TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/28elect/28elect.003

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                                                                                April 30, 1928

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

The Brown Derby



     Last week was Smith Week among the Democrats. East coast,
West coast, all around the land, the Smith candidacy seemed to
have reached a new high-tide line. In Washington, a Southern
Senator who would not permit his name to be quoted because he and
his State have been thoroughly anti-Smith, said: "Smith already
is nominated." Other Washington politicos were discussing, not
the probability of the nomination but its manner. Perhaps, they
said, it could be managed by acclamation, which would be a very
good thing for the chances of the Democracy in November, the
precise reverse of much-haggled, half-hearted 1924.

     In Manhattan, having bided its time, the Democratic State
Committee formally offered New York's "most distinguished son" to
the nation. The chief speechmaker used the words "progress" and
"progressive" nine times in ten paragraphs, and made the
customary references to Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. A
woman, Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, said that women "crave" a
President with an understanding, a human heart. She quoted
Kipling's Recessional and wound up: "The country needs a leader
and we offer, with entire confidence and affection, Governor
Alfred E. Smith, God bless him."

     In other States, the progress of the Smith boom in Smith
Week was as follows:

     Georgia's two largest cities, Atlanta and Savannah, invited
Candidate Smith to visit, through chamber of commerce and board
of trade.

     South Carolina's senior Senator, Coleman L. Blease, scouted
the notion that his State, outstanding exemplar of secession,
would bolt the Democratic ticket if Smith were nominated. This
and other statements quieted the talk of Smith's "splitting" the
South.

     Illinois and Iowa verified their support, binding 58 and 26
votes, respectively, at state conventions.

     Ohio, with a primary imminent, was conceded to Favorite Son
Pomerene, an out-spoken admirer of Candidate Smith.

     Pennsylvania, with a primary imminent, was heavily pro-
Smith.

     Massachusetts, with a primary imminent, was conceded to
Candidate Smith.

     California, with a primary imminent, was claimed for
Candidate Smith ahead of Candidates Walsh and Reed. Here, really,
was a crux of the Smith candidacy which its supporters were
taking on a surprising amount of faith. The California primary,
first direct contest between the leading candidates, is of great
importance psychologically as well as numerically. California is
farthest from New York. California contains a curious mixture of
wet Protestant, dry Catholics and vice versas. Thousands of
Republicans were registered to vote in the Democratic primary. To
predict a decisive Smith victory in California the margin of
10,000 votes quoted last week by Smith men seemed inadequate,
senseless. Behind Candidate Walsh is William Gibbs McAdoo. Behind
Candidate Reed is William Randolph Hearst. Behind Candidate Smith
is onetime (1915-21) Senator James Duval Phelan, locally no less
potent than McAdoo or Hearst but not clearly the Democratic
strong-man of California able to combat the other two and
confound them by division. The California primary, set for May
Day, loomed large and inscrutable.

     "By Gosh." Candidate Smith participated personally in Smith
Week almost not at all. Leaving his brown derby in his hotel room
at Biltmore, N. C., he wore a floppy felt hat and continued his
golf. He said he had not changed his June plans: "When I said
that I would not go to Houston, I meant it." Upon his fellow New
Yorkers' action in presenting him to the nation he made no
comment. Observers were thoroughly satisfied that he will exert
himself to obtain the nomination no more overtly than he did last
week in one action and two characteristic utterances:

     He went into a barnyard, milked a cow, had himself
photographed between two cows.

     He received a letter from Charles W. Tillett, a political
commentator of Charlotte, who wrote: "I have said many good
things concerning you and I wish to determine, after seeing you,
whether I can, like the queen of Sheba, say the half has not been
told, or whether I must repeat what Uncle Eph said to me the
other day when I got after him about an extravagant statement he
had made: 'Boss, I jest overspoke myself.' " Candidate Smith
wired back: "Will be delighted to see you . . .in the matter of
Queen of Sheba versus Uncle Eph."

     He received one Leonard H. Huff, hardbitten hill-billy, aged
92, who said: "I have been waiting four years to get a chance to
vote for you." Candidate Smith replied: "By gosh, I hope you get
the chance."

     Leaving Asheville, the Candidate and his party moved up to
Absecon, N. J., for more golf, more rest, less public politics.

     The increasing prospect of any man's nomination distorts his
image in the public eye. In the case of Candidate Smith, his
enemies see him more and more as a subtle knave of Rum and
Romanism wearing the stripes of Tammany. His friends, in turn,
are prone to exalt him as a Galahad of the masses, dight in
spotless, and stripeless, armor. Actually, of course, he is
simply a 54-year-old up-from-the-bottom man whose profession has
been politics, whose acquired technique is state government, whose
ambition is what he calls "the highest office in the world." In
acquiring his technique he found that knowledge of his job was
necessary to rise in his profession and that honesty was an
unbeatable asset after rising. In contemplating his ambition he
has perceived that a public man can no longer personally
manipulate a great destiny. The nomination must be brought to a
Destiny Man. He cannot go and get it.

