Which brings us now to the amazing career of Professor Rexford Guy Tugwell, Ph.D.—and probably more degrees than that. As an individual, he may not be worth a chapter, but as one who affected the lives of millions, and as a sensationalized and abused symbol of the "brain trust," he is worth a Five Foot Shelf.

So I am going to tell you about him. Then I will get down to some rural problems exemplified in these chapters on the South and the Southwest, but which apply to the whole nation. For surely enough, all the problems of land and life are as important to the city dwellers today as they were to the cliff-dwellers of yesterday who climbed down from their cliffs with the rise of the sun and gained sustenance from the fields.

But to Rex.

I met him by chance, and liked him. I had ridden into Congress two years after the first big Democratic victory. I had some prejudice against Tugwell, thinking possibly it was true that he was only a crack-pot professor. It seemed strange that I should like him when I first met him.

He has done something important for America in the realm of ideas: he has established the brain-trust idea. Now we know that learning and research in our Government are something very vital—an essentially new and changed concept of government. In the past, we thought of our "statesmen" and "justices" as wise fellows, because they orated and wrote ponderously about conditions and laws. But now we recognize that we need students more than politicians.

In truth, Rex's Resettlement payroll was packed and jammed with professors. For a while they rode high, wide, and handsome. Rex wanted men with college degrees for his key positions. But the academic hierarchy was overdone. The professors lost their influence. Now that Rex has gone to his sugar and molasses, the profs that are left are the ones who have survived a lot of rough treatment and have become reasonably human.

The march of the professor is the greatest advance in the history of our government. We are just beginning to slough off the philosophy of "Old Rough and Ready." It's high time.

Getting to know Tugwell pretty well, I have concluded that he received the dirtiest deal at the hands of the press of any official in the history of America. No public character, including Hauptmann of the Lindbergh case, has been badgered and poked at as much as he. It had an effect on his disposition; he was a little tetchy at times. He never admitted even to himself that the press attacks hurt him. He always said he did not give a damn, but he was sensitive, and he cared.

As for his disposition, he was like a good Texas possum after being captured by kids and put in a barrel. I can remember we used to poke a captive possum with sticks, making him madder and madder. Then some of us would forget, and go to the barrel to give the possum a piece of bread. He would snap and possibly bite the friendly hand. That was Rex, a possum in a barrel being poked at by the press and every enemy of the Administration in America.

But Rex was always fundamentally loyal both to the President and to his subordinates. I often thought, though, with the murderous and palpably unfair press attacks he was getting, that the President should have either struck back at the critics, or should have kicked Rex out. For if there was ever a scapegoat for the Administration, it was Rex.

He was no good with the press. If he had any color to begin with, it all washed out when an interview started. He wouldn't warm up. He wouldn't say anything. Reporters went away with the idea that Rex was either exceedingly dumb or exceedingly cautious. To the last day he never learned.

One time Rex wired me he was to arrive in San Antonio at a certain time. All my newspapers were violently against him and the President (and me). To my surprise, he turned out to be an affable, responsive fellow with the Press; he must have left his professorial cloak behind him, or else squelched his inhibitions awhile.

On arrival, he insisted on seeing, at once, the Alamo, "the Shrine of Texas Liberty." Arriving at the hotel, he met the waiting reporters and praised the heroes who died in the Alamo, the beauty of the place, and said just exactly the right things. The professor was making good.

In the lobby was Jim Ferguson, former governor. Rex and Jim had a conversation that was quite naive, and the next day Rex must have awakened with a headache, for he had made a big hit.

Tugwell had a secretary along, a kid professor, who looked nutty, and was. He tried to shield the "Doctor." But Rex posed for pictures, and smiled. Every now and then I would see a sad look, and I think it must have been that he realized he was enjoying himself, which was out of order.

