Tugwell to Puerto Rico

Dr. Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of the most trusted Brain Trusters of the First New Deal, last week got a new job: chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico. Paradoxically, although it returned him to his original calling as an educator, it looked more like a step toward a political comeback.

Dr. Tugwell, who learned Brain Trusting as a professor at Columbia University, resigned from the Resettlement Administration and the Second New Deal in 1936 to become a businessman (American Molasses Co.). Two years later New York City's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia made him chairman of his City Planning Commission. Last winter Secretary Harold Ickes retrieved him for the Fourth New Deal by sending him to Puerto Rico to study land use.

An authority on the problems of Puerto Rico, which he believes the U.S. has shamefully mismanaged, Tugwell is well-liked by Puerto Ricans. In the university chancellorship (salary: $15,000), they gave him the biggest job they had to offer. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico's Governor Guy J. Swope had resigned, and Washington dopesters named Tugwell as his probable successor. Should Tugwell be appointed Governor, he could serve in that office without pay, take a leave of absence from his chancellorship with pay, and thus, though a U.S.-appointed Governor, remain an employe of the Puerto Ricans.

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