Al Smith

For other uses, see Al Smith (disambiguation).
The Honorable
Al Smith
42nd Governor of New York
In office
January 1, 1923  December 31, 1928
Lieutenant George R. Lunn (1923–1924)
Seymour Lowman (1925–1926)
Edwin Corning (1927–1928)
Preceded by Nathan L. Miller
Succeeded by Franklin D. Roosevelt
In office
January 1, 1919  December 31, 1920
Lieutenant Harry C. Walker
Preceded by Charles S. Whitman
Succeeded by Nathan L. Miller
8th President of the New York City Board of Aldermen
In office
January 1, 1917  December 31, 1918
Preceded by Frank L. Dowling
Succeeded by Robert L. Moran
Personal details
Born Alfred Emanuel Smith
(1873-12-30)December 30, 1873
Manhattan, New York City
Died October 4, 1944(1944-10-04) (aged 70)
New York City
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Catherine Ann Dunn
Children 5
Residence Manhattan, New York City
Religion Roman Catholicism

Alfred Emanuel "Al" Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American statesman who was elected Governor of New York four times and was the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928. He was the foremost urban leader of the efficiency-oriented Progressive Movement and was noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as governor in the 1920s. He was also linked to the notorious Tammany Hall machine that controlled New York City's politics; was a strong opponent of Prohibition and was the first Catholic nominee for President. His candidacy mobilized Catholic votes—especially women who previously had not voted. It also mobilized the anti-Catholic vote, which was strongest in the South.

As a committed "wet" (anti-Prohibition) candidate, Smith attracted not only drinkers but also voters angered by the corruption and lawlessness brought about by prohibition.[1] However, he was feared among Protestants, including German Lutherans and Southern Baptists, who believed that the Catholic Church and the Pope would dictate his policies. Most importantly, this was a time of national prosperity under a Republican Presidency, and Smith lost in a landslide to Republican Herbert Hoover. Four years later Smith sought the 1932 nomination but was defeated by his former ally and successor as New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. Smith entered business in New York City and became an increasingly vocal opponent of Roosevelt's New Deal.

Early life

Smith was born and raised in the Fourth Ward on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and it was here he would spend his entire life.[2] His mother, Catherine (Mulvihill), was the daughter of Maria Marsh and Thomas Mulvihill, who were from County Westmeath, Ireland.[3] His father, Alfred Emanuele Ferraro, took the name Alfred E. Smith ('ferraro' means 'blacksmith' or 'smith' in Italian). The elder Alfred was the son of Italian and German[4][5] immigrants. He served with the 11th New York Fire Zouaves in the opening months of the Civil War.

Al Smith grew up in the Gilded Age as New York itself matured. The Brooklyn Bridge was being constructed nearby. "The Brooklyn Bridge and I grew up together," Smith would later recall.[6] His four grandparents were Irish, German, Italian, and Anglo-Irish,[7] but Smith identified with the Irish American community and became its leading spokesman in the 1920s.

His father Alfred owned a small trucking firm, but died when the boy was 13. At 14 he had to drop out of St. James parochial school to help support the family, working at a fish market for seven years. Prior to his dropping out of school, he spent time as an altar boy, and was strongly influenced by the priests he worked with.[8] He never attended high school or college and claimed he learned about people by studying them at the Fulton Fish Market, where he worked for $12 per week. His acting skills made him a success on the amateur theater circuit. He became widely known, and developed the smooth oratorical style that characterized his political career. On May 6, 1900, Al Smith married Catherine Ann Dunn, with whom he had five children.[9]

Political career

Gubernatorial portrait of Al Smith.

In his political career, Smith traded on his working-class beginnings, identifying himself with immigrants and campaigning as a man of the people. Although indebted to the Tammany Hall political machine, particularly to its boss, "Silent" Charlie Murphy, he remained untarnished by corruption and worked for the passage of progressive legislation.[9] It was during his early unofficial jobs with Tammany Hall that he gained notoriety as an excellent speaker.[10] Smith's first political job was in 1895 as an investigator in the office of the Commissioner of Jurors as appointed by Tammany Hall.

