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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Robert Ferdinand Wagner |
For more information on Robert Ferdinand Wagner, visit Britannica.com.
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Oxford Dictionary of Political Biography:
Robert Wagner |
(b. Germany, 8 June 1877; d. 4 May 1953) US; US Senator Wagner emigrated with his family to New York in 1885. He was educated in New York and qualified as a lawyer. He made his reputation in fighting many high-profile labour cases. He was elected as a Democrat in the state Senate and became the party's floor leader. At the time he had to work with the notorious Tammany Hall political machine. As a pro-labour politician, he sponsored bills covering wages and working hours for women and children and workmen's compensation. He became a judge in 1918. In 1926 he was elected to the Senate for New York and he was re-elected three times until his retirement from ill-health in 1949. In the Senate he continued with his interest in labour and employment issues and was a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. He introduced the National Recovery Act (NRA), to provide for minimum wage and maximum hours and tackle unemployment by public works construction programmes. His Wagner Act (1935), passed after the Supreme Court struck down the NRA, protected workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively through their own representatives and forbade employers from discriminating against unions. He also helped to establish the National Labor Relations Board, to rule on disputes arising from the act and to settle inter-union disputes. Some of these gains for labour were later reversed by the *Taft-Hartley Act passed in 1947 by a Republican Congress. In his first term in the Senate, he sponsored a bill for a census of the unemployed, a scheme of public works, and the creation of an employment agency to assist in the transfer of labour from areas of high to low unemployment.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Robert Ferdinand Wagner |
Robert Ferdinand Wagner (1877-1953) was probably the most effective legislative leader in the history of the U.S. Senate and one of the principal architects of modern American political liberalism.
Robert F. Wagner was born in Nastätten, Germany, on June 8, 1877, into a staunch Lutheran family, the youngest of nine children. In 1886 the family emigrated to New York City. Robert was unable to speak English when he entered school, but he proved a diligent student. He sold newspapers and worked as a grooery boy to supplement the family's income. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1898, a Phi Beta Kappa. Two years later he graduated from the New York Law School and gained admittance to the state bar.
Attracted to politics, Wagner associated himself with the Democratic Tammany Hall machine. In 1904 he won election to the New York Assembly and 4 years later to the Senate, becoming Democratic floor leader. He helped push through legislation pertaining to workmen's compensation and other social welfare measures.
In 1926, after eight years as a member of the New York Supreme Court, Wagner won election to the U.S. Senate. He was reelected three times. He became chairman of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee in 1931; 2 years later, after the election of Franklin Roosevelt and solid Democratic majorities, Wagner moved to the center of the liberal reform movement. He drafted the crucial National Industrial Recovery Act, and in 1933-1934 he chaired the new National Labor Board. During the remainder of the 1930s Wagner authored and sponsored a long list of far-reaching social legislation. In 1935 his career reached its pinnacle with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act - commonly called the Wagner Act - which committed the Federal government to protecting and encouraging unions.
Wagner was a loyal supporter of Roosevelt's policies. During World War II Wagner's main concern was warbred inflation. In the Employment Act of 1946 he helped bring about Federal responsibility for maintaining a healthy economy, and at his urging Congress significantly expanded social security coverage and benefits.
Wagner gave up his Senate seat in 1949. He died in New York City on May 4, 1953. His son, Robert Wagner, Jr., was mayor of New York City from 1954 to 1965.
Further Reading
J. Joseph Huthmacher gives a full account of Wagner's public career in Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (1968). Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt (3 vols., 1957-1960), shows Wagner to be a central figure in the development of the New Deal, as does William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940 (1963). Wagner's work in labor and housing legislation is treated by Harry A. Millis and Emily Clark Brown, From the Wagner Act to Taft-Hartley (1950), and by Timothy L. McDonnel, The Wagner Housing Act (1957). For Wagner's later employment legislation see Stephen K. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story behind the Employment Act of 1946 (1950).
Oxford Guide to the US Government:
Robert F. Wagner |
• Born: June 8, 1877, Nastatten, Germany
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: College of the City of New York, graduated, 1898; New York Law School, graduated, 1900
• Senator from New York: 1927–49
• Died: May 4, 1953, New York, N.Y.