     Heredity, Environment. That Alfred Emanuel Smith rose from
utter poverty and the shelter of a saloon is another current
myth. His father, for whom he was named, was a New York trucker
of whom little is known except that he worked hard and died young,
when his son was 13. The mother, whose maiden name was Mulvehill
and who also was born in New York, had seen to it that the boy
went to a parochial school. At the father's death, he left
school, having reached the eighth grade. Beside his mother he had
a sister, two years his junior, to support. He earned $15 per
week as a checker in the fulton Fish Market. His mother covered
umbrellas to help out. He checked fish for seven years, then
worked in a Brooklyn pumping station.

     The house he came home to at night was no less respectable
than any other on South Street in those days and he was a
welcome, an extra welcome, guest at all the neighborhood parties
and church sociables. "He talked all the time," his neighbors
recall. He could dance jigs and recite and he thought he could
sing. He wore fancy waistcoats, a red necktie, tight trousers and
a trig brown derby. He grew tall and quite handsome. He was
blond, eager, jocose. They always called him Alfred.

     Education. Books, the conventional source of information and
mental training, never attracted him. People were his educational
instruments and he early learned to use them well. His college
was the Society of St. Tammany and his freshman courses were in
addressing postcards to voters, watching at the polls, etc., etc.
He tried the real estate business on the side but Tammany
promoted him to speechmaking in his district and his name began to
get into the newspapers. The notorious Richard Croker was boss of
Tammany at the time and Smith's immediate professor was Tom
Foley, who kept the corner saloon.

     Foley got him his first local appointment. For eight years
he investigated jury panels, worked for other men's elections.
His diversion were bicycling, amateur theatricals and courting a
black-haired belle, Katherine Dunn, who had moved from his
neighborhood to the distant Bronx. In 1900, still a jury
investigator, he married her and they lived in a flat near his
Tammany club, later moving to a since-famed house in Oliver
Street. In 1903, aged 30, he was sent to the New York Assembly as
a Tammany regular. He made it a post-graduate course, became the
speaker and in 1915, when the State held a constitutional
convention, his thorough-going knowledge of the state laws
carried off high honors.

     In 1915 he became New York's sheriff. He was elected
president of New York's board of aldermen in 1917. His stupid
ticket-mate of that year, Mayor John F. Hylan, was to flounder on
through disrepute into obscurity but "Al" Smith went on, in 1918,
to be Governor. He has continued so down to date, except for the
term of 1920-1922, when he fortified his fortune as a private
citizen in the trucking business.

     Career. To have been Governor of New York longer than any
other man and to have been re-elected invariably by the
opposition's futile efforts to find flaws in one's record, is no
mean achievement in itself. Not without an eye to the national
electorate, Governor Smith reviewed his administrations
specifically last winter. Certain things stood out:

     The work of his Reconstruction Commission, straightening New
York out after the War and reorganizing the sprawling state
government.

     Fiscal reform and the introduction of business methods in
government control of ports, bridges, etc.

     Road building, aid to education, conservation of water
power.

     Certain other things, which Governor Smith did not mention,
will be noted in all Smith biographies as follows: (The ablest
Smith biography so far published is ALFRED E. SMITH, A CRITICAL
STUDY, by Henry F. Pringle (Macy-Masius, $3.50))

     In his first two terms, he conferred regularly and flexibly
with Tammany Boss Charles F. Murphy. He helped the stupid Hylan
get re-elected in 1921.

     In 1922 he was advised by Tammany that he was to lead a
ticket upon which William Randolph Hearst would run for U. S.
Senator. Ensuing events at the Onondaga Hotel in Syracuse, where
the convention was held, wrought one of those changes which no
man could have planned yet which might have been brought off by
any man possessed of native intelligence, self-respect and
courage. Alfred Emanuel Smith had learned to despise William
Randolph Hearst. In 1919, after Smith had striven to better New
York City's milk supply and been balked by a Republican
legislature, Hearst's press had viciously accused Smith of being
in league with the milk trust, of starving New York's babies.
Smith had answered, defied, publicly tongue-lashed Hearst, with
Irish violence. Now, Hearst had forgotten, but Smith had not
forgotten. To Tammany's coalition proposal, Smith said: "The
answer is, No!"

     Boss Murphy and his henchmen were aghast. Without Hearst
many a job might be lost. Perhaps Smith would have to go
overboard. They tried to reason with him. He stayed in his room
chewing his cigars, spitting, scowling, swearing. "No, no, NO!"
he roared.

