STATES & CITIES: New Broom

One week of Joseph Vincent (“Holy Joe”) McKee as Mayor of New York did more to damage the reputation of James John (“Jimmy”) Walker, his predecessor, than a year’s investigating by Samuel Seabury. Mayor McKee, young, handsome, sober, tackled his new job with a vigor and thoroughness that made many a New Yorker who had forgotten what good government was like gasp with happy astonishment. A new broom, he swept clean and by last week had accumulated a sizeable pile of Tammany trash.

Mayor McKee’s first and most important attack was upon city finances—a subject about which “Jimmy” Walker talked loud but did little. During the Walker regime municipal expenses mounted at the rate of $95,747 per day. Mayor McKee started reducing them at the rate of $71,440 per day.

Before the Board of Estimate over which the Mayor presides came a contract for printing ballots for this week’s municipal primary. Martin B. Brown Printing & Binding Co. bid $114,760 for the job, Burland Printing Co., $65,000. The Brown concern, long a Tammany favorite, had won practically all city printing contracts for years. The Tammany-controlled Board of Elections recommended that it get this one too, despite the high bid, on the ground that the Burland Company was not equipped to turn out work fast enough.

“I shall refuse to vote to give this contract to other than the low bidder,” announced Mayor McKee, “The Burland Company has been doing election work for the State as intricate as the work the city requires. Fifty thousand dollars is an awful lot of money. There’s a wholly unjustifiable monopoly on city printing and so far as I’m concerned it is ended.”

Seven Tammany votes on the Board lined up automatically for the Brown bid. But Mayor McKee mustered nine against its printing monopoly and the contract went to Burland. Savings: $49,760.

Cutting his own salary from $40,000 to $25,000 immediately, the new Mayor announced that effective Oct. 1 the 27 heads of municipal departments would get $12,000 instead of the $15,000-to-$25,000 they now draw. Savings: $151,000. Further salary cuts for employes drawing more than $2,000 were in the offing.

After a personal visit to Wall Street Mayor McKee borrowed $17,000,000 to help run the city. Where “Jimmy” Walker had to pay 5¾% for money, “Holy Joe McKee got it for 5¼%. Saving: $85,000.

Unannounced Mayor McKee dropped in on the $19,000,000 Bronx Terminal Market. He found in this huge municipal building two grocers and two vegetable dealers paying a total rent of $26,000 per year. Not more than ten city employes were visibly at work. Back at City Hall he learned that the market’s payroll and upkeep alone was costing the city $162,480 per year. Summoning his Commissioner of Markets, he told him that unless he remedied this “shocking condition,” in two days, he would be ignominiously “fired.” Two days later Tammany-backed William F. Dwyer was ousted, first to fall under Mayor McKee’s axe.

A Communist delegation of 50 was received at City Hall—something Mayor Walker would never have braved. Mayor McKee listened to their extravagant relief demands, then challenged them as to how their ends could be legally met. Wriggling and squirming under his superior logic, Reds weakly retorted that that was his job.

The Board of Elections ordered a special mayoralty election Nov. 8. Through his onetime law partner and a nominal plaintiff, Mayor McKee went to court to void the Board’s order, hold his job until Jan. 1, 1934. At stake was the question of whether the Mayor’s office was legally vacant. Mayor McKee said he wanted to save the city the expense of a special election.

These activities tended to depress the political stock of Citizen Walker. Whether Tammany would put him up for reelection or not remained as unsettled as ever. Mayor McKee was off to such a good start that many a wiseacre was sure that “Jimmy” Walker would never be able to regain his old job at the polls. The ex-Mayor, whom local cinema crowds were booing more & more in the newsreels, seemed to feel somewhat the same way when he suddenly sailed on the Conte Grande for a three weeks’ health trip abroad. Mused he: “Why is it they’ve done everything to throw me down and now they won’t let me go in peace? I guess it’s human nature. It was the same with Pericles.”