The New Leader LIterary Section
The New Leader LIterary Section Big-City Politics By PAUL SLADE ,ffff B1Q BOSSES. By Charles W. Vm Dswendsr. Hou^K, Soifctn, New York: 118 peg ««. $2 60. "¦"HIS book is not an expose. The...
...Nothing like the Moss Piatt upstate machine of a more lurid political age, but it will do...
...Even so, the author makes one of his chief failings evident on the ALP issue...
...JpHE book gives the American Labor Party due credit for the votes that kept Mayor LaGuardia in office, re-elected Gov...
...Kingdon is right in thinking that the best campaign argument is the reiteration of what we have lived through during the past decade, tit makes our experience live again In brilliant summaries...
...One leader after another fumbled the ball...
...When Rep...
...Roosevelt doles out fat federal jobs to "those machines which supported him...
...Others are Boss Kelly, Boss Hague, Boss Crump, Al Smith, Tom Dewey—and Charles W. Van Devander, who writes: "No public official who neglected the realities represented by precinct workers, ward leaders, city and s'tate bosses, would ever be likely to write any record of great accomplishments in public life in the present stage of American democracy . . . President Roosevelt, as s realist, has followed normal political practice in exchanging aid with those machines which supported him...
...And the excellence of Mr...
...What we need ia more books like "The Big Bosses''—all without last chapters...
...Van Devander insists that the "bossed delegations" in Congress "have been strong,nuclei of support for the foreign and domestic policies of the Administration," and in the case of New York State he finds that "if Sheriff Thomas M. 'Tin-Box-Tom' Failey was salting away a fortune whose origin he could not satisfactorily explain, and district leaders were selling appointments to the city magistrate's court at $10,000 each, this was perhaps offset by the fact that the Tammany delegation at Albany was helping to place on the statute books the nation's most advanced factory inspection laws, workmen's compensation laws, and measures to protect the state's natural resources from exploitation by private predatory interests...
...Roosevelt's Attorney General wraps a blinder marked "mutual aid" around his otherwise all-seeing eyes when Frank Hague's Hudson County stamps out civil liberties and makes a mockery of American Justice...
...For the benefit of those1 who still entertain hopes of a housecleaning, Mr...
...All that is lacking is the cherry tree...
...The present leader, Edward V. Ixmghlin, was jockeyed into power by the same district leaders who fronted for Frank Coatello in the nomination deal that elevated Thomas A. Aurelio to the Supreme Court bench...
...He is no more evilintentioned than the old time police reporter who aays, "The town's not the same since they knocked off Dutch Schulti...
...What Parson Weema did for Washington after his death he endeavors to do for Roosevelt while he still lives...
...The question is," he points out, "do we want him, or do we want what we are likely to get if we don't have him...
...This is oratorical history at its best...
...not only that he was an orfsniier of extraordinary abliity but that he possessed political generalship considerably superior to that of the ordinary...
...The book begins with this touching line, "It was a Black Day for Tammany Hall when they buried Charles Francis Murphy," If the author sounds a little weepy and nostalgic here, it is a kind of legman's license...
...LaGuardia's perfidy is a little shocking, although it is possible that when he wrote the book he had some hope that the Mayor would get off the fence once the chips were down and the party's very life was at stake...
...Murphy was around...
...Here is the lowdown—on Tammanv Hsll, fallen now on hard times...
...how to tap its sources of party wealth to the best advantage...
...Similarly, all Mr...
...In passing, Mr...
...Much the same was true of Workmen's compensation, and, for that matter, where whs the Tammany delegation when workmen's compensation whs degenerating into a fee-grabbing racket...
...And, it is fair to assume, Mr...
...Conditioned by numerous renditions of "Hail, Hail The Gang's All Here" and "For He's * Jolly Good Fellow," as sung at national political conventions, and B much on-the-spot observation of the touching scenes which ensue when barnstorming candidates kiss slum babies, he is so dispassionate that he ean even find some good words for the seamiest side of American politics...
...The negative passages are devastating...
...Thst's high piaise...
...From Harry Hopkins to Eric Johnston everyone is just too, too nice...
...on Boss Crump of Memphis...
...As for Mr...
...Michael J. Kennedy picked it up, the White House itself— and those wishy-washy sections of the press which cling to the dream of a Reform Tammany—took encouragement, hut Mr...
...He adds that candidates of both parties will have to work with the machines, "and offer suitable rewards in the way of spoils after they are elected," as long as the bosses "control important portions of the political organizations of their respective parties...
...fire, which killed 150 women bad more to do with the passage of the factory inspection laws than the Tammany delegation did...
...This system works in more ways than one...
...Frank Kingdon...
...And there is never a hint of hellish political devils lurking in the background...
...and on the lesser scoundrels...
...The quotations from Senators Wheeler and Nye as well as other isolationists are horrible enough to dig deep and wide graves for these gentlemen...
...on Boss Hague's incredibly corrupt domain across the river...
...It is doubtful if up to the day of decision in November the campaign will produce a comparable outburst...
...Frank Kingdon's strength is his unquestioning adoration...
...In the best (or worst) tradition of the morefamiliar Democratic bosses, Mr...