State legislature

He was a member of the New York State Assembly (New York Co., 2nd D.) in 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914 and 1915.[8] After being approached by Frances Perkins, he sought to improve the conditions of factory workers. He served as vice chairman of the commission appointed to investigate factory conditions after 146 workers died in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Meeting the families of the deceased Triangle factory workers left a strong impression on him, and together with Perkins, Smith crusaded against dangerous and unhealthy workplace conditions and championed corrective legislation.[10][11] The Commission was chaired by State Senator Robert F. Wagner and cochaired by Smith. They held a series of widely publicized investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking 3500 pages of testimony. They hired field agents to do on-site inspections of factories.They started with the issue of fire safety and moved on to broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory environment. Their findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating labor in New York state, and gave each of them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class. In the process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to progressive endeavors to help the workers.[12] New York City's Fire Chief John Kenlon told the investigators that his department had identified more than 200 factories where conditions made a fire like that at the Triangle Factory possible.[13] The State Commissions's reports helped modernize the state's labor laws, making New York State "one of the most progressive states in terms of labor reform."[14][15] New laws mandated better building access and egress, fireproofing requirements, the availability of fire extinguishers, the installation of alarm systems and automatic sprinklers, better eating and toilet facilities for workers, and limited the number of hours that women and children could work. In the years from 1911 to 1913, sixty of the sixty-four new laws recommended by the Commission were legislated with the support of Governor William Sulzer.[16]

In 1911, the Democrats obtained a majority of seats in the State Assembly; and Smith became Majority Leader and Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. In 1912, following the loss of the majority, he became the Minority Leader. When the Democrats reclaimed the majority after the next election, he was elected Speaker for the 1913 session. He became Minority Leader again in 1914 and 1915. In November 1915, he was elected Sheriff of New York County, New York. By now he was a leader of the Progressive movement in New York City and state. His campaign manager and top aide was Belle Moskowitz, a daughter of Jewish immigrants.[9]

Governor (1918–28)

Al Smith with his wife.

After serving in the patronage-rich job of Sheriff of New York County, Smith was elected President of the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York in 1917. Smith was elected Governor of New York at the New York state election, 1918 with the help of Murphy and James A. Farley, who brought Smith the upstate vote.

In 1919, Smith gave the famous speech, "A man as low and mean as I can picture",[17] making a drastic break with William Randolph Hearst. Publisher Hearst, known for his notoriously sensationalist and largely left-wing position in the state Democratic Party, was the leader of its populist wing in the city. Hearst had combined with Tammany Hall in electing the local administration. Hearst had attacked Smith for starving children by not reducing the cost of milk.[18]

Smith lost his bid for re-election at the New York state election, 1920, but was again elected governor at the elections in 1922, 1924 and 1926 with James A. Farley managing his campaign. In his 1922 re-election, he embraced his position as an anti-prohibitionist; Smith offered alcohol to guests at the Executive Mansion in Albany, and actually repealed the Prohibition enforcement statute: the Mullan-Gage law.[19] Governor Smith became known nationally as a progressive who sought to make government more efficient and more effective in meeting social needs. Smith's young assistant Robert Moses built the nation's first state park system and reformed the civil service, later gaining appointment as Secretary of State of New York. During Smith's term, New York strengthened laws governing workers' compensation, women's pensions and children and women's labor with the help of Frances Perkins, soon to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Labor Secretary.

At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, Smith unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president, advancing the cause of civil liberty by decrying lynching and racial violence. Roosevelt made the nominating speech in which he saluted Smith as "the Happy Warrior of the political battlefield."[9] Smith represented the urban, east coast wing of the party as an anti-prohibition "wet" candidate while his main rival for the nomination, California Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, stood for the more rural tradition and prohibition "dry" candidacy.[20] The party was hopelessly split between the two and an increasingly chaotic convention balloted 100 times before both accepted they would not be able to win the two-thirds majority required to win and so withdrew. The exhausted party then nominated the little-known John W. Davis of West Virginia. Davis went on to lose the election by a landslide to the Republican Calvin Coolidge. Undeterred, Smith fought a determined campaign for the party's nomination in 1928.

1928 election

Al Smith giving a speech.

It was reporter Frederick William Wile who made the oft-repeated observation that Smith was defeated by "the three P's: Prohibition, Prejudice and Prosperity".[21] The Republican Party was still benefitting from an economic boom and a failure to reapportion congress and the electoral college with the results of the 1920 census which registered a 15 percent increase in the urban population. Their presidential candidate Herbert Hoover did little to alter these events.

The Republican Party was benefitting from an economic boom and historians agree that the prosperity along with anti-Catholic sentiment made Hoover's election inevitable.[22] He defeated Smith by a landslide in the 1928 election.

Political cartoon suggesting the Pope was the force behind Al Smith. The Good Citizen. November 1926. Publisher: Pillar of Fire Church.

