For Job No. 3

(See front cover)

Next to the job of President who rules over all 48 United States, next to the job of Governor of New York who runs the affairs of the most populous and wealthy State, stands the No. 3 political job of the U. S., the job of managing 299 sq. mi. of territory whose importance to civilization has more than once been questioned. The importance of the job if not the bailiwick is undisputed.

It pays nominally $40,000, but because of economy, actually $22,500 a year-- more than the U. S. pays members of the Supreme-Court or the Cabinet, more than any State save one pays its Governor (New York's Governor gets $25,000). It involves trying to please more constituents than the Governors of the 14 least populous States have all together. It is the job of Mayor of New York City.

Last week the quadrennial campaign for that job began under such extraordinary circumstances that even New Yorkers felt like voters in wonderland. For it appeared that 1) when they go to the polls on Nov. 2, they may find no Tammany candidate for mayor, and 2) if there is a Tammany candidate, he may well be found on the Republican ticket.

Topsy-Turvy-For decades it appeared that New York City was created by a special dispensation of Providence for the benefit of the patriotic Society of St. Tammany. Tammany's serious troubles began in 1932 when the Democratic Governor of New York, Franklin Roosevelt, with his eye on the Presidency was obliged to investigate charges of graft and corruption against Tammany's dapper, wisecracking mayor, Jimmy Walker. When the hearing got too hot, Jimmy Walker resigned. Automatically Joseph V. McKee, president of the city's Board of Aldermen succeeded to the job and made motions of starting a cleanup. Then & there the current overlord of Tammany, Boss John Curry, made a mistake. Instead of nominating McKee for a special election to fill Walker's place, he chose a Tammany wheelhorse, Surrogate Judge John P. O'Brien, and maneuvered McKee off the ballot. O'Brien was elected but 125,000 angry citizens wrote in McKee's name on the ballot. Next year at the regular election, Tammany backed O'Brien again. Jim Farley, with whom Tammany had been on the outs since Walker's trial, arranged a Recovery ticket headed by McKee. Outraged citizens of all parties united to form a Fusion ticket headed by Fiorello LaGuardia. In the election LaGuardia ran first, O'Brien last. Even Tammany saw that Boss Curry had blundered. He was deposed.

This defeat was nothing new for Tammany. Fusion mayors were elected before, about once in a generation, and on the whole their election was all to Tammany's advantage. After the city had been run to the verge of bankruptcy where there was little profit left in running it and scandal was getting knee deep, it paid to let a Fusion mayor clean house and undertake the unpopular duty of raising taxes and cutting expenses until the city was once more a profitable institution for Tammany to run. And no Fusion mayor was ever reelected.

But last week, when the leaders of Tammany assembled to choose a candidate to regain the city hall for them, they were a very worried group of men. Something had happened to turn topsy-turvy the best of all political worlds in which they had so long dwelt. For three years they had had no patronage either from the city or from the New Deal. Their leader, James J. Dooling, who succeeded the deposed Boss Curry, was ill as he had been for months. Worse, he had never succeeded in becoming a real boss by bringing all factions of Tammany under his thumb. Worst of all, something had happened to Tammany's city.

New York City does not lie in one county but in five: New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, Bronx and Richmond (Staten Island). Tammany, the Democratic organization of New York County, used to be in the position of the Mother Country of an empire, controlling as the oldest and largest member the city government to which all were tributary. In 1920 Tammany's territory, Manhattan, was still the biggest member of the empire, had about 40% of the city's registered voters. Today it has only about 25% of the voters. If the five boroughs of the city (coterminous with its five counties) are considered as separate municipalities, the eight most populous cities of the U. S. are in approximate order: 1) Chicago. 2) Brooklyn, 3) Philadelphia, 4) Manhattan, 5) Detroit, 6) The Bronx, 7) Los Angeles, 8) Queens. The difficulties of Tammany's Manhattan political machine can therefore be compared to that of a Philadelphia political machine if it tried to dominate the politics of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and also of Richmond, Va. (which has about as large a population as New York City's small borough of Richmond on Staten Island).

