Scandals of New York (Cont'd)

To Albany, N. Y. last week traveled a henchman of Mayor James John ("Jimmy") Walker of New York City, bearing a 20,000-word document and many press copies thereof. One month after Governor Roosevelt had been asked to remove the Mayor from office, and two weeks after his leisurely vacation in California, Mr. Walker was replying formally to charges of misfeasance against his administration. A glib tongue, the vagueness of the charges, and a sudden Republican stupidity combined to help the Mayor out.

Defense. Because "the charges [of the volunteer City Affairs Committee] consist almost entirely of generalities without specification or detail," the facts and figures with which Mayor Walker interspersed his reply, gave it a strong semblance of satisfactory refutation. Charged with indifference to police corruption, he could show that during his administration 321 officers were dismissed from the force. He introduced a letter from Chief City Magistrate Corrigan to prove that he was "dissatisfied with conditions existing in the courts," now under investigation, one year ago. Where facts failed, the Mayor used sophistry. How could he find evidence of bribery in the allotment of pier leases when Republican U. S. District Attorney Tuttle could not? To the City Affairs Committee's demand that three of his appointees be removed from the Department of Hospitals, the patriotic Mayor replied: "These three men all saw service in France with the A. E. F. while the complainant [Rabbi Stephen S. Wise] was endeavoring to break down American resistance behind the lines. No one would believe that the Governor, whose patriotic services in the World War are universally remembered, would knowingly consider for a moment such wily propaganda."

As for his responsibility for municipal scandals, the Mayor pleaded: "A reasonable measure of regulation and supervision is all that is humanly possible over the personnel of a vast machine of government which numbers more than 130,000 employes."

By far the most interesting portion of the 20,000 words was the Mayor's excoriation of his accusers. Although the City Affairs Committee had scrupulously avoided mention of the playboy Mayor's private life, the Mayor applied to Rabbi Wise a set of epithets first used by the late Mayor William J. Gaynor: "All-sufficient, insufficient, self-sufficient Rabbi Wise, who thinks he is pious but is only bilious; a man of vast and varied misinformation and of prodigious moral requirements." Rev. John Haynes Holmes, co-signer of the charges, was described as "for years a leader in a group of agitators and Soviet sympathizers." To the Mayor, the City Affairs Committee was "nothing more than an annex of the Socialist party masquerading under a name contrived to deceive the public."

The Committee asked and received permission from Governor Roosevelt to make rebuttal. Commented Preacher Holmes:

"The Mayor is obviously getting panicky. It's not epithets but epitaphs that the City Affairs Committee is concerned with in this case--as the Mayor will discover in due time."

The publication of the Mayor's reply, hailed by henchmen as "a complete refutation," by foes as "claiming credit for eleventh-hour reforms forced on him by public clamor," was accompanied by a happy coincidence for Mayor Walker. In the preamble to its annual report, a City Affairs Committee of the National Republican Club publicly denounced the Mayor's private life. Chairman of this committee is Alan Fox, young G. 0. P. worker who made a name for himself by locally booming Herbert Clark Hoover for the 1928 presidential nomination. As a reward, the President seriously considered making him a U. S. District Attorney. Chairman Fox's report said:

"He has joked, junketed to race tracks, sat up all night at wild parties, entertained Hollywood and ignored the city's problems. . . . The Mayor of New York has no right to allow the vagaries of his private life to interfere with reasonable attention to the responsibilities of his great office."

Although these personal references were instantly repudiated by Republican State Chairman W. Kingsland Macy and hastily edited from the club's report, the Mayor was quick to take advantage of the sympathy which they created for him among his liberty-loving fellow citizens. Nor was he unaware that Mr. Fox's Republican City Affairs Committee might be confused in the public mind with the non-partisan City Affairs Committee of Rabbi Wise and Preacher Holmes. On the same day that his vituperative retort to the Wise-Holmes complaint reached the Governor, the sensitive Mayor flayed his Republican adversaries:

"During the last few weeks . . I have ignored the unfounded and slanderous attacks that have been running in the gossip gazettes. . . . Every man and woman of sense and sensibility in New York this beautiful morning experienced a shock in their ordinarily clean newspaper. Thanks to the Sunday clerk of a committee of the National Republican Club, this committee, with no constructive program, no civic pride, no regard for the fair name of the city, labored and brought forth a shower of hydrogen gas,* offensive alike to decent Republicans as well as Democrats and independents. As for my private life, I will match it against all the Pharisaical composers of that tirade. . . . The papers assert that the chairman of the committee is named 'A. Fox.' This is evidently a mistake. There must have been some confusion in the Republican zoo. It should have been signed by the name of another animal."

*Hydrogen gas is colorless, odorless, tasteless.

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