A member of the prominent Lowell family of Boston, he served as mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts, from 1937 until 1943, and as director of the Economic Stabilization Administration from 1951 until 1952.

[4][6] Through his uncle, Percival Lowell, and his own father, Roger Putnam gained a love of astronomy and was an amateur astronomer for most of his life.

He named Harcourt Amory (his cousin, college roommate and best friend) and his wife, Constance Lowell, executors of his estate.

After convincing Amory to resign as trustee, Constance Lowell also induced George Putnam (Roger's older brother) to decline the position.

The reluctant staff hesitated to spend the Observatory's limited funds on the new telescope until Putnam forced the issue.

[2] Determined to continue the modernization program begun by Wilson, Putnam hired astronomer John Scoville Hall as director in 1958.

Putnam used his extensive political connections to help Hall land lucrative federal contracts, which significantly improved the Observatory's finances.

Putnam led the negotiations which permanently moved the 42-inch (1,100 mm) telescope to Lowell Observatory's Anderson Mesa site (in Arizona).

[2][4][7] One of Putnam's last major contributions as trustee was the establishment of the Lowell Observatory's Planetary Research Center.

In 1933, he sat on a commission which helped draft Massachusetts' first unemployment compensation act, which Governor Joseph B. Ely signed into law in 1934.

Title IV of the Act gave the president the authority to impose wage and price controls in progressive steps.

[6][13] After Congress amended the Defense Production Act in July 1951 to permit looser price controls, ESA Administrator Eric Johnston quit in frustration six weeks later.

The collective bargaining agreement between the United Steelworkers of America and the nation's major steel manufacturers was to expire on December 31, 1951.

He also coordinated settlement efforts with Cyrus S. Ching, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, but the talks failed.

Putnam then urged President Truman to personally intervene in the steel crisis and use his influence with union leaders, which he did on New Year's Eve.

When making recommendations, the Board was authorized to report only to the president—bypassing Putnam and his superior, Charles Edward Wilson, administrator of the Office of Defense Mobilization (of which ESA was a part).

As one incentive to get the union to postpone the strike, Truman agreed to let the WSB investigate the labor dispute and invoke the direct presidential reporting provisions of E.O.

Michael DiSalle, the OPS administrator, had announced his resignation in the fall in order to run for the United States Senate.

[19] During this time, Putnam met repeatedly with White House staff to keep them abreast of developments at the Board and price negotiations between OPS and steel manufacturers.

John R. Steelman, Assistant to the President of the United States (a position which later became the White House Chief of Staff), was named interim director of the Office of Defense Mobilization on March 30.

[21] On June 2, 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) that the president lacked the authority as commander-in-chief to seize the steel mills.

Although Putnam was involved in presidential efforts to resolve the dispute, Truman's personal aides were primarily responsible for intervening in the strike.

The steelmakers and the union reached a tentative agreement on July 24, 1952, after Truman threatened to use his powers under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 to draft the steelworkers and turn the steel mills into military installations.

He felt the steelmakers had held "a loaded gun poised at the Government's head" and that the employers' publicly stated reasons for forcing the union on strike were "hollow" and pretentious.

The steelworkers' strike made Putnam work much harder to maintain the Truman administration's wage and price stabilization program.

[24] Putnam was forced to give aluminum workers a 21.4 cents an hour wage increase just days later in order to avoid a strike.

But he later imposed new wage restrictions on nine large classes of small businesses and strict limitations on the kind of Christmas gifts employers could give to workers in order to avoid a spike in inflation.

[27] Ellis Arnall resigned in early August, and Putnam appointed Tighe Woods, chairman of the federal rent stabilization agency, as his successor.

Although Putnam, Cox and other stabilization and mobilization officials all eventually endorsed the lower pay award, Truman reversed the WSB on December 3.

[30] During his last months in office, Putnam continually defended the wage and price control program as necessary for the national welfare while conceding that neither Congress nor the next president (whether Truman or Eisenhower) would be likely to retain it.