     In the end it was Hearst who had to back down. From then on,
Smith knew he was bigger than Tammany. In 1924, Boss Murphy died
and his successor, George Olvany, has never pretended to be
Smith's peer.

     After the Syracuse episode, Smith could and did begin to
think of himself as a free agent. In 1920 he had been put forward
as a perfunctory Favorite Son for the Presidential nomination, to
block McAdool In 1924, he was a real Favorite Son, a serious
contender, though the convention's fear of the Klan made him once
more only an obstructionist.

     Now there is no Klan, except for extraordinary Senator
Heflin, and no McAdoo, except as represented by polite Candidate
Walsh. There are large obstacles between Alfred Emanuel Smith and
election, but so far as the nomination goes, last week, in Smith
Week, there was even talk of an acclamation.

     Retinue. Persons who consider Candidate Smith unfit for the
Presidency on the ground that his entourage would disgrace the
White House are mostly persons unacquainted with what a White
House entourage is like or with those whom Candidate Smith would
take with him. Persons familiar with his presidential frame of
mind predict that he would content himself with no small-calibre
men, certainly no Tammany favorites, for Cabinet positions. Of
his oldtime personal retainers, only three seem indispensable:

     Belle Lindner Israels Moskowitz -- a calm, fine-minded Jewish
woman, widowed and remarried, whose social work led her into
politics in 1912 as a Roosevelt supporter. Smith enlisted her to
organize the women's vote for his first gubernatorial campaign
ten years ago. She became and has remained his publicist-
extraordinary, editing his speeches smoothing his rough accents,
advising his policy to a surprising extent. It was she, for
example, who saw the significance of his guardian stand on water
power. She kept him, and made the New York voters, increasingly
conscious of water power. With Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam now
nationally headlined, the Smith position thereon is well-
established and not campaign cant. If she went to Washington, as
it seems she would have to, Mrs. Moskowitz, would not be
Secretary of State but she might be something, short of
secretary, in the Labor Department.

     Robert Moses -- a young Jew of independent means and unusual
abilities. Nominally a Republican he accepted the Secretary of
State portfolio in the State Cabinet, chosen by Governor Smith
last year. Should there be such a person as President Smith, it
is more than likely he will keep his Moses by him in some
capacity.

     George Graves and James J. Mahoney -- smart executive
assistants at Albany, eminently qualified for private secretary
deals at the White House, both are used to wearing cutaways.

     Robert ("Bobby") Fitzmaurice -- for years "Man Friday" to the
Candidate. Smaller, balder, older than his patron, he still seems
much younger. He arranges trips, receives pressmen and callers,
personifies loyalty. He would doubtless perform the same
functions at Washington.

     Why He May. Above everything, the unique asset of Candidate
Smith as a public figure is his famed "human touch" -- the wide
smile, throaty laugh, instant humor, lowly origin, the tilt of
the Brown Derby. Under his ease among the mob, moreover,
responsibility has developed an innate dignity which is now
perfectly at command as occasion requires. His ability and
integrity in office have never successfully been questioned. The
lack of another Democrat combining trusted power with a warm
personality will be what causes the Dry Protestant south to
swallow a Wet Catholic if he is nominated. The lack of an
equivalent Republican will be that cause of his election, if any.

     Why He May Not. Unless the U. S. is at heart intolerant,
bigots of the Heflin type will have eliminated Roman Catholicism
as a consideration in June and November. Then comes the Smith
wetness. Candidate Smith is not a drunkard, he does not favor the
saloon's return, all he does favor is a Prohibition referendum;
but many will refuse to believe that this is the worst. The
charge that the Smith administrations at Albany were financially
extravagant may contrast effectively with Coolidge Economy,
despite the Smith answer that Republican legislators invariably
voted the appropriations of his time and that he frequently pared
down "pork" with his veto.

     Mrs. Katie Dunn Smith, honestly, defenselessly her Oliver
Street self, will undoubtedly alienate many women's votes but
unless the campaigning is even more uncivil than it promises to
be, that issue will be tacitly lumped with the undeniable private
properties of the Candidate himself -- spittoons, chewed cigars,
damp shirtsleeves, profanity. These are properties of masses,
perhaps, but not of the mass advertisements, so potent in the
U. S.

     Finally there is Tammany. Traditions live long and are
easily magnified into a country of few traditions. Corruption is
already on the fire and the public nose is perhaps dull enough to
confuse an old stench with a new one. If the political fathers
who sired him should come as ghosts to cause his ruin, that would
be a great irony upon them and "Al" Smith. If they should stay
buried and let ancestor-cursing go the way of ancestor-worship,
that would be more interesting, whether Smith wins or loses.