But Tammany has one greater difficulty: if it does not dominate the politics of the other boroughs, it will be dominated by them. The Democratic boss of The Bronx is Edward J. Flynn, an oldtime henchman of Jim Farley and onetime Secretary of State in Governor Franklin Roosevelt's State cabinet. He and Boss Kelly of Brooklyn, Boss Sheridan of Queens and Boss Fetherston of Richmond agreed on a ticket. When Tammany met it was split into at least three factions and Leader Dooling, ill abed and acting by proxy, was in danger of being unable to name his own candidate for mayor even in his own borough. By compromising with one faction he was able to beat the third which was in favor of bending the knee to the New Deal and the leaders of the other boroughs and accepting their ticket. Then, three days later Leader Dooling died. So, in the Democratic primary in September, bereaved Tammany, with its own ranks split, will try to nominate a candidate for mayor opposed by the political machines of four boroughs in which there are three votes to every vote in Manhattan.

Bedside Manner-The man on whom Tammany last week bestowed its standard was a U. S. Senator. Certain was Tammany that it needed a potent vote-getter to win and who could be better than one of its own sons, Bob Wagner, son of a German janitor, brought up in Yorkville (Manhattan's East Side German district), beloved of Labor because lie is credited with authorship of the Wagner Labor Relations Act. But Senator Wagner, although he called politely at Tammany Hall, declined the honor. So Tammany finally staked its bets on a onetime Republican mayor of Ann Arbor, Mich., New York's other Senator, Royal S. Copeland, M. D.

Dr. Copeland did not become a New Yorker until 1908 when he was 40. At that time he was an eye & ear doctor and he got a job with New York Flower Hospital Medical College. Soon he began to have Democratic leanings and was on good terms with Hearst for whose newspapers he wrote popular health treatises. John F. Hylan, a Tammany mayor who was the darling of Hearst, made him city health commissioner. In 1922 when Al Smith was running for Governor, a piece of good fortune fell into the doctor's lap. Since Smith refused to have Hearst, who wanted nomination for U. S. Senator, on the same ticket, someone suggested Copeland. He proved a surprising vote-getter, for, like elephants, mothers never forget; they had not forgotten all the worthy advice Dr. Copeland as columnist and health commissioner had given them on the care of babies. He was elected, re-elected in 1928, re-elected in 1934, for though Jim Farley and Franklin Roosevelt did not love Dr. Copeland, they did not dare challenge the potency of the bedside manner in politics.

No sooner had he undertaken the mayor's race for Tammany than Dr. Copeland made an unusual announcement. He would likewise enter the Republican primary and welcome nomination on the Republican ticket. The reason for this was obvious: he runs altogether too serious a risk of being beaten in the Democratic primary. That risk is not so much his as Tammany's, for he indicated that he would not resign his place in the Senate to make the race.

The Immaculate Politician. The Democratic leaders of New York City's outlying boroughs chose as their candidate one of the most distinguished looking gentlemen in New York City, Grover Aloysius Whalen. His father was Mike Whalen, an Irish contractor who never got very far in the world, but who named his son Grover because the lad was born June 2, 1886, the day that one of New York State's greatest Democratic politicians, Grover Cleveland, was married to Frances Folsom (now Mrs. Preston) in the White House. Grover got his start in politics when he was 30 by working for the election of John F. ("Red Mike") Hylan, Tammany's candidate to succeed the previous Fusion mayor, John Purroy Mitchell. Soon Whalen blossomed out as commissioner of plant & structures and holder of various other city offices. The one which made his reputation was secretary of Mayor Hylan's committee to welcome home coming troops after the War. He soon became the city's official welcomer. For years no notable arrived in New York harbor--not Lindbergh, not Admiral Byrd nor Queen Marie of Roumania--without the press carrying pictures of Grover Whalen in frock coat and striped trousers, topper in hand, gardenia in buttonhole, steaming down the bay on the bridge of the municipal yacht Macom to extend the hospitality of the city.

About the time Tammany decided that Hylan was becoming the butt of too many municipal jokes and replaced him with the sophisticated Jimmy Walker, Grover Whalen retired. His friend Rodman Wanamaker, who knew that besides looking the apotheosis of a floorwalker Grover Whalen had real executive ability, made him general manager of Wanamaker's Manhattan store. After only three years he was called back to the city's service. While Mayor Walker was dining out and making the wisecracks which endeared him to every Irish heart, things had gone on which put his administration in bad odor. One was the notoriously unsolved murder of the famed Gambler Arnold Rothstein. To rescue the administration from shame, Grover Whalen was made police commissioner. Soon the shortcomings of the police department were forgotten. Commissioner Whalen completely and drastically altered the city's method of traffic regulation, thereby producing an entirely new furor.

