Robert F. Wagner

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For other persons named Robert Wagner, see Robert Wagner (disambiguation).

Portrait of Robert F. Wagner in the U.S. Senate Reception Room

Robert Ferdinand Wagner (8 June 1877–4 May 1953) was a Democratic United States Senator from New York from 1927 until 1949. He was born in Nastätten, Province Hesse-Nassau, Germany, and immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1885. His family settled in New York City and Wagner attended the public schools. He graduated from the University of the City of New York (now named New York University) in 1898 and from New York Law School in 1900. He was admitted to the bar in 1900. He was the father of Robert F. Wagner, Jr., who became mayor of New York City.

Wagner commenced practice in New York City and was a member of the State Assembly (1905-1908), member of the State senate (1909-1918; the last eight years as Democratic floor leader), chairman of the State Factory Investigating Committee (1911-1915), delegate to the New York constitutional conventions in 1915 and 1938, and justice of the supreme court of New York (1919-1926).

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.[1] Wagner was the chairman of the Committee on Patents in the Seventy-third Congress, of the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys in the Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Congresses, and of the Committee on Banking and Currency in the Seventy-fifth through Seventy-ninth Congresses. He was a delegate to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944.

His most important legislative achievements include the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the United States Housing Authority in 1937. After serving as chairman of the National Labor Board and witnessing first-hand its problems, he introduced and won passage of the National Labor Relations Act, or Wagner Act, that created the National Labor Relations Board in 1935. He also introduced the Railway Pension Law, and co-sponsored the Wagner-O'Day Act, the predecessor to the Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act.

On the cover of Time magazine: March 19, 1934.

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 a bill that would punish sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs. He believed that he would lose the support of Southern Democrats in Congress and lose his entire New Deal program. 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.

Robert Wagner died in New York City and is interred in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York City.

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.

[edit] Reference

J. Joseph Huthmacher. Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (1968)

Preceded by Martin H. Glynn	Acting Lieutenant Governor of New York 1913-1914	Succeeded by Edward Schoeneck
Preceded by James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr.	U.S. Senator (Class 3) from New York 1927-1949	Succeeded by John Foster Dulles