National Affairs: The Brown Derby

(3 of 6)

The house he came home to at night was no less respectable than any other on South Street in those days and he was a welcome, an extra welcome, guest at all the neighborhood parties and church sociables. "He talked all the time," his neighbors recall. He could dance jigs and recite and he thought he could sing. He wore fancy waistcoats, a red necktie, tight trousers and a trig brown derby. He grew tall and quite handsome. He was blond, eager, jocose. They always called him Alfred.

Education. Books, the conventional source of information and mental training, never attracted him. People were his educational instruments and he early learned to use them well. His college was the Society of St. Tammany and his freshman courses were in addressing postcards to voters, watching at the polls, etc., etc. He tried the real estate business on the side but Tammany promoted him to speechmaking in his district and his name began to get into the newspapers. The notorious Richard Croker was boss of Tammany at the time and Smith's immediate professor was Tom Foley, who kept the corner saloon.

Foley got him his first local appointment. For eight years he investigated jury panels, worked for other men's elections. His diversions were bicycling, amateur theatricals and courting a blackhaired belle, Katherine Dunn, who had moved from his neighborhood to the distant Bronx. In 1900, still a jury investigator, he married her and they lived in a flat near his Tammany club, later moving to a since-famed house in Oliver Street. In 1903, aged 30, he was sent to the New York Assembly as a Tammany regular. He made it a post-graduate course, became the speaker and in 1915, when the State held a constitutional convention, his thoroughgoing knowledge of the state laws carried off high honors.

In 1915 he became New York's sheriff. He was elected president of New York's board of aldermen in 1917. His stupid ticket-mate of that year, Mayor John F. Hylan, was to flounder on through disrepute into obscurity but "Al" Smith went on, in 1918, to be Governor. He has continued so down to date, except for the term of 1920-1922, when he fortified his fortune as a private citizen in the trucking business.

Career. To have been Governor of New York longer than any other man and to have been re-elected invariably by the opposition's futile efforts to find flaws in one's record, is no mean achievement in itself. Not without an eye to the national electorate, Governor Smith reviewed his administrations specifically last winter (TIME, Jan. 9). Certain things stood out:

The work of his Reconstruction Commission, straightening New York out after the War and reorganizing the sprawling state government.

Fiscal reform and the introduction of business methods in government control of ports, bridges, etc.

Road building, aid to education, conservation of water power.

Certain other things, which Governor Smith did not mention, will be noted in all Smith biographies* as follows:

In his first two terms, he conferred regularly and flexibly with Tammany Boss Charles F. Murphy. He helped the stupid Hylan get re-elected in 1921.