We traveled over Texas. Anyone who has never traveled over Texas has never traveled. We had all of the advantage of being a part of the United States, but of being close by Mexico. We whoop and holler and play cowboy, but we scrape and bow and smile like Castillian gentlement, and then we give you a little touch of the aristocratic old South. Rex went through the paces like a trained race horse; worse, he was the delight of the Rotarians and the Kiwanians.

Having "done," we arrived at Laredo, and the International Bridge. It was like a Pan-American Peace Conference. There were all kinds of Excellencies for the occasion. All the dignitaries, including Rex, lined up on the bridge, and had their pictures taken. By the route of Mexican Diplomacy, wining and dining, military salutes, generals, and his excellencies los distinguidos señores this and that, we arrived finally at Saltillo, Mexico, the capital of Coahuila, once the capital of Texas, and where my grandfather had become a prisoner of war.

We thought we were safe from courtesy. We were standing in the lobby of the hotel. Came the Secretary of the Mayor, who addressed us somewhat as follows: "The distinguished Mayor of the great city of Saltillo, Señor Doctor Gonzales, Colonel of the Army, Professor of our Municipal High School, Senator of the Legislature of the State of Coahuila, respectfully presents his compliments to the distinguished Sub-Secretary of Agriculture, Dr. Rexford G. Tugwell, and desires to inform him that upon tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock the Band of the municipality of Saltillo will play for a period of one hour, and the distinguished Mayor will visit the distinguished Sub-Secretary as a token of honor and of peace between our sister Republics."

This kind of language was duck soup to me, and I was in my element. But Rex's secretary was having almost a breakdown, and shot: "No! No! The Secretary cannot accept!" I butted in and accepted, merely reversing the words of the invitation, starting out with The Distinguished Sub-Secretary accepts, and so forth.

The next morning, as we were standing in the hotel, the band began to show up. They were dressed in brilliant red, blue, and yellow uniforms; they looked like a flock of parakeets. They crowded into the small courtyard, about a hundred strong. We pulled out our chairs and sat down, for the Mayor and his cortége had not yet arrived.

The band started to play.

I think it must have torn the roof off the hotel—whatever was left; it must have shivered every timber in the place, besides rocking the town. In a short while the Mayor arrived with three or four Mexican officers, as well as with Blas Narro, a graduate of Swarthmore, who acted as interpreter. Blas has an ambi-national personality. When he speaks American, he thinks American and acts American; when he speaks Spanish, he has a Mexican psychology and does his part accordingly. Blas did all the introducing, and when the band finished playing we were taken over to the Casino Club and then around the city. We were given a banquet at the best restaurant in town. It was very fine entertainment, even though it was a trifle overwhelming.

Later, during our travels around the hills and looking at the mountains and the springs and the little villages, Rex got to talking about his speech, which he was going to deliver out in Los Angeles. I proposed that he pour fourth the speech, and I was ready to give him some suggestions. But he didn't want any help, although he did practice on me. Just there I noticed the same thing about him that you see about a politician. A politician is perfectly capable of talking natural, but some of them, on making a speech, suddenly begin to bellow and twist their mouths in such an unnatural manner as to be completely unrecognizable. It was the same with Rex—only when he got started he talked like a professor. It was ambiguous, abstruse, academic, tiresome. I give my word of honor I did not know what he was talking about.

So, when he got through talking, I told him I could not understand anything he was saying. He looked at me in amazement. I could see what he was thinking—there was I, with a reasonable education, at least with sense enough to be a Congressman—and I didn't understand him! I think Rex thought I was spoofing him, but as God is my judge, I was not.

In this beautiful valley of Mexico, he proceeded: "It is my belief that the American people, those who are imbued with a liberal philosophy, those who——" He would tell me something, then he would say it as he intended for the speech. For instance, he told me the liberals and progressives ought to stick together. But when he cast this harmless thought into the heavy phrases of his address, it came out as the language later to become famous—or infamous: "our best strategy is to surge forward with the workers and farmers . . . trusting to the genius of our leader for the disposition of our forces and the timing of our attacks."

