Death of Brennan

Roger C. Sullivan, boss of Illinois, died April 14, 1920.

Charles F. Murphy, boss of New York (Tammany), died April 25, 1924.

James R. Nugent, deposed boss of New Jersey, died April 26, 1927.

George E. Brennan, boss of Illinois (succeeding Sullivan), died Aug. 8, 1928.

The passing of these bosses is significant because they were the advance guard of the revolution which transformed the Democratic Party from the rural dilemma of Bryan and McAdoo to the urban climax of Alfred Emanuel Smith. Election day will determine whether it is a happy climax.

The lone survivor of the advance guard is Thomas Taggart, 71, of Indiana. It was Taggart, Murphy and Brennan (acting on deathbed instructions from Sullivan) who pushed aside McAdoo and forced the nomination of Cox at the Democratic convention in 1920. The same forces compromised on John W. Davis in 1924, when the Smith movement failed. Mr. Taggart is now in ill health and resides quietly at French Lick, Ind., playing croquet with his grandchildren.

George Washington Olvany, under the careful guidance of Governor Smith, has succeeded Tammany Boss Murphy. Frank Hague is in power in New Jersey.

It will be difficult to replace Boss Brennan of Illinois. An Irishman, plump and nimble-witted, a poker player and duck hunter, a successful and honest businessman, a philanthropist who gave away several hundred wooden legs*--he was sincerely mourned. The triumph of his career as boss came in 1923 when he put honest William Emmett Dever into Chicago's mayorship. In 1926, Brennan "bet his bossdom against a seat in the U. S. Senate that Illinois is sick of Prohibition"--and lost to Senator-eject Frank L. Smith.

Though Brennan worked in back rooms, his political deeds were not black.

* He lost his own right leg when he, 13, substituted for a switchman who was off on a post-payday drunk, at a coal mine in Braidwood, Ill. He tried to uncouple two cars of a moving train; his right foot became wedged in a frog and stayed there.