See Biography.
Excerpt (page 9):
Being Governor of Puerto Rico is unquestionably one of the most difficult administrative tasks in the world. The colonial status of the island is reflected in its devious politics. Appointment by the President frees the Governor from dependence on any of the constantly shifting parties, yet leaves him prey to attack by any party which is dissatisfied. No Governor ever has escaped this, but those who believed most in laissez-faire government suffered least. Since the United States took Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898, laissez-faire has meant acceptance of political, economic and social domination by a small private oligarchy. To understand this is to understand how Governor Tugwell can be the most popular executive in the history of the island, can command a working majority in support of his program in the four legislative sessions of his first year in office, and yet can be made to appear on the mainland as a hated tyrant. Mr. Tugwell became Governor in September of 1941. But the story of his fight against the feudalism of sugar began long before that. It was in 1934, while he was Assistant United States Secretary of Agriculture, that he joined, quite accidentally, the battle of Puerto Ricans to free themselves from absentee landlords. He came to the island to plan expansion of the only tropical rain forest under the American flag, and to establish a C.C.C. unit to put jobless young men back to work on the land. He stayed, briefly, to discuss how marginal acreage could be turned from sugar to other crops and thus diversify the base of the island’s economy. Out of his visit came a land distribution and resettlement scheme known as the Chardon Plan, named for one of the men who wrote it, Dr. Carlos E. Chardon. And out of the Chardon Plan came the PRRA, which began the work of reconstruction only to lose support in Congress and reduce its effectiveness for want of funds.
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