He used more professorial language and said something about "averting a revolution." I was going blind.

Then, to prove his point, he said: "And the workers and farmers, combining their genius and (another word I couldn't get), and they shall form a nodule. . . ."

I blew up completely.

I said: "Rex, I am sore and insulted, and do not want to hear any more."

"Why?" he asked.

"What in God's name is a nodule?" I said.

"A nodule is——" began Rex.

"Stop! Stop!" I shouted. "Don't tell me. Whenever you use a word that I don't understand, it makes me mad. I am an American! The word nodule is not understood by the American people, nor is it understood by me, which makes it worse—and I do not want to know what it means. Nobody wants to listen to your academic phrases. Nodule my eye! Put your speech in simple language. I never heard of a 'nodule' before, so I don't like it. Besides," I continued, "it sounds like sex perversion."

Then I got out of the car and made a speech. I pointed to the majestic peaks, the green valleys, the mighty sequoias, and delivered a properly rhetorical compliment to the people of Los Angeles, and told a bum joke about the City of Angeles.

Rex feared I was being a demagogue. I insisted that even if I were, the people had a right to know what the speech was about. I told him to point right at the electric light, and say, "Fellow Americans, you are now paying approximately three times too much for your lights—develop Boulder Dam, reduce your rates, have municipal ownership. . . ."

"I thought you said (Rex interjecting) that it was only twice too much. To say 'three' when it is 'two,' is not honest, is not accurate, it is——"

I continued: "Let me make my speech. Take the aggressive, my friend. Next day the power trust can deny their rates are three times too much, and say they are only two times too much. Which only condemns them, and proves your point. But localize your speech at first, give the people who invited you a break——"

Rex (interrupting) . . . "Demagoguery! I do not speak to audiences. I speak with the hope that posterity. . . ."

Oh, me.

Out there in these open spaces we enacted a scene which dramatized one of the fundamental failures of the Administration. Professors with wonderful ideas—but professors who can afford to have Olympian contempt for the politician, since they do not have to be elected.

No man could be elected, or if elected by accident, no man could stay in office if he used this Tugwellian jargon of abstruse and incomprehensible polysyllables.

Let us have knowledge, all we can get. But let us express it so we can understant it, and translate it into efficient action so it will do some good.

Rex told me more about his Los Angeles Speech—which was intended to make history—and did—at least with Mr. Hearst and the reactionary press.

He continued with his speech, the words or content of which I do not remember. Although I did not know what it was all about, I did know that it would get him in trouble, for his language could be stretched into any bizarre and even seditious meaning.

Later, after he had got in trouble, I took his speech out and read it. It was tedious and involved, but it had a lot of good ideas. It was written in such terminology, however, that it gave all the red-baiters in the country a chance to jump on him. The most that they could say about his speech was that Rex had used a few words they didn't like—and had said something about "discipline" "surging forward" and "unholy hands."

Politicians need more scientific and economic understanding; professors need more practical and human touch. These deficiencies have been improved a little; but the future of society demands more improvement.

But the Resettlement Administration has worked out some of the finest plans for the American people. Rex has done some first-class thinking. His ideas about the land and the people, of resettlement and "greenbelt villages," are vital to America, and are far from being "radical."

Whether the Resettlement ideas are correct in detail or not, I do not know. But the problems have at least been stated. The fact that they have been written down is a tremendous advance. The fact that there have been efforts—and failures—is also of tremendous importance.

The fact that some bookkeeper found out the overhead in the Resettlement Administration was too great is also of vital importance. For there is enough information to suggest that a great organization with reasonable overhead will be a success. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on activities like Resettlement, it is true. In spending the hundreds of millions, a great proportion has been spent wisely, and is well invested. But stated either in dollars or in proportion to the millions of humans who must be resettled and reconstructed, what has been done is not a drop in the bucket. The work done is only a small laboratory experiment.