27 Facts About Rexford Tugwell

Rexford Guy Tugwell was an American economist who became part of Franklin D Roosevelt's first "Brain Trust", a group of Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations leading up to Roosevelt's New Deal.

Rexford Tugwell 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.

Rexford Tugwell helped design the New Deal farm program and the Resettlement Administration that moved subsistence farmers into small rented farms under close supervision.

Rexford Tugwell was denounced by conservatives for advocating state-directed economic planning to overcome the Great Depression.

Rexford Tugwell became a professor at various universities, with lengthy service at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Rexford Tugwell wrote twenty books, covering the politics of the New Deal, biographies of major politicians, issues in planning, and memoirs of his experiences.

Rexford Tugwell was born in 1891 in Sinclairville, New York.

Rexford Tugwell began studying economics in graduate work at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his doctorate at Columbia University.

Rexford Tugwell advocated agricultural planning to stop the rural poverty that had become prevalent due to a crop surplus after the First World War.

In 1932 Rexford Tugwell was invited to join President Franklin Roosevelt's team of advisers known as the Brain Trust.

Rexford Tugwell helped create the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and served as its director.

Rexford Tugwell's department managed the production of key crops by adjusting the subsidies for non-production.

Rexford Tugwell was instrumental in creating the Soil Conservation Service in 1933, to restrict cultivation, restore poor-quality land, and introduce better agricultural practices to farmers to conserve the soil.

Rexford Tugwell additionally played a key role in crafting the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Rexford Tugwell was appointed as a vice president at the American Molasses Co.

In 1938 Rexford Tugwell was appointed as the first director of the New York City Planning Commission.

Rexford Tugwell tried to retroactively enforce nonconforming land uses, despite a lack of public or legal support.

Rexford Tugwell's commission sought to establish public housing at moderate densities, yet repeatedly approved FHA requests for greater density.

Robert Moses killed Rexford Tugwell's proposed fifty-year master plan with a fiery public denouncement of its open-space protections.

Rexford Tugwell served as the last appointed American Governor of Puerto Rico, from 1941 to 1946.

Rexford Tugwell worked with the legislature to create the Puerto Rico Planning, Urbanization, and Zoning Board in 1942.

Rexford Tugwell had years of service at the University of Chicago, where he helped develop their planning program.

Rexford Tugwell moved to Greenbelt, Maryland, one of the new suburbs designed and built by the Resettlement Administration under his direction.

Rexford Tugwell participated in the Committee to Frame a World Constitution from 1945 to 1948.

Rexford Tugwell thought the national constitution needed to be amended to enable economic planning.

In 1948, Rexford Tugwell served as chair of the platform committee for the Progressive Party.

Rexford Tugwell's autobiographies include The Light of Other Days, To the Lesser Heights of Morningside, The Stricken Land, A Chronicle of Jeopardy, The Brains Trust, Off Course, and Roosevelt's Revolution: The First Year, a Personal Perspective.