National Affairs: Death of an Apostle

It was in 1930, when he was running for mayor of Detroit, that Frank Murphy astonished voters with a novel slogan. He was pledged, he said, to "the dew and the dawn and the sunshine of a new era." His enemies scoffed. But the votes of one of the nation's toughest industrial cities swept red-haired Frank Murphy into office.

The Reformer. From boyhood Frank Murphy had had a kind of desperate intentness. He carried with him the Bible given him by his mother and read a chapter from it every day. He played football at...