https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Keyserling

Leon Hirsch Keyserling (January 11, 1908 – August 9, 1987) was an American economist and lawyer. During his career he helped draft major pieces of Fair Deal legislation and advised President Harry S. Truman as head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Early life

Keyserling was born in 1908 in Charleston, South Carolina and grew up on Saint Helena Island. He earned an A.B. from Columbia University in 1928 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1931. He returned to Columbia as a graduate student in the Department of Economics from 1931 to 1933, where he also taught for a short time. While there, Keyserling studied under Rexford Tugwell, but never finished his dissertation.

Keyserling married Mary Dublin Keyserling, also an economist.

Government career

In 1933 Keyserling became an attorney for the newly constituted Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a New Deal agency that distributed subsidies to reduce crop area. From 1933 to 1946 he was a consultant economist to the Senate on a variety of social, economic, industrial, and financial issues, during which time he also served as a legislative assistant to Democratic New York Senator Robert F. Wagner (1933–37) and held several positions, including general counsel, in the US Housing Authority (later, the Federal Public Housing Authority in the National Housing Agency) (1937–46). It was during his time with Wagner that Keyserling was participating in drafting various New Deal initiatives, including the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Social Security Act, and the National Labor Relations Act.

In 1946 Keyserling became the Vice Chairman of the newly created Council of Economic Advisers. He became its Acting Chairman in 1949 and the Chairman in 1950. In 1952 Keyserling and his wife were attacked by Joseph McCarthy as part of the second Red Scare as "belonging to Communist front groups". Keyserling left as Chairman in 1953.

During his time at the CEA, Keyserling strongly promoted the pursuit of sustained economic growth and full employment. He also introduced the reporting of the Gross National Product in real as well as nominal dollars

Later life

Following his time advising President Truman, Keyserling consulted with Congress on a variety of economic issues and also practiced law. In 1954 he founded the Conference on Economic Progress (CEP), serving as its president until 1987. His wife had left the Department of Commerce in 1953 and joined him in consulting as well as the founding of the CEP, where she served as associate director from its inception to 1963.

In 1969 Keyserling served as president of the National Committee for Labor in Israel, a US organization that worked with the Israeli Histadrut.

He died on August 9, 1987, at Washington, D.C.'s George Washington University Hospital.

Writings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Keyserling#Writings

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https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/keyserling-leon-hirsch/

Economist, lawyer, presidential adviser. The South Carolina–born son of Jewish immigrants, Leon Keyserling made his mark as an economist and architect of the New Deal of the 1930s. He was born on January 22, 1908, in Beaufort, the first child of William Keyserling and Jennie Hyman. Keyserling’s father had come to the United States from Lithuania in 1888 and established himself with the MacDonald, Wilkins and Company cotton gin and wholesale warehouse in Beaufort. Leon spent his early years on St. Helena Island, east of Beaufort, reading books with his mother and developing his gifts of quick comprehension and remarkable memory. In 1917 Leon moved with his parents and three siblings to town, where in the tenth grade he won an award for an essay entitled “A Bigger, Better, and More Beautiful Beaufort.” A framed copy hung in his office and, after his retirement, at his home.

At age sixteen, Keyserling left Beaufort and enrolled in Columbia University in New York. He graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in economics in 1928 and from Harvard University Law School in 1931, then returned to Columbia to teach economics. In 1933 he became chief legislative aide to New York senator Robert F. Wagner, and during the next four years he helped design major New Deal economic and employment programs. He was the principal draftsman of a $3 billion public works bill, the wage and hour provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), the National Housing Act (1934–1935), the National Labor Relations Act (1935), and portions of the Social Security Act (1935).

During these years Keyserling also worked with the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency and wrote national platforms for the Democratic Party in 1936, 1940, and 1944. He helped to create the U.S. Housing Authority, and as the agency’s acting administrator and general counsel oversaw construction of millions of residences for war workers. His 1944 essay on postwar employment has been cited as the basis for the historic Employment Act of 1946, which created the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) and firmly established a federal government role in the expansion and stability of the national economy.

Keyserling served on President Harry Truman’s CEA from 1946 to 1953 and became its chairman in 1950. His interest in public policy continued after his retirement from government in 1953. He founded the Conference on Economic Progress, a private, nonprofit organization that published works criticizing the economic policies of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. During the 1970s he drafted legislation establishing the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Full Employment and Growth Act (1978).

On October 4, 1940, Keyserling married Mary Dublin, a professor of economics at Sarah Lawrence College. They had no children. Mary Dublin Keyserling went on to become an influential economist and social activist in her own right, serving as head of the Women’s Bureau of the Labor Department under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Leon Keyserling died on August 9, 1987, in Washington, D.C.