Clinton Roosevelt

Who was Clinton Roosevelt?

Clinton Roosevelt was an American politician, pro-labor economic reformer, and inventor from New York City. A member of the Roosevelt family, he was the son of Elbert Roosevelt, who was a grandson of Johannes Roosevelt, making him a distant cousin of U.S. Presidents Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was an early and prominent member of the Locofocos, or Equal Rights Party, a radical faction of the Democratic Party. He was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1836 and served one year. Roosevelt was an opponent of the monopoly banking system and cited bank paper currency as the cause of economic problems. After the Panic of 1837, when New York's economy worsened and the working population suffered, he changed his views, calling for an entirely new economic system with greater government involvement. He was also an inventor and an advocate of patent reform. In the 1850s, he invented a warship design, but neither the United States nor Russia were interested; he later proposed trade unions to increase the profits of inventors. He died on Fisher's Island, New York.