused too much social displacement in "tearing down" neighborhoods that might have been renovated. This resulted in greater damage to
inner city neighborhoods.
The RA completed three "Greenbelt" towns before the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found the program unconstitutional in ''Franklin Township v. Tugwell.'' It ruled that housing construction was a state power, and the RA was an illegal delegation of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration's power.
Tugwell had previously been denounced as "Rex the Red". The RA's suburban resettlement program earned him condemnation as Communist and un-American because of its social planning aspects. Historians agree he was at all times a loyal American and was never affiliated in any way with the Communist Party.
American Molasses Co.
Given the opposition to his policies, Tugwell resigned from the Roosevelt administration at the end of 1936. He was appointed as a vice president at the American Molasses Co. At this time, he divorced his first wife and married Grace Falke, his former assistant.
Director of New York City Planning Commission
In 1938 Tugwell was appointed as the first director of the
New York City Planning Commission
The Department of City Planning (DCP) is the department of the government of New York City responsible for setting the framework of city's physical and socioeconomic planning. The department is responsible for land use and environmental review, p ...
. New York's reformist mayor,
Fiorello LaGuardia, created the commission as part of a city charter reform aimed at reducing corruption and inefficiency. The Planning Commission had relatively limited powers: all actions needed approval from the legislative
Board of Estimate
A board of estimate is a governing body, particularly in the United States.
Typically, the board's membership will consist of a combination of elected officials from the executive branch (e.g., the mayor or county executive) and the legislative br ...
. Tugwell tried to assert the commission's power. He tried to retroactively enforce nonconforming land uses, despite a lack of public or legal support. His commission sought to establish
public housing
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, de ...
at moderate densities, yet repeatedly approved FHA requests for greater density.
Robert Moses killed Tugwell's proposed fifty-year
master plan
Master Plan, Masterplan or The Master Plan may refer to:
General usage
* Master Plan East or Generalplan Ost, a 1941–1945 Nazi plan for genocide and ethnic cleansing in Central and Eastern Europe
* Master Plan Neighborhood areas in Detroit, urb ...
with a fiery public denouncement of its open-space protections.
Governor of Puerto Rico
Tugwell served as the last appointed American
Governor of Puerto Rico, from 1941 to 1946. He worked with the legislature to create the
Puerto Rico Planning, Urbanization, and Zoning Board in 1942. Tugwell supported Puerto Rican self-government through amendment to the
Organic Act in 1948 but fiercely opposed decentralizing government agencies and services away from the city of San Juan "despite most Puerto Ricans in need of such services not residing in the capital." In one case, he vetoed a bill approved by both chambers of the Puerto Rico Legislature, and supported by 59 of 77 municipalities, establishing a state medical school in the city of Ponce, calling it "regionalism." He publicly supported
Luis Muñoz Marín
José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín (February 18, 1898April 30, 1980) was a Puerto Rican journalist, politician, statesman and was the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, regarded as the "Architect of the Puerto Rico Commonwealth."
In 1948 he ...
's
Popular Democratic Party, which wanted a Commonwealth status.
As he prepared to retire from the Governorship, Tugwell was instrumental in getting the first Puerto Rican appointed to the job,
Jesús T. Piñero, then serving as
Resident Commissioner in Washington, D.C. Tugwell also served as Chancellor of the
University of Puerto Rico.
Return to academia
After his stint as governor, Tugwell returned to teaching at a variety of institutions. He had years of service at the
University of Chicago, where he helped develop their planning program. He moved to
Greenbelt, Maryland, one of the new suburbs designed and built by the Resettlement Administration under his direction.
After the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...
, Tugwell believed that
global planning was the only sure way to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. He participated in the
Committee to Frame a World Constitution from 1945 to 1948. He also thought the national constitution needed to be amended to enable
economic planning
Economic planning is a resource allocation mechanism based on a computational procedure for solving a constrained maximization problem with an iterative process for obtaining its solution. Planning is a mechanism for the allocation of resources b ...
.
Progressive Party (1948)
In 1948, Tugwell served as chair of the platform committee for the
Progressive Party. During its
convention (July 23–25, 1948), he recounted a conversation with presidential candidate
Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 during which FDR warned him of internal clashes that might destroy the Democratic Party but might also create a "Progressive Party," adding in his own words that Roosevelt "would have led a movement like that which we now join." Tugwell pled for party unity under a platform that the ''New York Times'' summed up as "endorsing Red foreign policy."
Later life
Late in life, he drafted a constitution for the Newstates of America. In it, Planning would become a new branch of federal government, alongside the Regulatory and Electoral branches.
During this time, Tugwell wrote several books, including a
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...
of
Grover Cleveland, subtitled: ''A Biography of the President Whose Uncompromising Honesty and Integrity Failed America in a Time of Crisis'' (1968). His biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt was entitled ''FDR: An Architect of an Era.'' ''A Stricken Land'' was his memoir about his years in Puerto Rico. This book was reprinted in 2007 by the
Muñoz Marín Foundation.
Representation in other media
*Tugwell is mentioned in the
Ernie Pyle book, ''Home Country''.
*
Philip K. Dick's novel, ''
The Man in the High Castle'' (1962), set in an alternate world where the United States was
conquered by Germany and Japan, features a
novel within a novel, ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.'' In it, Tugwell was elected President of the United States in 1940, succeeding Franklin Roosevelt, and received much of the credit for the Allied victory in World War II, after which the US enters a
Cold War with an intact, expansionist British Empire rather than the Soviet Union.
