DEMOCRATS: Necessary Chore

Last week the Democratic Party was a burdensome nuisance to Franklin Roosevelt. Left to himself, Mr. Roosevelt might not have fretted much about finding a successor to James Aloysius Farley. But other Democrats did not share his conviction that Adolf Hitler would have more to do with the November election than the next chairman of the Democratic

National Committee. So, with all the enthusiasm of a boy chopping wood, the President perforce looked around for a politician, preferably Catholic, who could & would do his Third Term scrubwork. Nobody wanted the job. Leo T. Crowley, Catholic, and able chairman of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., was determined to leave Washington to head Standard Gas & Electric Co. Catholic Frank Walker, who was the Party treasurer in 1932, pleaded the pressure of his theatre business and law practice.

Finally the President chose Boss Edward Joseph Flynn of The Bronx, who said: “I do not hope to equal the record of my predecessor and friend, Jim Farley, but I will do my best.”

Bronx Boy. Irish Catholic Ed Flynn was born, reared, schooled (at Fordham University) in New York City’s teeming Borough of The Bronx. He is a graduate cum laude of the seamy school of politics. But no seams show on Edward J. Flynn. At 48 he is trimly built, iron-grey, dresses even more splendidly than Jersey City’s Boss Frank Hague. Blackest spot that Boss-Buster Tom Dewey could find on Ed Flynn was the fact that when he was Sheriff of The Bronx (1921-25) one of his deputies was Gangster Arthur (“Dutch Schultz”) Flegenheimer (who had much closer connections with Tammany’s convicted Jimmy Hines). Last year Flynn learned that Jim Farley wanted to go out of politics and into business because he needed money to pay his debts. Mr. Flynn was heard to say, in great surprise: “Why, in his position he ought to be able to make plenty of money!”

Bigwig Democrats have seen something of Ed Flynn at the last three national conventions. But he is a stranger to thousands of local party hacks whom Jim Farley calls by first names.