FDR's "Brain Trust"
Prior to his election as President in 1932, as well as during the transition period after the election and into his Presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was advised by a group of trusted advisors that he referred to as his "Brain Trust". Included in this group were such persons as Raymond Moley, Frances Perkins (who would become the first female member of the federal cabinet), and Rexford Tugwell. Also advising Roosevelt was his long-time advisor Louis McHenry Howe.
Ray Moley was a political economist who received his PhD from Columbia University in 1918. In 1918–19 he was also director of Americanization work program under the Ohio State Council of Defense. He joined the Barnard College faculty in 1923, then became a professor of law at Columbia University from 1928–1954, where he was a specialist on the criminal justice system. He supported then-New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt in his bid for the presidency in 1932, and he recruited fellow Columbia professors to form the original "Brain Trust" to advise Roosevelt during his presidential campaign. Despite ridicule from the editorial pages of a number of newspapers, as well as from their political cartoonists, Roosevelt's "Brain Trust" went to Washington and became powerful figures in Roosevelt's New Deal. Moley wrote a number of important speeches for FDR, and wrote the majority of Roosevelt's first inaugural address. Although he did not pen the famous line, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," it was Moley who was responsible for FDR's use of the term "the Forgotten Man" in earlier speeches. He claimed credit for inventing the term "New Deal," though this is not something that is generally accepted. Moley also wrote various pamphlets and articles on the teaching of government. When assessing the new president's first moves in March of 1933, Moley claimed that capitalism "was saved in eight days."
In mid-1933 Moley began his break with Roosevelt, and although he continued to write speeches for the president until 1936, he became increasingly critical of his policies, and claimed that the New Deal had gone too far. He eventually becoming a conservative Republican.
While Moley was a conservative economist, Rexford Tugwell was an economist from the other end of the political spectrum. At Columbia University he had taught economics from 1920 to 1932. He was an experimentalist economist who called for agricultural planning to stop the rural poverty that had become prevalent due to a crop surplus after the First World War. He supported this method of controlling production, prices, and costs during the Great Depression. In 1932 Tugwell was invited to join Roosevelt's Brain Trust. 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 (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 of their crops. Tugwell's department managed the production of key crops by adjusting the subsidies for non-production. This practice and its enabling legislation was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1936 in United States v. Butler.
Tugwell was also 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. This was especially necessary given the widespread damage of the 1930s' Dust Bowls. In April 1935 Tugwell and Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration (RA), a unit of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Under Tugwell's direction, the RA tried 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. Tugwell said of 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." 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, who was known to his critics as "Rex the Red," was branded as a communist because of the RA's social planning aspects. He earned this nickname even though he was never affiliated in any way with the Communist Party. Given the opposition to his policies, Tugwell resigned from the Roosevelt administration at the end of 1936.
Frances Perkins had held various positions in the New York state government and in 1919 she was added to the Industrial Commission of the State of New York by Governor Al Smith. Her nomination was met with protests from both manufacturers and labor, but Smith stood by Perkins as someone who could be a voice for women in the workforce. Some state senators pointed to Perkins's not taking her husband's name as a sign that she was a radical. Her fellow Commissioner James M. Lynch called Perkins’s contributions "invaluable" and predicted a bright future for her. He was correct. In 1929, the newly elected New York governor, Franklin Roosevelt, appointed Perkins as the inaugural New York state industrial commissioner. As commissioner, Perkins supervised an agency with 1,800 employees. In that role she expanded factory investigations, reduced the workweek for women to 48 hours, and championed minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws. She worked to put an end to child labor and to provide safety for women workers.
Perkins advised Roosevelt on labor matters, including how to tackle the massive unemployment that the Great Depression had brought. In 1933, Roosevelt asked Perkins to join his cabinet. Perkins presented Roosevelt with a long list of labor programs for which she would fight, from Social Security to minimum wage. Roosevelt nominated Perkins as Secretary of Labor. The nomination was met with support from the National League of Women Voters and the Women's Party, but with criticism from the American Federation of Labor.
As secretary, Perkins oversaw the Department of Labor. Perkins went on to hold the position for 12 years, longer than any other Secretary of Labor. She also became the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the United States, making her the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession. Roosevelt consistently supported the goals and programs of Secretary Perkins. As Secretary of Labor, Perkins played a role in the New Deal by helping to write legislation. Her most important contribution was to help design the Social Security Act of 1935.
