Etymology
Early use of the term "brain trust" was patterned on the use of the term "trust" to depict economic consolidation within an industry. This was a subject of much interest at the time and led to the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. In 1888 the Springfield [Missouri] Leader used the term in connection with the consolidation of newspapers in the state: "[Too many newspapers in Columbia, Mo.] overstocked the brain market of that town, and the Columbian and Statesman formed a "trust." ... While sugar, coffee, lumber, whiskey, iron, coal and other trusts are forming we can see no reason why a 'brain trust' can't be organized." [1] Around the same time the Philadelphia Press penned a witticism concerning free traders that made the rounds of U.S. papers. The joke implies the lack of thought output, just as "trusts (consolidation of productive units) reduced industrial output: "Some of the free trade shouters display enough ignorance to excite a suspicion that they have been made the victims of a brain 'trust.'" [2] Using the term as an analogy to industrial trusts seems to have spread widely in 1888. For example, lawyers who signed a fee-fixing agreement were called a "brain trust." [3] In a long lament of the independence of small editors, the Marion [Ohio] Star says that a "Brains Trust" is evidenced by the "machine made" opinions of gullible editors. [4]
Around the same time the term "brain trust" was employed in a slightly different sense by journalists covering Henry Cabot Lodge. During the Spanish–American War in 1898, a group of journalists would gather in Senator Lodge's committee room and discuss with him the progress of the war. Lodge called this group his "board of strategy," but the Senate press corp called it "the brain trust." [5]
The sense of the term as depicting a collection of well informed experts was this sense that seemed to catch hold. For example, in 1901 a group of journalists in a state press association was called a "brain trust" by the Deseret Evening News. [6] It was not long before the term described a group that was so expert that their advice would be almost inevitably agreed to and acted upon. Such was the reference to the eight senators who made up the "Brain Trust of the Senate" as described by William Allen White in the Saturday Evening Post . [7] That use became regular for the next two decades, as can be seen from the use by Time magazine in 1928, which ran a headline on a meeting of the American Council on Learned Societies titled "Brain Trust". [8]
Roosevelt's "Brain Trust"
Franklin D. Roosevelt's speechwriter and legal counsel Samuel Rosenman suggested having an academic team to advise Roosevelt in March 1932. In 1932, The New York Times writer James Kieran first used the term Brains Trust (shortened to Brain Trust later) when he applied it to the close group of experts that surrounded United States presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt. According to Roosevelt Brain Trust member Raymond Moley, Kieran coined the term, however Rosenman contended that Louis Howe, a close advisor to the President, first used the term but used it derisively in a conversation with Roosevelt. [8] [9]
The core of the Roosevelt brain trust initially consisted of a group of Columbia Law School professors (Moley, Tugwell, and Berle). These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the First New Deal (1933). Although they never met together as a group, they each had Roosevelt's ear. Many newspaper editorials and editorial cartoons ridiculed them as impractical idealists.
The core of the Roosevelt brain trust later consisted of men associated with Harvard Law School (Cohen, Corcoran, and Frankfurter). These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the Second New Deal (1935–1936).
The White House chief of staff is the head of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a cabinet position, in the federal government of the United States.
The fireside chats were a series of evening radio addresses given by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, between 1933 and 1944. Roosevelt spoke with familiarity to millions of Americans about recovery from the Great Depression, the promulgation of the Emergency Banking Act in response to the banking crisis, the 1936 recession, New Deal initiatives, and the course of World War II. On radio, he quelled rumors, countered conservative-dominated newspapers, and explained his policies directly to the American people. His tone and demeanor communicated self-assurance during times of despair and uncertainty. Roosevelt was regarded as an effective communicator on radio, and the fireside chats kept him in high public regard throughout his presidency. Their introduction was later described as a "revolutionary experiment with a nascent media platform."
Samuel Irving Rosenman was an American lawyer, judge, Democratic Party activist and presidential speechwriter. He coined the term "New Deal", and helped articulate liberal policies during the heyday of the New Deal coalition. He was the first person to hold the position of White House Counsel.
Rexford Guy Tugwell was an American economist who became part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first "Brain Trust", a group of Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations leading up to Roosevelt's New Deal. Tugwell served in FDR's administration until he was forced out in 1936. He was a specialist on planning and believed the government should have large-scale plans to move the economy out of the Great Depression because private businesses were too frozen in place to do the job. He helped design the New Deal farm program and the Resettlement Administration that moved subsistence farmers into small rented farms under close supervision. His ideas on suburban planning resulted in the construction of Greenbelt, Maryland, with low-cost rents for relief families. He was denounced by conservatives for advocating state-directed economic planning to overcome the Great Depression.