Smith's Catholic beliefs played a key role in his loss of the election of 1928.[8] Many feared that he would answer to the pope and not the Constitution. His close association with Tammany Hall, the Democratic machine in Manhattan, opened the issue of tolerating corruption in government. Another major controversial issue was the continuation of Prohibition. Smith was personally in favor of relaxation or repeal of Prohibition laws despite its status as part of the nation's Constitution, but the Democratic Party split north and south on the issue. During the campaign Smith tried to duck the issue with noncommittal statements.[23]

Smith was an articulate proponent of good government and efficiency, as was Hoover. Smith swept the entire Catholic vote, which had been split in 1920 and 1924 and brought millions of Catholics to the polls for the first time, especially women. He lost important Democratic constituencies in the rural north and in southern cities and suburbs. He did carry the Deep South, thanks in part to his running mate, Senator Joseph Robinson from Arkansas and he carried the ten most populous cities in the United States. Some of Smith's losses can be attributed to fear that as President, Smith would answer to the Pope rather than to the Constitution, to fears of the power of New York City, to distaste for the long history of corruption associated with Tammany Hall, as well as to Smith's own mediocre campaigning. Smith's campaign theme song, "The Sidewalks of New York", was not likely to appeal to rural folks and his city accent on the "raddio" seemed slightly foreign. Although Smith narrowly lost New York state, his fellow Democrat Roosevelt was elected to replace him as governor of New York.[24] James A. Farley left Smith's camp to run Franklin D. Roosevelt's successful campaign for Governor and later Roosevelt's successful campaigns for the Presidency in 1932 and 1936.

Voter realignment

Some political scientists believe that the 1928 election started a voter realignment that helped develop the New Deal coalition of Franklin D. Roosevelt.[25] As one political scientist explains, "...not until 1928, with the nomination of Al Smith, a northeastern reformer, did Democrats make gains among the urban, blue-collar and Catholic voters who were later to become core components of the New Deal coalition and break the pattern of minimal class polarization that had characterized the Fourth Party System."[26] However, Allan Lichtman's quantitative analysis suggests that the 1928 results were based largely on religion and are not a useful barometer of the voting patterns of the New Deal era.[27]

Finan (2003) says Smith is an underestimated symbol of the changing nature of American politics in the first half of the last century. He represented the rising ambitions of urban, industrial America at a time when the hegemony of rural, agrarian America was in decline. He was connected to the hopes and aspirations of immigrants, especially Catholics and Jews. Smith was a devout Catholic, but his struggles against religious bigotry were often misinterpreted when he fought the religiously inspired Protestant morality imposed by prohibitionists.

Opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal

Smith felt slighted by Roosevelt during the latter's governorship. They became rivals for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination. At the convention, Smith's animosity toward Roosevelt was so great, he put aside longstanding rivalries and managed to work with William McAdoo and William Randolph Hearst to try to block FDR's nomination for several ballots. This unlikely coalition fell apart when Smith refused to work on finding a compromise candidate and instead maneuvered to make himself the nominee. After losing the nomination, Smith eventually campaigned for Roosevelt in 1932, giving a particularly important speech on behalf of the Democratic nominee at Boston on October 27 in which he "pulled out all the stops."[28]

Smith became highly critical of Roosevelt's New Deal policies and joined the American Liberty League, an anti-Roosevelt group. Smith believed the New Deal was a betrayal of good-government progressive ideals and ran counter to the goal of close cooperation with business. The Liberty League was an organization that tried to rally public opinion against Roosevelt's New Deal. Conservative Democrats who disapproved of Roosevelt's New Deal measures founded the group. In 1934, Smith joined forces with wealthy business executives, who provided most of the league's funds. The league published pamphlets and sponsored radio programs, arguing that the New Deal was destroying personal liberty. However, the league failed to gain support in the 1934 and 1936 elections and it rapidly declined in influence. The league was officially dissolved in 1940.[29][30]

Smith's antipathy to Roosevelt and his policies was so great that he supported Republican presidential candidates Alfred M. Landon (in the 1936 election) and Wendell Willkie (in the 1940 election).[9] Although personal resentment was one motivating factor in Smith's break with Roosevelt and the New Deal, Smith was consistent in his beliefs and politics. Finan (2003) argues Smith always believed in social mobility, economic opportunity, religious tolerance and individualism. Strangely enough, Smith and Eleanor Roosevelt remained close. In 1936, while Smith was in Washington making a vehement radio attack on the President, she invited him to stay at the White House. To avoid embarrassing the Roosevelts, he declined.

