National Affairs: Jimmy Walker, Tsar

In 1929 Mayor James John Walker of New York City, blithe, debonair, and Tammany’s greatest vote-getter, swamped his Republican rival by 500,000 votes. The rival was Fiorello Henry LaGuardia. In 1932 Governor Franklin Roosevelt held hearings on Mayor Walker’s conduct of his office, during which Mayor Walker resigned. Fiorello LaGuardia, making much of Mayor Walker’s misdoings, in due time became New York City’s mayor.

Last week New Yorkers rubbed their eyes at finding the names Walker-Roosevelt-La Guardia tied together again. After lunch at the White House, Mayor LaGuardia flew back to Manhattan and, as he explained upon landing, at 7,000 feet up in the air it suddenly occurred to him to appoint James Walker “tsar” of industrial and labor relations of Manhattan’s giant cloak & suit industry. Salary: $20,000. Gravely David Dubinsky, head of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, and ardent pro-Roosevelt campaigner, hailed James Walker’s “wide executive experience” as fitting him for the complex job of impartial labor arbitrator.

Happiest man in the whole show was Jimmy Walker. After returning from abroad, halfheartedly practicing law while his wife ran a flower shop, conducting a short-lived radio program, he was back in the world of headlines, photographers, wisecracks, still the popular idol of many a New York City voter. Dressed in a natty, double-breasted grey suit, with a white shirt, black shoes and blue socks, a speck of white handkerchief peeping from his breast pocket, he was five minutes early on his first day at work.