But Grover Whalen and Jimmy Walker, models of sartorial perfection though both were, had little in common. Whalen was an ambitious man but he had none of the Walker flair, and after two years Walker was glad to get rid of him. Since then Grover Whalen's talents have been devoted to private business and movements for civic improvement, chief of which was heading NRA's headquarters in Manhattan. Last year, he got an even bigger job: head promoter for New York City's World's Fair of 1939. Once more his tailored form was produced in rotogravure and then the lightning struck. He was chosen as the New Deal, anti-Tammany candidate for mayor.

Little Flower of Indignation. Fiorello LaGuardia is not a Fusion mayor such as the Hon. Seth Low, elected in 1901 or the Hon. John Purroy Mitchell elected in 1913, gentlemen whom the silk stocking element of the city looked on with respect and pride. Fiorello inherited a volcanic temperament from his father, Achilles LaGuardia, an Italian musician and his mother, Irene Coen Luzzatti, a Sephardic Jewess from Venice. By luck he was born on New York's East Side, shortly after his parents immigrated, but his boyhood was spent in Army posts in the Dakotas and Arizona because his father had become bandmaster to the 11th Infantry. At 19 he began his career by getting a post in the U. S. consular service which kept him for several years in Hungary and Italy. There he became a polyglot--learned German, French and Italian. When he returned to the U. S. he became an interpreter at Ellis Island, learned Yiddish and studied law.

He was born a spitfire and a revolter against the established order. When he was elected to Congress in 1916, it was not as a member of Tammany but as a Republican. As soon as war was declared he turned his back on Congress and, taught to fly by his friend Giuseppe Bellanca, went overseas as an aviator. When he returned to Congress, he consented as a political favor to the Republican machine to run for president of New York City's Board of Aldermen. It was a polite gesture because Republicans were practically never elected, but LaGuardia, the hero of the city's Italian colony, was elected. For two years he sat on the city's Board of Estimate with the same Mayor Hylan who started Grover Whalen and Dr. Copeland toward fame. Moreover, he got along with the mayor rather well, since he had a very bitter enmity with City Comptroller Craig, who was also at odd's with the mayor. Later Fiorello went back to Congress and when the Republicans refused him nomination, shifted labels and won election on the La Follette Progressive ticket. There he was a New Dealer before the New Deal.

The respectable citizens of all parties rose up to oust Tammany in 1933. At one of the last big Fusion rallies before the election, LaGuardia shouted, "You've nominated me but don't expect any patronage if I'm elected!" The crowd applauded such a pious sentiment. LaGuardia stuck out his chin. "I mean it!" he yelled. When office seekers began to call upon him after election they were surprised to find he did. Regardless of New York City votes, he picked a health commissioner from New Haven, Conn., a commissioner of correction from the Federal prison service. For his fire commissioner he chose a stanch Democrat who was said to have voted against him. There was not a vote-controlling politician in the lot. The result is that today he has no political machine and most of the Republican leaders who supported him four years ago on the Fusion ticket do not want to see him renominated or reelected.

Next to the politicians, the silk stocking group which usually supports Fusion candidates liked him least, for Mayor La-Guardia has not good manners. Short, swart and tousled, with a minimum of neck and a maximum of torso, he takes off his rumpled coat and leans back in his big office chair with his feet dangling a foot from the floor, no picture of municipal dignity. When he flies off the handle, as he frequently does, his voice grows shrill, he is likely to call almost anybody names, and whatever he doesn't like is "lousy."

In the morning when the mayor drives to his office--in the winter to the fine old city hall in lower Manhattan; at present to a fine old house in Queens overlooking the East River, rented as a "summer city hall" --he is almost lost in the back of his limousine behind a portable desk, going over his mail. On arriving at his office he may begin dictating to two secretaries at once, then plunge into a series of 15-minute conferences with officials and delegations wanting favors, then dash off to dedicate a playground or unveil a statue, thence drive across a borough or two to speak at a civic luncheon, dictating orders as he goes to a secretary who can telephone them back to city hall while he is speaking. An hour later he may be back at his office to see a queue of people who have been waiting for hours, interview a deputy commissioner, perform a marriage for an eager friend, rush off to inspect a swimming pool, a hospital, a ferryboat or a street accident.