Business life and later years

Smith golfing with baseball great Babe Ruth in Coral Gables, Florida (1930) – State Archive of Florida

After the 1928 election, Smith became the president of Empire State, Inc., the corporation that built and operated the Empire State Building. Construction for the building was commenced symbolically on March 17, 1930, per Smith's instructions. Smith's grandchildren cut the ribbon when the world's tallest skyscraper—built in only 13 months—opened on May 1, 1931—May Day. As with the Brooklyn Bridge, which Smith witnessed being built from his Lower East Side boyhood home, the Empire State Building was a vision and an achievement constructed by combining the interests of all rather than being divided by interests of a few.

Smith was elected as President of the Board of Trustees of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, in 1929.[31]

Like most New York City businessmen, Smith enthusiastically supported World War II, but was not asked by Roosevelt to play any role in the war effort.[9]

In 1939 he was appointed a Papal Chamberlain of the Sword and Cape, one of the highest honors the Papacy bestowed on a layman, which today is styled a Gentleman of His Holiness.

Smith died at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital on October 4, 1944 of a heart attack, at the age of 70, broken-hearted over the death of his wife from cancer five months earlier, on May 4, 1944.[32] He is interred at Calvary Cemetery.[33]

Namesake

Smith's name is on a hospital in Manhattan.

Electoral history

New York gubernatorial elections, 1918–1926

1918 General election results
Governor candidate Running Mate Party Popular Vote
Alfred E. Smith Harry C. Walker Democratic 1,009,936 (47.37%)
Charles S. Whitman Edward Schoeneck (Republican),
Mamie W. Colvin (Prohibition)
Republican,
Prohibition
995,094 (46.68%)
Charles Wesley Ervin Ella Reeve Bloor Socialist 121,705 (5.71%)
Olive M. Johnson August Gillhaus Socialist Labor 5,183 (0.24%)

Notes:

1920 General election results
Governor candidate Running Mate Party Popular Vote
Nathan L. Miller Jeremiah Wood Republican 1,335,878 (46.58%)
Alfred E. Smith George R. Fitts Democratic 1,261,812 (44.00%)
Joseph D. Cannon Jessie Wallace Hughan Socialist 159,804 (5.57%)
Dudley Field Malone Farmer-Labor 69,908 (2.44%)
George F. Thompson Edward G. Deltrich Prohibition 35,509 (1.24%)
John P. Quinn Socialist Labor 5,015 (0.17%)

1922 General election results
Governor candidate Running Mate Party Popular Vote
Alfred E. Smith George R. Lunn Democratic 1,397,670 (55.21%)
Nathan L. Miller William J. Donovan Republican 1,011,725 (39.97%)
Edward F. Cassidy Theresa B. Wiley Socialist,
Farmer-Labor
109,119 (4.31%)
George K. Hinds William C. Ramsdell Prohibition 9,499 (0.38%)
Jeremiah D. Crowley John E. DeLee Socialist Labor 9,499 (0.38%)

1924 General election results
Governor candidate Running Mate Party Popular Vote
Alfred E. Smith George R. Lunn Democratic 1,627,111 (49.96%)
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Seymour Lowman Republican 1,518,552 (46.63%)
Norman Mattoon Thomas Charles Solomon Socialist 99,854 (3.07%)
James P. Cannon Franklin P. Brill Workers 6,395 (0.20%)
Frank E. Passonno Milton Weinberger Socialist Labor 4,931 (0.15%)

Note: This was the last time the running mate of the elected governor was defeated, Democrat Smith having Republican Lowman as lieutenant for the duration of this term.

1926 General election results
Governor candidate Running Mate Party Popular Vote
Alfred E. Smith Edwin Corning Democratic 1,523,813 (52.13%)
Ogden L. Mills Seymour Lowman Republican 1,276,137 (43.80%)
Jacob Panken August Claessens Socialist 83,481 (2.87%)
Charles E. Manierre Ella McCarthy Prohibition 21,285 (0.73%)
Benjamin Gitlow Franklin P. Brill Workers 5,507 (0.19%)
Jeremiah D. Crowley John E. DeLee Socialist Labor 3,553 (0.12%)

United States presidential election, 1928

Presidential candidate Party Home state Popular vote Electoral
vote
Running mate
Count Pct Vice-presidential candidate Home state Elect. vote
Herbert Hoover Republican California 21,427,123 58.2% 444 Charles Curtis Kansas 444
Alfred E. Smith Democratic New York 15,015,464 40.8% 87 Joseph Taylor Robinson Arkansas 87
Norman Thomas Socialist New York 267,478 0.7% 0 James H. Maurer Pennsylvania 0
William Z. Foster Communist Illinois 48,551 0.1% 0 Benjamin Gitlow New York 0
Other 48,396 0.1% Other
Total 36,807,012 100% 531 531
Needed to win 266 266