Short, stocky, with a heavy New York accent (saying “woik” for “work”), Robert F. Wagner may have appeared to be a typical machine politician. But he proved to be one of the most effective legislators of the New Deal era. Wagner worked best behind closed committee doors, making his case for legislation, reaching necessary compromises, and rounding up votes before going into debate on the Senate floor. Wagner sponsored a long list of important legislation, but his two greatest achievements occurred in 1935: the Wagner Act, guaranteeing labor's right to organize into unions, and the Social Security Act to provide old-age pensions to most Americans. Milton Handler, a young New Dealer who watched Wagner firsthand, credited Wagner's legislative success to these qualities:
First, his ingrained, humanitarian, progressive philosophy; second, his uncanny capacity to recruit good men to do the detail work for him; third, his masterful ability to maneuver bills through the legislative mill; and fourth, and most important of all, his willingness and determination to stick to his basic conviction through thick and thin—in a word, his “guts.”
Sources
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Robert Ferdinand Wagner |
West's Encyclopedia of American Law:
Wagner, Robert Ferdinand |
Robert Ferdinand Wagner served as a U.S. senator from New York from 1927 to 1949. Wagner was a strong believer in the social welfare state and sponsored many federal laws that have shaped U.S. law and society. In the 1930s he worked closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and helped to implement much of Roosevelt's New Deal agenda.
Wagner was born on June 8, 1877, in Nast;auatten, Germany. With his family he immigrated to the United States in 1885, settling in a New York City tenement neighborhood. He graduated from City College in New York in 1898 and studied law at New York Law School, where he earned his degree in 1900.
Wagner was admitted to the New York bar in 1900 and practiced law on his own for a short time. He then abandoned his law practice to enter Democratic party politics. Wagner worked his way up the party ladder and won a seat in the state legislature in 1904. In 1908 he was elected to the New York Senate, where he soon established himself as a socially progressive leader, investigating industrial working conditions and introducing legislation that sought to use the power of government to improve the lives of blue-collar workers and the poor.
Wagner became a judge of the New York Supreme Court in 1919 but resigned in 1926 to run as the Democratic party candidate for the U.S. Senate. He won the election and took office in 1927 during the heyday of the "Roaring Twenties." The U.S. economy was at its postwar zenith, and the Republican party controlled Congress. Wagner introduced legislation to help organized labor and the unemployed, but his proposals were unsuccessful.
Wagner's political fortunes changed dramatically with the Great Depression of the 1930s and the election of President Roosevelt in 1932. Like Wagner, Roosevelt believed that the federal government needed to play a larger role in the activities of the national economy and in the lives of U.S. citizens. Wagner helped draft and sponsor the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933 (48 Stat. 195), which established the National Recovery Administration to administer codes of fair practice within each industry. Under these codes, labor and management negotiated minimum wages, maximum hours, and fair trade practices for each industry. The Roosevelt administration sought to use these codes to stabilize production, raise prices, and protect labor and consumers. In Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S. Ct. 837, 79 L. Ed. 1570 (1935), however, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the NIRA.
Wagner also sponsored the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C.A. §301 et seq.), the bedrock of U.S. social welfare law. He is best remembered for the Wagner Act, also known as the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (29 U.S.C.A. §151 et seq.). The Wagner Act recognized for the first time the right of workers to organize unions and to collectively bargain with employers. The statute also established the National Labor Relations Board to enforce labor-management relations in the United States.
Wagner sponsored numerous New Deal programs, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and the U.S. Housing Authority, which provided loans for low-cost public housing. When World War II began, the country's attention shifted to international issues, and Wagner's social welfare agenda fell out of favor. He lobbied unsuccessfully for a national health care system and for antilynching legislation.
Wagner resigned from the Senate for health reasons in 1949. He died on May 5, 1953, in New York City. In 1954 his son, Robert F. Wagner, Jr., was elected mayor of New York City and served until 1965.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Robert F. Wagner |
| Robert Ferdinand Wagner I | |
|---|---|
| Portrait of Robert F. Wagner in the U.S. Senate Reception Room | |
| United States Senator from New York |
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| In office March 4, 1927 – June 28, 1949 |
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| Preceded by | James W. Wadsworth, Jr. |
| Succeeded by | John Foster Dulles |
| Acting Lieutenant Governor of New York | |
| In office October 17, 1913 – December 31, 1914 |
|
| Governor | Martin H. Glynn |
| Preceded by | Martin H. Glynn as Lieutenant Governor |
| Succeeded by | Edward Schoeneck as Lieutenant Governor |
| Personal details | |
| Born | June 8, 1877 Nastätten, Hesse-Nassau, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire |
| Died | May 4, 1953 (aged 75) New York City, New York |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Children | Robert Ferdinand Wagner II |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Robert Ferdinand Wagner I (June 8, 1877 – May 4, 1953) was an American politician. He was a Democratic U.S. Senator from New York from 1927 to 1949.
