New York State Senate

He was a member of the New York State Senate (16th D.) from 1909 to 1918, sitting in the 132nd, 133rd, 134th, 135th, 136th, 137th, 138th, 139th, 140th and 141st New York State Legislatures. He was President pro tempore of the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1914. Wagner became Acting Lieutenant Governor of New York after the impeachment of Governor William Sulzer, and the succession of Lieutenant Governor Martin H. Glynn to the governorship. In 1914, while Wagner remained President pro tempore, John F. Murtaugh was chosen Majority Leader of the State Senate. That was the only time before 2009 that the two offices were not held by the same person. After the Democrats lost their Senate majority, Wagner was Senate Minority Leader from January 1915 until he retired in 1918.

In the aftermath of the horrible Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he was Chairman of the State Factory Investigating Committee (1911–1915). His Vice Chairman was fellow Tammany Hall politician, Al Smith. They held a series of widely publicized investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking 3500 pages of testimony. They started with the issue of fire safety and moved on to broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory environment. Their findings led to 38 new laws regulating labor in New York State and gave each of them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class. In the process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to progressive endeavors to help workers.^[6][7][8]

Wagner was a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Conventions of 1915 and 1938 and a justice of the New York Supreme Court from 1919 to 1926.

U.S. Senate

President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law, August 14, 1935. (Wagner second from left)

Federal Housing Administrator Stewart McDonald (right) discussing with Senator Robert F. Wagner, author of The Wagner Housing Act

Wagner was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1926 and re-elected in 1932, 1938, and 1944. He resigned on June 28, 1949, due to ill health. He was unable to attend any sessions of the 80th or 81st Congress from 1947 to 1949 because of a heart ailment.^[9] Wagner was the Chairman of the Committee on Patents in the 73rd Congress, of the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys in the 73rd and 74th Congresses, and of the Committee on Banking and Currency in the 75th through 79th Congresses. He was a delegate to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944.

Wagner, who had known the future President when they were in the New York state legislature together, was a member of Franklin Roosevelt's Brain Trust. He was very involved in labor issues, fought for legal protection and rights for workers, and was a leader in crafting the New Deal.

In April 1943, a confidential analysis by British scholar Isaiah Berlin of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the British Foreign Office stated of Wagner:

a veteran Liberal Tammany statesman, author of the United States labour code and devotee of the New Deal who is respected by the White House for his political acumen within his own State no less than for his political connexions. Greatest champion of the Liberal cause in the United States Senate since [George W.] Norris. A typical anti-Nazi German Democrat who has supported all the Administration measures, being usually well in advance of them.^[10]

His most important legislative achievements include the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the Wagner–Steagall Housing Act of 1937. After the Supreme Court ruled the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration unconstitutional, Wagner helped pass the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) in 1935,^[11] a similar but much more expansive bill. The National Labor Relations Act, perhaps Wagner's greatest achievement, was a seminal event in the history of organized labor in the United States. It created the National Labor Relations Board, which mediated disputes between unions and corporations, and greatly expanded the rights of workers by banning many "unfair labor practices" and guaranteeing all workers the right to form a union. He also introduced the Railway Pension Law and cosponsored the Wagner–O'Day Act, the predecessor to the Javits–Wagner–O'Day Act.

Wagner was instrumental in writing the Social Security Act, and originally introduced it in the United States Senate.

The Wagner–Hatfield amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, aimed at turning over twenty-five percent of all radio channels to non-profit radio broadcasters, did not pass. In 1939 he co-sponsored with Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (R–MA) the Wagner–Rogers Bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugees under the age of 14 to the United States from Nazi Germany, but the bill never passed.^[12]

Wagner and Edward P. Costigan sponsored a federal anti-lynching law in 1934. They tried to persuade President Roosevelt to support the bill but Roosevelt refused for fear of alienating Southern Democrats and losing their support for New Deal programs. There were 18 lynchings of blacks in the South in 1935, but after the threat of federal legislation, the number fell to eight in 1936 and to two in 1939.^[13]

On June 28, 1949, Wagner resigned from the Senate because of ill health; John Foster Dulles was appointed by Governor Thomas E. Dewey on July 7, 1949, to fill the vacancy temporarily.