In popular culture

See also

References

  1. Daniel Okrent, Last Call, 2010.
  2. MacAdam, George (January 1920). "Governor Smith of New York". The World's work (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.). XXXIX (3): 237. Retrieved September 1, 2010.
  3. Slayton, Robert A. (2001). Empire statesman: the rise and redemption of Al Smith. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-684-86302-3.
  4. Barkan, Elliott Robert (2001). Making it in America: a sourcebook on eminent ethnic Americans. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. p. 350. ISBN 978-1-57607-098-7.
  5. https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-25847-12175-45?cc=1937366&wc=M99Q-NSQ:723368583
  6. Slayton (2001), p. 16
  7. Josephsons 1969
  8. 1 2 3 Burner, David. "Al Smith". American National Biography. Retrieved 24 March 2013.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Slayton 2001, ch 1-4
  10. 1 2 Von Drehle, David (2003). Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. New York, NY: Grove Press New York. pp. 204–210. ISBN 0-8021-4151-X.
  11. "Obama, the Triangle fire and the real father of the New Deal". Salon.com. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
  12. Robert Ferdinand Wagner" in Dictionary of American Biography (1977)
  13. New York Times: "Factory Firetraps Found by Hundreds," October 14, 1911,
  14. Richard A. Greenwald, The Triangle Fire, the Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy in Progressive Era New York (2005), 128
  15. The Economist, "Triangle Shirtwaist: The birth of the New Deal", March 19, 2011, p. 39.
  16. Slayton, Empire Statesman (2001) pp 92-92
  17. MacArthur, Brian (May 1, 2000). The Penguin Book of 20th-Century Speeches. Penguin (Non-Classics). ISBN 0-14-028500-8.
  18. Procter, Ben H. (2007). William Randolph Hearst. Oxford University Press US. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-19-532534-8.
  19. Lerner, Michael (2007). Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 239–240. ISBN 978-0-674-03057-2.
  20. "Al Smith". Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 26 March 2013.
  21. reprinted 1977, John A. Ryan, "Religion in the Election of 1928," Current History, December 1928; reprinted in Ryan, Questions of the Day (Ayer Publishing, 1977) p.91
  22. William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958) pp. 225–240.
  23. Lichtman (1979)
  24. Slayton 2001; Lichtman (1979)
  25. Degler (1964)
  26. Lawrence (1996) p 34.
  27. Lichtman (1976)
  28. J. Joseph Huthmacher, Massachusetts People and Politics: The transition from Republican to Democratic dominance and its national implications (1973) p. 248.
  29. George Wolfskill. The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League, 1934–1940. (Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
  30. Jordan A. Schwarz, "Al Smith in the Thirties." New York History (1964): 316-330. in JSTOR
  31. Reznikoff, Charles, ed. 1957. Louis Marshall: Champion of Liberty. Selected Papers and Addresses. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, p. 1123.
  32. "Alfred E. Smith Dies Here at 70; 4 Times Governor". New York Times. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
  33. "U.S. Department of Labor – Labor Hall of Fame – Alfred E. Smith". Dol.gov. Retrieved June 17, 2010.
  34. Election result in NYT on December 31, 1918

Works

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Al Smith.
Wikisource has the text of a 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Al Smith.
New York Assembly
Preceded by
Joseph P. Bourke
New York State Assembly
New York County, 2nd District

1904–1915
Succeeded by
Peter J. Hamill
Political offices
Preceded by
Edwin A. Merritt, Jr.
Majority Leader in the New York State Assembly
1911
Succeeded by
Frank L. Young
Preceded by
Edwin A. Merritt, Jr.
Minority Leader in the New York State Assembly
1912
Succeeded by
Harold J. Hinman
Preceded by
Edwin A. Merritt, Jr.
Speaker of the New York State Assembly
1913
Succeeded by
Thaddeus C. Sweet
Preceded by
Harold J. Hinman
Minority Leader in the New York State Assembly
1914–1915
Succeeded by
Joseph M. Callahan
Preceded by
Frank L. Dowling
President of the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York
1918
Succeeded by
Robert L. Moran
Preceded by
Charles S. Whitman
Governor of New York
1919–1920
Succeeded by
Nathan L. Miller
Preceded by
Nathan L. Miller
Governor of New York
1923–1928
Succeeded by
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Party political offices
Preceded by
John W. Davis
Democratic presidential nominee
1928
Succeeded by
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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