Robert Ferdinand WAGNER, Congress, NY (1877-1953)

WAGNER, Robert Ferdinand, a Senator from New York; born in Nastatten, Province Hessen-Nassau, Germany, June 8, 1877; immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1885 and settled in New York City; attended the public schools; graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1898 and from New York Law School in 1900; admitted to the bar in 1900 and commenced practice in New York City; member, State assembly 1905-1908; member, State senate 1909-1918, the last eight years as Democratic floor leader; chairman of the State Factory Investigating Commission 1911-1915; delegate to the New York constitutional conventions in 1915 and 1938; justice of the supreme court of New York 1919-1926; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1926; reelected in 1932, 1938 and 1944 and served from March 4, 1927, until his resignation on June 28, 1949, due to ill health; chairman, Committee on Patents (Seventy-third Congress), Committee on Public Lands and Surveys (Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Congresses), Committee on Banking and Currency (Seventy-fifth through Seventy-ninth Congresses); author of the National Labor Relations Act (“Wagner Act”), that created the National Labor Relations Board in 1935; delegate to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods in 1944; died in New York City, May 4, 1953; interment in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York City.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law; Bryne, Thomas. “The Social Thought of Senator Robert F. Wagner.” Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1951; Huthmacher, J. Joseph. Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism. New York: Atheneum, 1968.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present