Franklin D. Roosevelt was a truly great president who led a country on the verge of total economic and psychic collapse through a Depression, an attempted coup d'etat and a war of global scope.
He is often credited with creating the New Deal, which gave millions of Americans the help and hope to face the Great Depression.
But, in truth, FDR didn't call up the New Deal like a spirit from the aether. Much of it had already been designed and implemented twenty years earlier, some over the objections of Roosevelt himself. And much of it was made by one man, a man who Roosevelt had known from his earliest days in politics.
Come get to know him. You owe him a great Deal.
On June 8, 1877, in the town of Nastätten, near Wiesbaden, Reinhard and Magdalene Wagner celebrated the birth of their seventh child, a boy they named Robert. While their life in Nastätten was reasonably secure--Reinhard was a dyer and printer and Magdalene taught school--their older boys, taken with stories of the opportunities in America, urged them to emigrate. And so, on Christmas Eve of 1886, the Wagners arrived in New York.
Sadly, in the industrial explosion that was late-19th century America, Reinhard's skills as a hand craftsman were in little in demand. He and all the family were forced to take menial jobs to make ends meet, save Robert, who was too young to work.
This proved a blessing, as it enabled "Bobby" to take advantage of New York's free public schools. After arriving in America knowing not a word of English, the boy studied hard, supplementing the family's income with after-school and weekend odd jobs, and graduated high school in 1893.
While his parents wanted Bob to enter the workforce, his older brother Augustus insisted that at least one member of the family should attend the tuition-free City College of New York, offering to help support the family scholar. It took him five years, what with supplementing Gus' assistance with part-time jobs, but in 1898, Robert Wagner graduated City College near the top of his class.
In the meantime, most of the Wagner family had returned to Germany, disillusioned with the hard life in New York, but Robert and Gus stayed on. At the encouragement of his childhood friend Jeremiah Mahoney, and with further assistance from Gus and a loan from the father of a boy Wagner had tutored, Robert Wagner graduated from New York University Law School and passed the bar in 1900. Soon after, he and Mahoney started a private practice together.
Law wasn't the only field into which his friend Jere Mahoney led Wagner. In 1898, he followed his friend's lead and began working with the Tammany Hall Democratic machine, speaking for candidates in the 29th and 30th Assembly districts he knew intimately. He frequented the Algonquian Club, Cosgrove's Bar and other Tammany strongholds. He joined the Elks and other fraternal organizations and, whenever and wherever he could, he spoke for Tammany candidates. Finally, in 1904, under Cosgrove's patronage, he secured the Democratic nomination for the Assembly seat from the 30th District.
Wagner represented a break from the Tammany tradition of unschooled, rough populism. Educated, refined and well-spoken, he was a far cry from the classic Tammany boss George "He Seen His Opportunities and He Took 'Em" Plunkitt. Still, as a freshman Assemblyman, he knew to follow the Hall's lead, and he voted as his bosses ordered.
This turned out to be a great mistake, as 1905 marked the beginnings of the Progressive Era of New York politics. When Tammany Democrats killed a bill to reduce the price of natural gas charged to city customers, voters rose up (egged on by William Randolph Heart's paper) and threw the bums out. Unfortunately, Wagner was a Tammany bum.
In '06, Tammany boss Charles Murphy, seeing the tide of reform swelling, pulled a political about-face and endorsed none other than Hearst himself for governor. Hearst switched his support from his original reform candidates to a mix of reform/Tammany contenders, including Wagner, who regained his seat.
All too aware of the price of bucking reform himself, Wagner hit Albany with a bill to force the New York transit system to issue free transfers, so that the same nickel could get a rider anywhere in the city. It was a very popular and populist measure and, by the time it passed, Wagner was a well-known and well-liked politician in the city.
In 1908, Murphy used Wagner in a power play against another Tammany leader, Maurice Featherstone, pushing the young Assemblyman for the Senate seat in the district Featherstone controlled. After a grueling fight, Wagner secured the nomination by a single vote and was elected to the upper house.
In 1910, the Democrats regained the Governor's Mansion and Wagner was named Senate president, over the objections of upstate reform Democrats led by State senator Franklin Roosevelt. Wagner's friend Al Smith was Tammany's choice for leader in the Assembly.
Smith and Wagner, though touted as fresh, young faces, started their leadership positions under an all-Democratic government more or less as party hacks, shepherding legislation that eliminated or weakened boards and agencies headed by Republicans. Despite promises of reform, it looked as if the new Tammany generation would prove to be the same sorts of Machinists as the old.
Then came The Fire.
The story of Robert Wagner's public service proved to be much too long to be told in one diary, so I've decided to serialize. Coming soon: Part 2--The Triangle Fire and the Education of a Liberal.
Happy birthday, Senator Wagner, with deepest gratitude.