*Portrayed by Craig Welzbacher, Tugwell makes a brief appearance in the 2020 film ''
Mank
''Mank'' is a 2020 American black-and-white biographical drama film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his development of the screenplay for ''Citizen Kane'' (1941). It was directed by David Fincher based on a screenplay by his lat ...
''.
*Tugwell is mentioned in the
Joan Didion
Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer. Along with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese, she is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an ...
essay collection
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
''Slouching Towards Bethlehem'' is a 1968 collection of essays by Joan Didion that mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s. It takes its title from the poem " The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats. The contents of this ...
in the piece "California Dreaming."
Books and articles by Tugwell
* ''The Economic Basis of Public Interest,'' Menasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Company, 1922.
* ''Industry's Coming of Age'', New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927.
* "Russian Agriculture," in Stuart Chase, Robert Dunn, and R. G. Tugwell, eds. ''Soviet Russia in the second decade: a joint survey by the technical staff of the first American Trade Union Delegation'' (The John Day Company, 1928)
* "The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez Faire." ''American Economic Review: Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association'' (1932) 22#1 pp. 75–9
in JSTOR* "Experimental Control in Russian Industry." ''Political Science Quarterly'' (1928): 161–187
in JSTOR* ''Mr. Hoover's Economic Policy,'' New York: John Day, 1932.
* ''The Industrial Discipline and the Governmental Arts'', New York: Columbia University Press, 1933.
* with Howard Copeland Hill. ''Our economic society and its problems: a study of American levels of living and how to improve them'' (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1934)
* ''The Battle for Democracy,'' New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.
* ''Changing the Colonial Climate: the Story, from His Official Messages, of Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell's Efforts to Bring Democracy to an Island Possession Which Serves the United Nations as a Warbase,'' selection and explanatory comments by J. San Juan Lear: Bureau of Supplies, Printing, and Transportation, 1942.
* ''Puerto Rican Public Papers of R. G. Tugwell, Governor, San Juan'': Service Office of the Government of Puerto Rico, Printing Division, 1945.
* ''Forty-Fifth Annual Report of the Governor, 1945,'' San Juan: Government of Puerto Rico, 1945.
* ''The Stricken Land: The Story of Puerto Rico,'' Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1947.
* ''The Place of Planning in Society: Seven Lectures, San Juan'': Office of the Government Planning Board, 1954.
* ''A Chronicle of Jeopardy, 1945–1955,'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
* ''The Democratic Roosevelt: A Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt,'' Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1957.
* ''The Art of Politics, As Practiced by Three Great Americans: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Luis Munoz Marin, and Fiorell H. LaGuardia,'' Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1958.
* ''The Enlargement of the Presidency,'' Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1960.
* ''The Light of Other Days,'' Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1962.
* ''How They Became President,'' Simon & Schuster, 1964.
* ''FDR: An Architect of an Era,'' Macmillan, 1967.
* ''The Brains Trust,'' Viking Press, 1968.
* ''Grover Cleveland,'' Macmillan, 1968.
* ''In Search of Roosevelt'', Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
* ''The Emerging Constitution,'' Harper's Magazine Press, 1974. .
* ''The Diary of Rexford G. Tugwell: The New Deal, 1932–1935'' (Greenwood, 1992)
Tugwell also wrote the foreword to
Edward C. Banfield
Edward Christie Banfield (November 19, 1916 – September 30, 1999) was an American political scientist, best known as the author of ''The Moral Basis of a Backward Society'' (1958), and ''The Unheavenly City'' (1970). His work was foundational to ...
's first published work, ''Government Project'' (Free Press, 1951), a history of one of Tugwell's collective farm programs in California.
Tugwell's autobiographies include ''The Light of Other Days'' (1962), ''To the Lesser Heights of Morningside'' (1982), ''The Stricken Land'' (1947), ''A Chronicle of Jeopardy'' (1955), ''The Brains Trust'' (1968), ''Off Course'' (1971), and ''Roosevelt's Revolution: The First Year, a Personal Perspective'' (1977).
References
Notes
Further reading
* Chichester, Steven A. "Making America Over: Rexford Guy Tugwell and his thoughts on central planning," (MA thesis Department of History." Liberty University Lynchburg, Virginia, 2011
online* Gelfand, Mark. "Rexford G. Tugwell and the Frustration of Planning in New York City," ''Journal of the American Planning Association'' 51, no. 2 (1985): 151–159.
* Myhra, David. "Rexford Guy Tugwell: Initiator of America’s Greenbelt New Towns, 1935 to 1936," ''Journal of the American Planning Association,'' Vol. 40, no. 3 (1974).
* Namorato, Michael. ''Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography'' (1988)
**review by Ellis W. Hawley, ''Reviews in American History'' (1990) 18#2 pp 229–234
in JSTOR* Namorato, Michael. "Tugwell, Rexford Guy"
Access Aug 23 2014
* Sternsher, Bernard. ''Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal'' (Rutgers University Press, 1964)
* Whitten, David O. "Tugwell after Eighty Years." ''Essays in Economic & Business History'' 22 (2012).
nline
External links
*
Biography on Spartacus EducationalMini-biography at the
United States National Park Service website.
Tugwell Room of the Greenbelt Library
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tugwell, Rexford
1891 births
1979 deaths
People from Chautauqua County, New York
Franklin D. Roosevelt administration personnel
Governors of Puerto Rico
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni
Columbia University alumni
University of Washington faculty
Columbia University faculty
Writers about the Soviet Union
University of Puerto Rico faculty
University of Chicago faculty
Economists from New York (state)
People from Greenbelt, Maryland
Greenbelt, Maryland
20th-century American economists
Bancroft Prize winners