The Crack-Up

The most telling blow to the reeling Democrats was the breakdown of their big-city machines.

Big Ed Kelly had held Chicago in his ham-handed fist for a dozen years. But last week his grip was so flabby that the Democrats lost, besides four Congressmen, two key county officers. The city simply could not pile up the plurality to outweigh the Republican suburbs in Cook County. With a Republican treasurer and Republican sheriff handing out Republican patronage, next April might well see a Republican in City Hall.

In New Jersey, the pattern was the same. Red-faced, stiff-collared Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City had long been delivering 100,000 pluralities in his Hudson County bailiwick. That was what it took to outvote the Republican suburbs and farmlands. But six years of being at odds with the State House had begun to count. Hague spent money as never before: electioneers got $10 or $20 a day instead of the usual $5. It was not enough. Starved of patronage, outfoxed by voting machines, Hague could deliver only a measly 67,000 plurality in his home county. With another enemy, Republican Alfred E. Driscoll, going to the State House for three years, the aged Hague's last days would be lean indeed.

The biggest flop was the Kansas City machine. Scrapped for junk after Uncle Tom Pendergast went to jail in 1941, the steamroller had been repaired by Nephew Jim. It looked good for a while last summer, but last week, the voters overturned it. It not only failed to elect Harry Truman's Enos Axtell, it lost its two best patronage jobs, including the presiding judgeship of the County Court (in which Harry Truman had begun his rise).

It was the same in other cities where New Deal Democrats had rolled up big majorities--in Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia and St. Louis. In New York City, where three great county machines had been coasting too long, the old, fat pluralities were melted to a grease spot.

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