...jBMl ne ran i imu viiuug-jj, jyj wnu-ii uiv customers should, give thanks...
...Now J. Russell Sprague, leader of the nation's wealthiest community, Nassau County, is simply a gentleman "who knows from long experienS...
...This is so much balderdash...
...Lehman in 1938, and carried the •tat* for Mr...
...The author makes no pretense of possessing lithe crusading zeal which accounts for the stop-the-presses approach »ser in revolting vogue as a substitute for good reporting (see PM any day...
...Witness: That paragon of virtue, Thomas E. Dewey, is top man, in a quiet way, in what the author describes as the JaeckleSprague-Dewey machine...
...A great public outcry—stimulated by the tragic Triangle Waist Co...
...On thing more...
...It is titled, The "Realist" (yes, in quotes), and the No...
...But application of critical yardsticks to campaign rhapsody is contrary to all tradition...
...Van Devander does a fast and highly skillful job of marshalling his facts...
...on Albany's ruling dynasty, the O'Counell boys...
...un of leaders produced by the major Parties...
...Van Devander's third point, what laws did the Legislature pass to protect the people from exploitation by predatory liolitirnl interests...
...Van Devander says that "as long as a machine produces men of the calibre of 'AT Smith and "Boh" Wagner, provides a certain am.Him of progressive legislation for the benefit of the whole people, and serves as a buffer between the needs of the ignorant and the Complexities of government, it can safely get away with a certain amount of private graft and corruption...
...The lyric author can see no hint of failure even in the tale of the Ixmdon Economic Conference...
...Frank Kingdon, in other words, opens all the stops of his organ voice...
...Campaign Prosody By WILLIAM E.BOHN THAT MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE...
...1.00...
...Here, then, in sordid array, are the bosses...
...Kennedy was so uninspired as to let the Aurelio-Costello scandal crash around his head...
...This G.O.P...
...And it speaks of Alex Rose as having "demonstrated...
...And that, he concludes, "is 'realism' in American politics in 1944...
...In an sppended message from Rex Stout the character of the President's enemies is turned into a powerful argument for his election...
...But Edwin F. Jaeckle, the Erie County boss, is the kind of politician, scaled down to pur times, that used to inspire Thomas Nust's ominous caricatures...
...Maybe so, but it is also the most unpardonable defeatism...
...Van Devander means to convey is that things were much more interesting when the able Mr...
...when the Legislature abolished the job...
...From that point on, barring a last chapter which must have been written not only in a smoke-filled room but on a smoke-filled typewriter, Mr...
...Van Devander notes that "Governor Dewey...
...Pew of Pennsylvania, wearing Boss Grundy's old crown and dispensing his oil and shipyard millions with free hand to the stop Roosevelt-atany-cost crowd...
...And the machines—shame of the lJties...
...who hod scampered up the ladder as e youthful crusader against 'criminal political organisations'," is on the warpath against the O'Counell machine...
...For, (1) today's bosses are poor bargain-counter editions of the colossal thieves of the past, thanks to the realities of social progress, and (2) they can't "Safely get away" with it indefinitely if we keep letting "the ignorant" in on their back-room secrets...
...on the once affluent Pendergast of Missouri...
...bigwig once jjot himself appointed collector of back taxes, a fee paying job in Erie: "From lit'JH to 1933...
...Thus the calm with which he views Mr...
...Roosevelt in 1940...
...Ifdeed,-Mr...
...In any case, he makes the point that the Tiger has shrivelled considerably since the 22-year Murphy reign ended in 1924...
...Areo Publishing Co...
...Jaeckle rules his bailiwick with an iron hand— not neglecting to grease the palm in the process...
...Jaeckle salted away $154,606 in fees" and developed a flourishing law business on the side...
...Now about that last chapter...
...And a handsome, high-soaring bird it is...
...Van Devander notes that when "Mike" Kennedy got the sack the link between Tammany and the underworld was strengthened, not weakened...
...1 "realist" in it is President Roosevelt...
...Interesting occupation for the chief benefactor of Mr...
...Van Devander, Washington correspondent of the New York Post, does know the score...
...77pp...
...Van Devander is a hard-boiled, cynical fellow...
...on Tennessee's rural political badsum, Sheriff Biggs, who backs his authority with "the pistol and the blackjack" snd scornfully refers to territories bordering on his own Polk County as "occupied countries...
...He says that Heyor LaGuardia is "the man who has ¦est benefited" from the ALP but he ***** no position on the Little Flower's inexcusable neutrality when the HillmanCommunist coalition set out to capture the party from the very Rose-CountsDubinsky-Alfange leadership which he admires so much...
...Van Devander's earlier chapters, coldly and indisputably factual, disprove his own thesis...
...pHIS is the first swallow of the hot * campaign summer which will soon be upon us...
...Jaeckle's "political organisation," isn't it...
...We get the story of the New Deal, of the fascist threat, of the war effort...
...on Govvernor Dewey's flourishing machine (cut from the old cloth, and coming along very nicely, thanks to the oodles of patronage which accrue to the party in powei), on Mr...
...In one chapter we practically see our hero surrounded by a choir of heavenly angels...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 21