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He was born in Nastätten, then in the Province Hesse-Nassau, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire (now in Rhein-Lahn-Kreis, Rhineland-Palatinate, Federal Republic of Germany) and immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1885.[1] His family settled in New York City and Wagner attended the public schools. He graduated from the College of the City of New York (now named City College) in 1898 where he was a brother of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity and from New York Law School in 1900. He was admitted to the bar in 1900.
He was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1905 to 1908, and of the New York State Senate from 1909 to 1918. He was President pro tempore of the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1914, and became Acting Lieutenant Governor of New York after the impeachment of Governor William Sulzer, and the succession of Lt. Gov. Martin H. Glynn to the governorship. In 1914, while Wagner remained President pro tem, John F. Murtaugh was chosen Majority Leader of the State Senate, the only time before 2009 that the two offices were not held by the same person. In January 1915, following the loss of the Senate majority by the Democrats, Wagner became Minority Leader until his retirement in 1918. Also, during his time in the State Senate, he served as Chairman of the State Factory Investigating Committee (1911–1915). Wagner was a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Conventions of 1915 and 1938, and a justice of the New York Supreme Court from 1919 to 1926.
Wagner was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1926, and reelected in 1932, 1938 and 1944. He resigned on June 28, 1949, due to ill health. He was unable to attend any sessions of the 80th or 81st Congress from 1947 to 1949 because of a heart ailment.[2] Wagner was Chairman of the Committee on Patents in the 73rd Congress, of the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys in the 73rd and 74th Congresses, and of the Committee on Banking and Currency in the 75th through 79th Congresses. He was a delegate to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944.
Wagner, who had known the future President when they were in the New York state legislature together, was a member of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Brain Trust. He was very involved in labor issues, fought for legal protection and rights for workers, and was a leader in crafting the New Deal.
His most important legislative achievements include the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act of 1937. After the Supreme Court ruled the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration unconstitutional, Wagner helped pass the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) in 1935,[3] a similar but much more expansive bill. The National Labor Relations Act, perhaps Wagner's greatest achievement, was a seminal event in the history of organized labor in the United States. It created the National Labor Relations Board, which mediated disputes between unions and corporations, and greatly expanded the rights of workers by banning many "unfair labor practices" and guaranteeing all workers the right to form a union. He also introduced the Railway Pension Law, and cosponsored the Wagner-O'Day Act, the predecessor to the Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act.
Wagner was instrumental in writing the Social Security Act, and originally introduced it in the United States Senate.
The Wagner-Hatfield amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, aimed at turning over twenty-five percent of all radio channels to non-profit radio broadcasters, did not pass. He also co-sponsored with Rep. Edith Rogers (R-Mass.) the Wagner-Rogers Bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugees under the age of 14 to the United States from Nazi Germany, but the bill was rejected by the United States Congress in February 1939.
Wagner and Edward P. Costigan sponsored a federal anti-Lynching law. In 1935 attempts were made to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to support the Costigan-Wagner Bill. However, Roosevelt refused to support the bill, not wanting to alienate Southern Democrats in Congress and lose their support for New Deal programs. There were 18 lynchings of blacks in the South in 1935, but after the threat of federal legislation the number fell to eight in 1936, and to two in 1939.
On June 28, 1949, Wagner resigned from the U.S. Senate, due to ill health; John Foster Dulles was appointed by Governor Thomas E. Dewey on July 7, 1949, to temporarily fill the vacancy.
He died in New York City, and is interred in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York City.
His son, Robert F. Wagner, Jr., was Mayor of New York City from 1954 to 1965.
On September 14, 2004, a portrait of Wagner, along with one of Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, was unveiled in the Senate Reception Room. The new portraits joined a group of distinguished former Senators, including Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and Robert A. Taft. Portraits of this group of Senators, known as the "Famous Five", were unveiled on March 12, 1959.
The public middle school located at 220 east 76th Street in New York City is named after him.
American Passages: a History of the United States
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![]() | Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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