Louis Howe attached himself to rising Democratic star Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1909 and worked with FDR for the rest of his life. Howe oversaw Roosevelt's campaign for the New York State Senate, worked with him in the Navy Department, and acted as an advisor and campaign manager during Roosevelt's 1920 vice presidential run. After Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921, resulting in partial paralysis, Howe became Roosevelt's public representative, keeping his political career alive during his recovery. He arranged Roosevelt's 1924 "Happy Warrior" convention speech that returned him to the public eye, and helped to run Roosevelt's successful 1928 campaign to become Governor of New York. Howe then spent the next four years laying the groundwork for Roosevelt's landslide 1932 presidential victory. As President Roosevelt's secretary, Howe helped the president to shape the early programs of the New Deal, particularly the Civilian Conservation Corps. Howe grew ill shortly after Roosevelt's election, and died before the end of his first term.
Howe had also acted as a political advisor to Franklin's wife, Eleanor, and he encouraged her to take an active role in politics. Initially put off by How, Eleanor later called Howe one of the most influential people in her life. Roosevelt publicly credited Howe and James Farley for his first election to the presidency in 1932.
Other advisors to Roosevelt in the early stages of his presidency included friends and associates such as Edward J. Flynn, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Jesse I. Straus, Frank C. Walker, and William H. Woodin (who would later become FDR's Treasury secretary.) Working out of the Roosevelt campaign's national headquarters at the New York Biltmore Hotel was Chair of the Democratic National Committee James Farley, who would become Postmaster-General in FDR's first cabinet. Roosevelt received legal counsel from Samuel Rosenman. Others providing some assistance to Roosevelt's transition were James F. Byrnes, Homer Cummings, Josephus Daniels, Lewis W. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Edward M. House, Daniel Roper, and Swagar Sherley.
In 1932, The New York Times writer James Kieran first used the term Brains Trust (shortened to Brain Trust later) for this group of FDR's advisors. Sam Rosenman contended that Louis Howe first used the term but used it derisively in a conversation with Roosevelt. The group played a key role in shaping the policies of the First New Deal. Although they never met together as a group, they each had Roosevelt's ear.
Ray Moley was a political economist who received his PhD from Columbia University in 1918. In 1918–19 he was also director of Americanization work program under the Ohio State Council of Defense. He joined the Barnard College faculty in 1923, then became a professor of law at Columbia University from 1928–1954, where he was a specialist on the criminal justice system. He supported then-New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt in his bid for the presidency in 1932, and he recruited fellow Columbia professors to form the original "Brain Trust" to advise Roosevelt during his presidential campaign. Despite ridicule from the editorial pages of a number of newspapers, as well as from their political cartoonists, Roosevelt's "Brain Trust" went to Washington and became powerful figures in Roosevelt's New Deal. Moley wrote a number of important speeches for FDR, and wrote the majority of Roosevelt's first inaugural address. Although he did not pen the famous line, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," it was Moley who was responsible for FDR's use of the term "the Forgotten Man" in earlier speeches. He claimed credit for inventing the term "New Deal," though this is not something that is generally accepted. Moley also wrote various pamphlets and articles on the teaching of government. When assessing the new president's first moves in March of 1933, Moley claimed that capitalism "was saved in eight days."
In mid-1933 Moley began his break with Roosevelt, and although he continued to write speeches for the president until 1936, he became increasingly critical of his policies, and claimed that the New Deal had gone too far. He eventually becoming a conservative Republican.
While Moley was a conservative economist, Rexford Tugwell was an economist from the other end of the political spectrum. At Columbia University he had taught economics from 1920 to 1932. He was an experimentalist economist who called for agricultural planning to stop the rural poverty that had become prevalent due to a crop surplus after the First World War. He supported this method of controlling production, prices, and costs during the Great Depression. In 1932 Tugwell was invited to join Roosevelt's Brain Trust. 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 (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 of their crops. Tugwell's department managed the production of key crops by adjusting the subsidies for non-production. This practice and its enabling legislation was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1936 in United States v. Butler.
