The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN New York Apologizes ON this sunny autumn morning I cast my vote before breakfast. It took only a couple of minutes, and it seemed to me that all of the election...
...I saw this side of the Mayor's performance through the eyes of l.ang don Post...
...Installed in office, he did a lot of fine things...
...In addition to his talent for making enemies of good men, the Mayor's political methods have made it impossible for him to consolidate the good-government forces...
...His cabinet appointments were excellent...
...What I am going to say, then, is in the nature of a confession of failure to my friends, and friends of The New Leader, in such far places as Los Angeles, Kalamazoo and Jones's Corners...
...He turned out to be so egocentric that practically no other official who had any ability and self-respect could long work with him...
...Bt-T it soon became evident that the dynamic little autocrat at City Hall had all the faults that went with his virtues...
...From the most vociferous Italian street-cleaner to the saintly Citizens Union, he had us all in his train...
...It is probable that some of the bargains would hot stand the light of publicity and some of the support which has been secured would be far from pleasing to the more saintly among the Mayor's admirers...
...He could stand up to the Mayor and trade insult for insult...
...George...
...The establishment of the City Center proved that there is nothing wrong about an American city's taking the lead in music and drama...
...The citizens standing in line smiled with self satisfaction...
...But his Honor, acting—as he had so often done—the part of a disgruntled child, had quarreled with Joseph McGoldrick about a plan for housing over in Brooklyn...
...How can such things be...
...English muffins and sipped my second cup of coffee, I should have been more pleased with the world than ever...
...The billions to be spent on our postwar construction program will be placed in the hands from which we wrenched control with such cries of joy ten years ago...
...A new candidate had to be found...
...This, then, is the upshot of the tragedy...
...It took only a couple of minutes, and it seemed to me that all of the election officials and the watchers and even the policeman were exceptionally agreeable...
...So on New Years Day the Tammany tiger will crawl back to City Hall, And the cause of it all is the littleness of a big man...
...A lietter man could not have lieen chosen to head the Housing Authority...
...But the one thing which LaGuardia cannot do is to stay out of the picture...
...Most of them have not even been cast...
...McGoldrick and all of his friends had to be punished even if the whole fabric of the reform administration was pulled down in the i...
...The Veterans League of America fully agrees with the contention of Walter P. Reuther, vice-president of the United Auto Workers, CIO, that the proposal of C. E. Wilson, president of General Motors, would 'slam the door of job opportunity in the faces of millions of returning servicemen and other Americans entitled to work," the Veterans League stated...
...The returning veteran has a stake in organized labor's fight for a 30 percent wage increare as opposed to a lengthened work-week, for only by America's ability to consume the vast amount of goods which industry will produce at forty hours can the goal of full employment be achieved...
...While LaGuardia sulked in bis lent, i|.e Republicans, Fusionists and the Liberals put together the best ticket they eotua and prepared for the campaign...
...His double talent for playing effectively to the gallery at the front of the stage while quietly welding effective political links behind the scenes made him a national St...
...Many of us have devoted a lot of time and thought to it...
...He had at his finger-tips—or, rather, at the tip of his tongue—something for the must simple snd the most sophisticated...
...Rut he mi iply could not stand the Mayor's domineering ways...
...He earned the glory for rescuing the big town from tin-box Tammany braves...
...As I write this, the votes have not been counted...
...And for the commonest of the common people he could make noses at Hitler or use words that would not...
...New combinations had to be made...
...Out of rancor, spleen, personal spite, the Mayor has split the good-government ranks...
...As 1 thought things over and look in the sense of the headlines in the morning papers, the feeling grew that the people of New York City have been frustrated...
...The men he put on the Board of Higher Education started a new era for the city's colleges...
...Out of pure spite he put into the field a ticket of his own...
...As a politician, he has a gift for making perfnal bargains and gaining personal support...
...As 1 munched my toaster...
...The city's finances, under the sharp eyes of Joseph McGoldrlck, were put in order...
...bear the publicity of cold type...
...Alter performing my patriotic duty, 1 rewarded myself with an extra good breakfast...
...Never was there another man so sprightly on his feet, so quick with his response, so varied in his appeal...
...Had LaGuardia been willing to keep hands off, a good-government ticket headed by a leading Republican could have been lined up and probably would have gnns on to victory...
...To increase the work-week, as suggested by General Motors, would succeed only in widening the gap between production and consumption, and thereby wreck the entire reconversion...
...The only good man who in the long run could endure this treatment was Bob Moses...
...Had the Mayor been sufficiently public-spirited to forget his personal grudges and work wholeheartedly with the Republicans, the Fusionists and the Liberal Party, we could have built up an unbeatable combination and swept to victory a ticket that would have continued the best features of the LaGuardia regime...
...A visitor from the country might have thought that in our great metropolis the democratic process was running .smoothly to produce it* J>« i feet results...
...So much good has been done by the LaGuardia Administration that you would think the citizens would enthusiastically unite to see that it was followed up by another one of the same sort...
...1 feel that we intelligent, decent, liberal citizens of the metropolis owe an explanation to the rest of the country...
...The atory must begin and end with Mayor LaGuardia...
...He is both hero and villain...
...The Little Flower, who waa so laughingly complaisant on the public platform, gave way to fits of spleen in his office and frequently treated his fellow officials as if they had been recalcitrant schoolboys...
...How did our electoral machinery kick back at us in "this strange and unpleasant way...
...Hut I wasn't...
...For the rest, the appointive members of the Mayor's household have been changed over and over again...
...So he is still there and goes oti with his magnificent work...
...In the field of parks and playgrounds we made great progress...
...We have had a long and bitter campaign...
...Utopians on The Timet, The t'ott and, finally, P!U have given their support to a candidate who has no more chance of election than Snow White or one of the Seven Dwarfs...
...VETERANS LEAGUE SUPPORTS UAW CONDEMNING General Motors proposal to extend the national work-week to forty-five hours as a direct blow to the job hopes of returning veterans, the Veterans League of America, 45 Astor Place, New York City, called upon all veterans' organizations to fight for the maintenance or lowering of the national work-week to forty hours as a prime requisite for guaranteeing full employment for the veteran...
...Newbold Morris, one of the best men in this town, was persuaded—by what arguments I cannot imagine—to stand at its head...
...The result of all these things, running over a decade, has been that Mayor laiGuardia approached the 1946 election without any solid backing...
...But the result is known in advance...
...He could talk social science with the settlement workers, education with the school people, music with the musicians, kitchen affairs with the housewives, snd wages with the workers...
...And now the result is something that most of us <lo not want...
...For once the reform forces of New York had the advantage of going before the people with a warm and popular leader...
...Here was a man for everone who wanted a better city...
...The great city of New York is about to be turned back to the tender mercies of Tammany Hall plus the ALP-Communist machine...
Vol. 28 • November 1945 • No. 45
