STATES & CITIES: Sheep in a Garden

STATES & CITIES

Still picking their teeth after hasty dinners some 20,000 sheeplike New York City Democrats one evening last week were herded into Madison Square Garden.

In mass if not mind their assembly constituted the largest political convention ever held in the U. S. Collectively they made up the county committees in the city’s five boroughs—the Democratic machine loosely referred to as Tammany. Individually they ruled atomic election district¯sgrubby little politicians taking orders from above. As delegates they had been collected at the Garden to nominate a man who in all probability would be New York’s next Mayor. That man had already been picked but not one in a hundred of the sheep in the Garden knew or cared who he was.

That afternoon the State Court of Appeals had finally decided that New York City must elect a Mayor next month to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation under-fire last month of James John (“Jimmy”) Walker. Hawk-beaked, tight-mouthed John Francis Curry, the Tammany boss whose leadership had cracked and broken earlier in the week at the state convention in Albany (see col. I), had hastily summoned a conference at the Plaza Hotel. In attendance were, among others, cherubic old John McCooey, the Brooklyn boss; hulking John Theofel, the Queens boss; George Washington Olvany,

onetime Tammany boss; Max David Steuer, Tammany’s legal brains. They were there to settle the nomination and they did.

Boss Curry wanted Walker again, who was speeding home on the Europa. But New Yorkers were utterly sick of “Jimmy.” His nomination, it was agreed, would be the weakest Tammany could make. Edward Joseph Flynn, the Bronx boss, wanted his man Joseph Vincent (“Holy Joe”) McKee kept in City Hall but Boss Curry flatly refused. Mayor McKee was shocking Tammany’s sensibilities by trying to save the city money and cutting salaries. As hotel waiters brought in an early dinner a compromise was struck, to wit, both Walker and McKee would be dropped and a third man picked.

In the shake of a sheep’s tail Boss Curry Hipped out the name of his man, telephoned him to hump himself to the Garden to receive the nomination.

At 7:30 p. m. Bosses Curry and McCooey marched into the crowded Garden,

sat together in Box 20. Delegates cheered but few noticed when a stout, jut-jawed man in a brown suit also entered and sat down inconspicuously in Box 22.

Newsmen, pressing about Box 20, asked: “Who’s it going to be?” Boss Curry clipped his words: “I think it will be Surrogate John P. O’Brien.” “You think?” mocked a reporter.

“Yes. I think it will be Surrogate O’Brien,” icily replied the man who knew it would be Surrogate O’Brien.

Newshawks flocked to Box 22 and around brown-suited Surrogate O’Brien.

His huge jaw bent into an amiable grin.

He explained it was all very much of a surprise to him. that he had been summoned directly from his court chambers and had not even had time to telephone his wife the news.

Meanwhile a sudden pall had settled on the convention. By law the roll had to be called of the 32,075 county committeemen authorized to make the nomination.

It was a two-hour ordeal, requiring five reading clerks in relays—names, names, names—none of them heeded as the delegates talked, roughhoused. fidgeted, fumed.

The meeting came to life when someone got up and read a radiogram from “Jimmy” Walker. Boastful as ever, he declared: “I have a justifiable pride in my six and a half years as Mayor. I know I could be re-elected by another overwhelming plurality. … I cannot see how I could campaign without daily reminding the public of the unfair nature of the hearings conducted by the Governor of our state. This would do the Democratic ticket no good. . . . Rather than jeopardize the hopes of democracy in the nation which I feel my candidacy might do I request that my name be withheld from the convention.” “We want Jimmy!” yelled the delegates, booing the reference to Governor Roosevelt. But after a Tammany sachem had delivered a nominating speech hastily scribbled on his knee, Surrogate O’Brien was chosen automatically. Applause was perfunctory. Half the delegates walked out during his acceptance speech.

With nomination of his candidate Boss Curry was still boss. Nominee O’Brien, whose son rooms with Boss Curry’s at Harvard Law School, has been a docile Tammany sheep for 35 years. He began as an assistant corporation counsel, was made corporation counsel in 1920 by Mayor Hylan. was promoted to the Surrogate’s bench two years later. Irish Catholic, 59, easy, affable, everybody’s friend, he likes cards, the theatre, golf, wears button shoes, leads an eminently respectable private life on the upper West Side. He promptly indicated his obedience to Tammany by announcing against any wage cuts for city employes.

The judicial deal whereby Tammany endorsed its inquisitor. Republican State Senator Samuel Hofstadter, for the Supreme Court bench began to bear fruit for the Democrats last week. Republican State Chairman Kingsland Macy, shocked and resentful, denounced the deal as “an unspeakable idea.” The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, led by George Woodward Wickersham, flayed Senator Hofstadter as “unfit to hold judicial office” and got busy trying to frame an independent ticket. One item of the deal was that city Republicans were not to fuse with independent Democrats to beat Tammany but were to nominate a flabby figure of their own who could not win.

Two days after the Garden meeting less than half of the city’s 8,747 Republican committeemen convened in Mecca Temple, nominated a sag-jowled, 71-year-old Brooklyn realtor named Lewis Humphrey Pounds. In 1924 Mr. Pounds had been elected State Treasurer after he had been awakened from a sound sleep and told he was being run for office. He dislikes nothing so much as vaudeville jokes at Brooklyn’s expense. A sacrifice offering to Tammany, he took the Republican nomination only after it had been rejected by better known G. O. Partisans who saw no reason for running to certain defeat.

Meanwhile municipal bonds slumped back to the level of the Walker regime as New York prepared to elect, simultaneously for the first time in 60 years, a Mayor, a Governor and a President.