Tugwell was also 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. This was especially necessary given the widespread damage of the 1930s' Dust Bowls. In April 1935 Tugwell and Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration (RA), a unit of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Under Tugwell's direction, the RA tried 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. Tugwell said of 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." 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, who was known to his critics as "Rex the Red," was branded as a communist because of the RA's social planning aspects. He earned this nickname even though he was never affiliated in any way with the Communist Party. Given the opposition to his policies, Tugwell resigned from the Roosevelt administration at the end of 1936.
Frances Perkins had held various positions in the New York state government and in 1919 she was added to the Industrial Commission of the State of New York by Governor Al Smith. Her nomination was met with protests from both manufacturers and labor, but Smith stood by Perkins as someone who could be a voice for women in the workforce. Some state senators pointed to Perkins's not taking her husband's name as a sign that she was a radical. Her fellow Commissioner James M. Lynch called Perkins’s contributions "invaluable" and predicted a bright future for her. He was correct. In 1929, the newly elected New York governor, Franklin Roosevelt, appointed Perkins as the inaugural New York state industrial commissioner. As commissioner, Perkins supervised an agency with 1,800 employees. In that role she expanded factory investigations, reduced the workweek for women to 48 hours, and championed minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws. She worked to put an end to child labor and to provide safety for women workers.
Perkins advised Roosevelt on labor matters, including how to tackle the massive unemployment that the Great Depression had brought. In 1933, Roosevelt asked Perkins to join his cabinet. Perkins presented Roosevelt with a long list of labor programs for which she would fight, from Social Security to minimum wage. Roosevelt nominated Perkins as Secretary of Labor. The nomination was met with support from the National League of Women Voters and the Women's Party, but with criticism from the American Federation of Labor.
As secretary, Perkins oversaw the Department of Labor. Perkins went on to hold the position for 12 years, longer than any other Secretary of Labor. She also became the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the United States, making her the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession. Roosevelt consistently supported the goals and programs of Secretary Perkins. As Secretary of Labor, Perkins played a role in the New Deal by helping to write legislation. Her most important contribution was to help design the Social Security Act of 1935.
Louis Howe attached himself to rising Democratic star Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1909 and worked with FDR for the rest of his life. Howe oversaw Roosevelt's campaign for the New York State Senate, worked with him in the Navy Department, and acted as an advisor and campaign manager during Roosevelt's 1920 vice presidential run. After Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921, resulting in partial paralysis, Howe became Roosevelt's public representative, keeping his political career alive during his recovery. He arranged Roosevelt's 1924 "Happy Warrior" convention speech that returned him to the public eye, and helped to run Roosevelt's successful 1928 campaign to become Governor of New York. Howe then spent the next four years laying the groundwork for Roosevelt's landslide 1932 presidential victory. As President Roosevelt's secretary, Howe helped the president to shape the early programs of the New Deal, particularly the Civilian Conservation Corps. Howe grew ill shortly after Roosevelt's election, and died before the end of his first term.
Howe had also acted as a political advisor to Franklin's wife, Eleanor, and he encouraged her to take an active role in politics. Initially put off by How, Eleanor later called Howe one of the most influential people in her life. Roosevelt publicly credited Howe and James Farley for his first election to the presidency in 1932.
Other advisors to Roosevelt in the early stages of his presidency included friends and associates such as Edward J. Flynn, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Jesse I. Straus, Frank C. Walker, and William H. Woodin (who would later become FDR's Treasury secretary.) Working out of the Roosevelt campaign's national headquarters at the New York Biltmore Hotel was Chair of the Democratic National Committee James Farley, who would become Postmaster-General in FDR's first cabinet. Roosevelt received legal counsel from Samuel Rosenman. Others providing some assistance to Roosevelt's transition were James F. Byrnes, Homer Cummings, Josephus Daniels, Lewis W. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Edward M. House, Daniel Roper, and Swagar Sherley.
In 1932, The New York Times writer James Kieran first used the term Brains Trust (shortened to Brain Trust later) for this group of FDR's advisors. Sam Rosenman contended that Louis Howe first used the term but used it derisively in a conversation with Roosevelt. The group played a key role in shaping the policies of the First New Deal. Although they never met together as a group, they each had Roosevelt's ear.