National Affairs: The Voice of the Convention

Alben Barkley’s dull roar died away. In its stead, for a long moment during the Democratic Convention last week, there was only the manifold murmur of the crowd in the Chicago Stadium. The sweating, shuffling, staring thousands had just heard Franklin Roosevelt’s inconclusive message that he could be had (see p. 9), wondered what would happen next. Suddenly the loudspeakers clustered above the delegates came alive. A voice thundered:

We want Roosevelt!

The delegates on the floor, the thousands stacked in the galleries began to stir, here & there to cry with The Voice:

We “want Roosevelt!

The Voice continued, for 45 minutes, intermittently sustained a sonorous tom-tom chant:

The Party wants Roosevelt!

New Jersey wants Roosevelt!

The world needs Roosevelt!

Everybody wants Roosevelt!

The Voice which thus lifted delegates and spectators from apathy into their first big, draft-Roosevelt demonstration belonged neither to Alben Barkley, to the People, nor to God. Politically it belonged to Chicago Bosses Ed Kelly and Pat Nash: technically, to their Superintendent of Sewers Thomas D. (“for Democrat”) Garry.

Leathery, pot-bellied Tom Garry was the Kelly-Nash henchman who had charge of Stadium decorations. By prearrangement, he also had an electrical pipe line to the loudspeaker circuit, which was supposed to be controlled exclusively from the convention rostrum. In the hour of his triumph last week he was ensconced in a tiny basement room, where the amplifier circuits were centred. Six times he ran from “the catacombs” to Mayor Kelly’s box and up into the galleries to survey the milling, parading, shouting results of his tongue work, then dashed back to his microphone.

“It was a job right up my alley,” said Tom Garry next day, beaming through his bifocal glasses and stroking his green plaid jacket. “I figured out a lot of my own angles.”

Tom Garry went into politics at the age of 12, when he rang doorbells for his father, who was an alderman in Chicago’s Eighth Ward. He also learned to lay brick (and still carries a union card), but for more than 30 years Chicago’s brand of

14 politics has been his business. Along with other Sanitary District employes he was once indicted for general conspiracy, was never tried. He has been Superintendent of Sewers three years, gets $6,000 a year. Says contented Tom Garry: “People in politics are the biggest chumps in the world. Only one out of 20,000 makes a living out of it. I’m just an ordinary lug who loves the game of politics.” Tom Garry has a comfortable apartment on Chicago’s West Side, a wife, four daughters (three are married). His great day last week was also Mrs. Garry’s birthday, the first in 33 years when he had failed to give her a party. “But she’s a good pal,” said The Voice, “and sees the convention is more important. . . . Outside of my wife, my hobby is Mayor Kelly and Pat Nash. They’re the greatest humanitarians in the world. They’re the nuts.”

Proud of his 3,800 miles of sewers, his 300,000 manholes and catch basins is Tom Garry. And he has his own way of emphasizing their (and his) importance to Chicago. “First thing when you get up in the morning,” says Tom Garry, “you come in and see me. You don’t know it, but that’s me you’re visiting.”