U.S. At War: Rex in Puerto Rico

After silver-haired, handsome Rexford Guy Tugwell took office in Puerto Rico last September as Governor, little was heard of him until last week, when from that much-experimented-on island came roars and rumors of roars.

To the White House went an angry cable from leaders of Puerto Rico’s Coalition Party, begging President Roosevelt to take Rex Tugwell away. In Washington, slick-haired, solemn Bolivar Pagan, Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, passionately denounced Rex Tugwell as “an American quisling.” Said Commissioner Pagan: “He is doing everything so that loyal American citizens in Puerto Rico become sore and disunited. . . . Governor Tugwell is doing a good job for the Axis powers.”

Neither Commissioner Pagan nor the Coalition leaders seemed to think that Governor Tugwell was a wicked man: they just thought he was a wrong one.

Brain-Truster Tugwell, tarnished glamor boy of the New Deal, had a chance in Puerto Rico to make a political comeback. Thanks largely to the good offices of bearish, sad-eyed Luis Muñoz Marin, President of Puerto Rico’s Senate, he seemed to be making it.

But, like many another sincere New Dealer, Rex Tugwell is no impartial statesman. He loves the people to beat hell, and he has a fairly simple blueprint of hell. As Governor of Puerto Rico, greyheaded Rex Tugwell went grayer for the Popular Democratic Party of his friend Muñoz Marin.

Fortnight ago, Rex Tugwell fired the Coalition members of San Juan’s civilian-defense board, replaced them with Populares. Saying that civilian defense had bogged down, he put a friend of Muñoz Marin at the head of civilian defense in San Juan and its neighbor cities. Coalitionists retorted that Tugwell had thrown a wrench in the works, said: “He is harder to see than the Pope.”

Yet by & large Tugwell has shown himself a cautious administrator. Puerto Rico’s Legislature appropriated $7,000,000 to carry out Muñoz Marin’s (and Tugwell’s) pet project of buying up some 200,000 corporate-owned acres of sugar-cane lands, dividing them into tracts of 500 acres or less, then selling them to the hungry, landless jibaros on 40-year terms. So far, not a cent has been spent. Appraisers are still checking over two modest plantations whose owners offered to sell.

Even if the Coalitionists do succeed in ousting Rex Tugwell from the Governor’s chair, he has another to sit in. Before President Roosevelt appointed him Governor, his good friend Muñoz Marin made him Chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico (TIME, Aug. 18). The University has never accepted his resignation. As Governor, he draws $10,000 a year; as Chancellor, he would get $15,000.