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Stuart Chase was an American economist, social theorist, and writer. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His thought was shaped by Henry George, by economic philosopher Thorstein Veblen, by Fabian socialism, and briefly by the Communist social and educational experiments in the Soviet Union to around 1930, though Chase was broadly a modern American liberal.
Raymond Charles Moley was an American political economist. Initially a leading supporter of the New Deal, he went on to become its bitter opponent before the end of the Great Depression.
The Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico (GDB) —Spanish: Banco Gubernamental de Fomento para Puerto Rico (BGF)— is the government bond issuer, intragovernmental bank, fiscal agent, and financial advisor of the government of Puerto Rico. The bank, along with its subsidiaries and affiliates, serves as the principal entity through which Puerto Rico channels its issuance of bonds. As an overview, the different executive agencies of the government of Puerto Rico and its government-owned corporations either issue bonds with the bank as a proxy, or owe debt to the bank itself.
Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. was an American lawyer, educator, writer, and diplomat. He was the author of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, a professor at Columbia University, and an important member of US President Franklin Roosevelt's "Brain Trust."
John Franklin Carter a.k.a. Jay Franklin a.k.a. Diplomat a.k.a. Unofficial Observer (1897–1967) was an American journalist, columnist, biographer and novelist. He notably wrote the syndicated column, "We the People", under his pen name Jay Franklin. He wrote over 30 books on a variety of subjects, including his detective novels about the character Dennis Tyler. In his column, he was one of the few who predicted Truman's victory in the 1948 presidential election.
Frederic Clemson Howe was a progressive reformer, author, lawyer, member of the Ohio Senate, a Georgist, and Commissioner of Immigration of the Port of New York. He was also founder and president of the League of Small and Subject Nationalities.
The term brains trust may refer to:
The Frazier–Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act was an Act of Congress passed in the United States in 1934 that restricted the ability of banks to repossess farms.
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression is a book by Amity Shlaes published by HarperCollins in 2007. The book is a re-analysis of the events of the Great Depression, generally from a free market perspective. The book criticizes Herbert Hoover and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff as exacerbating the Depression through government intervention. It opines that Franklin D. Roosevelt pursued erratic policies that froze investment and failed to take the steps needed to stop the Depression, and that the New Deal extended the length of the Depression and had deleterious effects on individuals.
Frank Richardson Kent (1877–1958) was an American journalist and political theorist of the 1920s and 1930s whose Baltimore Sun column "The Great Game of Politics" was syndicated nationally.
The Office of Management and Budget of Puerto Rico —Spanish: Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto de Puerto Rico (OGP)— is a Cabinet-level office, and the largest office within the Office of the Governor of Puerto Rico. The main job of the office is to help the governor prepare the budget. The office also measures the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures and see if they comply with the governor's policies. Its current director is Jose I. Marrero Rosado.
The 1938 United States Senate election in Georgia took place on November 8, 1938. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Walter F. George was re-elected to a third term in office, holding off a primary challenge from Eugene Talmadge and Lawrence Camp. At this time, Georgia was a one-party state. George's victory in the September 14 primary was tantamount to election, and he had only nominal opposition in the general election.
The Berle-Dodd debate is the name for a series of exchanges over the purposes of the corporation between the New Deal architect, A. A. Berle, and Merrick Dodd, a law professor. In this debate, Berle argued that corporations should "serve... all society" through legally enforceable rules, and argued that shareholders' interests should ultimately be "equal" or "subordinated to a number of claims by labor, by customers and patrons, by the community". Dodd argued that corporate powers should be regarded as held on "trust" by directors and managers, and considered it "undesirable... to give increased emphasis... to the view that business corporations exist for the sole purpose of making profits for their stockholders". This debate has become well known in corporate governance, with widely conflicting interpretations, for the conflict over the extent to which corporations should pursue "shareholder value" or the "public interest". Both Berle and Dodd agreed that the corporation should pursue the public interest, but were initially at odds in how this was achieved.
The presidential transition of Franklin D. Roosevelt began when he won the United States 1932 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect of the United States, and ended when Roosevelt was inaugurated at noon EST on March 4, 1933.