Day after day, practically without vacations, he carries on the pace. By nightfall his nerves are in knots. Formerly he used to take a few drinks of straight whiskey in order to relax. Nowadays his friends have persuaded him to substitute Scotch highballs as easier on the stomach. The liquor serves no purpose except to relax him. Usually he then has a dinner engagement, maybe several more engagements during the evening, but he likes to get home as early as possible to romp with his two adopted children, to see his wife who used to be his secretary when he was in Congress and who seldom appears publicly.

How Not to Get Elected. When Mayor LaGuardia was elected he found himself in charge of a city which had a debt of $1,800,000,000, about 50% greater than the public debt of the U. S. when he was elected to Congress in 1916. He found a city accustomed to living on an annual budget of $600,000,000. Tammany in election year had cut the budget to $551,000,000, but it was still $30,000,000 out of balance and when Mr. LaGuardia stepped in he found that Tammany had reduced the apparent size of the budget by simply omitting such items as food, fuel and medical supplies for hospitals, taxes on land outside the city which the city owned for watersheds, etc., etc. Actually the budget was $41,000,000 out of balance and LaGuardia set out to balance it by raising half in taxes and saving the remainder. He did so with the aid of a drastic economy act passed by the State Legislature. Since then he has kept the city's budget at about the same size which he inherited from Tammany.

But his savings were none the less real, for he took a down-at-heel city and gave it desperately needed equipment, scores of new school buildings, sewage plants and incinerators, $7,000,000 worth of snow-removal equipment, more than double the number of playgrounds and dental clinics for children, new fire equipment that cut fire losses $2,000,000. His Park Commissioner Robert Moses (who replaced five such commissioners, one in each borough) laid out nearly 5,000 acres of new parks and two new municipal bathing beaches. His city law department cleaned up back litigation, much of it 15 years old, some of it nearly 30, reduced recoveries in suits against the city by 73%. In doing these and a thousand other things he had the benefit of Federal relief and PWA grants running into many millions and he imposed a 2% city sales tax, but no responsible civic group contends that the city has not got its money's worth, and far more than that by Tammany standards. As long experience of Fusion administrations proves, however, the possession of such a record is the best way not to get re-elected mayor of New York City.

The Game of Politics. LaGuardia is today supremely confident of being reelected. Even in 1933 with the Republican machine solidly behind his Fusion ticket he did not win a majority in any borough, only a bare 800,000 out of 2,000,000 votes split three ways. That he may carry Manhattan where Tammany itself is split and where he has long had constituents is obviously possible, but has high hopes for Kings and Queens--and knaves. Just a little too-obvious knavery in the ranks of his opponents will drive the independent vote into his arms. And he hopes for Kings and Queens--and the other outlying boroughs--because of two attitudes which count more in politics than the most brilliant record of efficient administration.

One of these attitudes was expressed several months ago when, talking to a group of Jewish women about Grover Whalen's World's Fair, Fiorello nominated Adolf Hitler for the Fair's chamber of horrors (TIME, Mar. 15). The other attitude is his consistent stand in favor of Labor. Both C.I.O. and A.F. of L. leaders in the city announced themselves for his reelection. The Republican Party may or may not back him, for its leaders have had no favors from him, but the American Labor Party, formed last summer in New York--which succeeded in delivering over 200,000 votes to Franklin Roosevelt and Governor Herbert Lehman--is virtually committed to his nomination. Finally believing that the voters, who in the last city election backed Joseph V. McKee, were independents who will naturally swing to him, LaGuardia easily adds up a majority for reelection.

Grover Whalen and his supporters are just as placid in their own conviction of success. Where, they ask, in any great American city has a man without a machine succeeded in beating a machine? Only Dr. Copeland is perhaps without such placid assurance. The strength he musters must come from a battered Tammany machine, and from the antis--anti-LaGuardia, anti-New Dealers--a vote whose total is problematic. If Grover Whalen wins it will be an historic election. It will mean the end of Tammany as the machine in New York City politics. Barbaric conquerors from the provinces will tramp through Tammany's proud hall. But if LaGuardia wins. Tammany Hall may as well be torn down.

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