Rexford Tugwell
Rexford Tugwell | |
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Governor of Puerto Rico | |
In office September 19, 1941 – September 2, 1946 | |
Preceded by | José Miguel Gallardo |
Succeeded by | Jesús T. Piñero |
Personal details | |
Born | Rexford Guy Tugwell July 10, 1891 Sinclairville, New York, U.S. |
Died | July 21, 1979 Santa Barbara, California, U.S. | (aged 88)
Political party |
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Alma mater |
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Profession | |
Rexford Guy Tugwell (July 10, 1891 – July 21, 1979) was an American
Roosevelt appointed Tugwell as the
Early life and education
Rexford Tugwell was born in 1891 in
Career
Academic economist
After graduation, Tugwell served as junior faculty at the
Tugwell's approach to economics was experimentalist, and he viewed the industrial planning of
Roosevelt administration
In 1932 Tugwell was invited to join President
Tugwell was also instrumental in creating the
In April 1935 Tugwell and Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration (RA), a unit of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. 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 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."[10] 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.[11]
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.[12][13]
Tugwell had previously been denounced as "Rex the Red".[14] 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.[15]
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.[16]
Director of New York City Planning Commission
In 1938 Tugwell was appointed as the first director of the
Governor of Puerto Rico
Tugwell served as the last appointed American
As he prepared to retire from the Governorship, Tugwell was instrumental in getting the first Puerto Rican appointed to the job,
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, 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.
Progressive Party (1948)
In 1948, Tugwell served as chair of the platform committee for the
Later life
Late in life, Tugwell 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.[21] During this time, he wrote several books, including a biography 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.
- 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 D. 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.[22]
- Tugwell is mentioned in the Joan Didion essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem 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. 75–92 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. ISBN 978-0-8371-0252-8
- 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. ISBN 978-0-670-00273-3
- Grover Cleveland, Macmillan, 1968.
- In Search of Roosevelt, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972. ISBN 978-0-674-44625-0
- The Emerging Constitution, Harper's Magazine Press, 1974. ISBN 978-0-06-128225-6.
- The Diary of Rexford G. Tugwell: The New Deal, 1932–1935 (Greenwood, 1992)
Tugwell also wrote the foreword to Edward C. Banfield'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
- ^ Namorato, Michael. Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography. 1988. 11–18.
- ^ The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919–1933, The Age of Roosevelt, By Arthur M. Schlesinger, p. 210
- ^ A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis
- ^ The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, Part One
- ^ Namorato, Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography, pp 21–54.
- ISBN 978-0415862875.
- ^ Namorato, Michael. Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography. 1988. 35–54.
- ^ Sternsher, Bernard. Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal. Rutgers University Press, 1964. 183–193.
- ^ Namorato, Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography. pp. 81–82.
- ^ Chapter 16, "Gradual Money and Cataclysmic Money," p. 310
- ^ Chapter 16, "Gradual Money and Cataclysmic Money," p. 310
- ^ 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).
- ^ Arnold, Joseph. The New Deal in the Suburbs. Ohio State University Press, 1971.
- ^ Gilbert, Jess and Carolyn Howe. "Beyond "State vs. Society": Theories of the State and New Deal Agricultural Policies." American Sociological Review 56, no. 2 (1991): 216.
- ^ Namorato, Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography. 1988. 114–115.
- ^ Milestones, Dec. 5, 1938 "Rexford Tugwell, Time, 1938
- ^ 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.
- ^ Carmelo Rosario Nadal. Ponce en su Historia Moderna: 1945–2002. Secretaria de Cultura y Turismo. Gobierno Municipal de Ponce. 2003. pp. 75–76.
- ^ Namorato, Michael. Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography. 1988. 138–143.
- ^ Lawrence, W. H. (July 26, 1948). "New Party Blocks Ban on Endorsing Red Foreign Policy: With Communists in Control, Platform Is Adopted Avoiding Any Criticism of Russia". The New York Times. p. 1. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
- ^ Namorato, Michael. Rexford G. Tugwell: A Biography. 1988. 149–162.
- ^ "Mank (2020) - IMDb". IMDb. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
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"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000 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). [online]
External links
- Works by or about Rexford Tugwell at Internet Archive
- Biography on Spartacus Educational
- Rexford G. Tugwell Mini-biography at the United States National Park Servicewebsite.
- Tugwell Room of the Greenbelt Library.
- 1934 Time Magazine Cover featuring Rexford G. Tugwell
- "Rexford Tugwell". JSTOR.
- Newspaper clippings about Rexford Tugwell in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW