PENNSYLVANIA: Philadelphia Primary

Last week, at the end of its regular registration period, Philadelphia had enrolled more voters than the entire population of San Francisco or Pittsburgh in one of the most stupendous political campaigns in the history of the third city of the land.

In the old days when the Republican machine of the late William S. Vare plotted the path which Philadelphia should tread, the Boss simply pointed his finger and the man at whom he pointed was overwhelmingly elected. Whom the Democrats might nominate made little difference. This year it does.

Running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia in next week’s primary, and virtually certain of victory, is a 45-year-old athlete whose name had hardly been heard of in politics until two years ago. John Bernard Kelly, brother of Playwright George Kelly (The Show-Off, Craig’s Wife, Philip Goes Forth), learned to row on his native Schuylkill; won the singles sculling championship at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920; has 125 rowing championships to his credit. He married the female coach of water sports and canoeing at the University of Pennsylvania who bore him four children. Squash, golf, and handball are still his games.

Jack Kelly’s business career began as messenger boy for a contractor who was building John Wanamaker’s store. In the course of his duties Jack Kelly took a four-story fall off the steel framework, landed in a pile of cinders. Subsequently he became a bricklayer, made a fortune as a contractor for brick work. He raised such structures as Philadelphia’s Packard Building, the new Gimbel store and, appropriately, the Penn Athletic Club.

Quite inappropriately, Jack Kelly, who never registered as a regular Democrat until 1933, is today the highly successful boss of Philadelphia’s Democratic machine. He was picked by J. David Stern, publisher of the Philadelphia Record, and other ardent New Dealers for the job of putting Democrats on the Philadelphia map. Athlete Kelly promptly kicked out the machine Democrats who, by grace of Boss Vare, had for years played piccolo in Philadelphia’s political orchestra. Today City Boss Kelly can and has told State Boss Guffey what he would and would not permit. This week he is running for Mayor on the platform of a 5¢ fare (in place of 7½¢ tokens), WPA money to rebuild Philadelphia’s slums, sandblasting for the outside of the City Hall, ejection of bums who sleep in its corridors, an eight instead of a five-hour day for city employes. His nomination is conceded and his chances of election in November are considered good. Running on the same ticket with him for District Attorney is Curtis Bok, liberal grandson of the late Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, who appeals to socialite New Dealers.

On the Republican side of the Philadelphia picture things are less neat and simple. Because of the confusion within that party no less than 19 Republicans filed as candidates for Mayor. Of these, eleven remained on the ballot for next week’s primary. Compromise was impossible because none of the three leading candidates would give an inch for party unity. Sheriff Richard Weglein, for 25 years boss of “Brewerytown,” thought he ought to be Mayor because he is “the only real Republican of the lot.” The Penrose faction of the Republican machine threw its support to City Treasurer WillB Hadley for Mayor. Also definitely in the Republican race was a newcomer named Samuel Davis Wilson.

WillB Hadley’s peculiar first name is due to the fact that his father was also named Will and his mother added “B” to the boy’s to distinguish father and son. He studied finance at Wharton School, worked for the Manhattan accounting firm of Haskins & Sells, helped Charles Evans Hughes investigate New York insurance companies. In 1906 Roosevelt I named him assistant auditor of Puerto Rico. Three years later he was called home to overhaul Philadelphia’s accounting system, became chief accountant in the office of the city controller. He did so good a job that in a few years he was recognized as an international authority on municipal finance.

As a candidate for Mayor WillB Hadley was no politician to stir apathetic Philadelphians to white heat. He was a master of figures, not words, a shy, frugal, philosophical man, whose chief joy was his 650-acre farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. If he was to have a political career he had to be dramatized. So he acquired a curious jack-of-all-political-trades named Samuel Davis Wilson. Mr. Wilson began issuing statements for Controller Hadley that made news: How city funds bought a barber’s chair for City Solicitor Augustus Trask (“Dandy Gus) Ashton; how Coroner Schwarz got a $25 desk pad, and a $25 wastebasket. And presently Mr. Wilson, although no member of the Bar, was allowed by a friendly judge personally to argue a big traction suit in which he was opposed by some of Philadelphia’s best corporation lawyers.

The political Twins Hadley and Wilson hoped to force Boss Vare to nominate them in 1933, respectively, for City Treasurer and Controller. Boss Vare balked. Messrs. Hadley and Wilson got their jobs anyway by running on the Democratic and Town Meeting (Fusion) ticket and the Republican machine went to pieces in dire defeat. This year WillB Hadley returned to the junk heap to pick up the fragments and take the Republican nomination for Mayor. To his distress he there found a deadly rival: S. Davis Wilson.

Partner Wilson might have tried to seize the Democratic nomination except that Democratic Boss Kelly got there ahead of him. So while Partner Hadley rounded up support of the Penrose faction, Partner Wilson rounded up support of the Vare faction and began to make things hot.

Boston-born, Davis Wilson at 20 went to Vermont as an assistant to the attorney general in a crime crusade, was set upon and stabbed by thugs, killed one of them. Later in Washington he was “assistant” for four years to the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, Chaplain of the U. S. Senate. In 1905 he turned up in Philadelphia to fight the Vare machine, became Secretary of an independent Republican group backed by Owen Wister, Owen J. Roberts, and William C. Bullitt, father of the present U. S. Ambassador to Russia. In 1912 with Princeton’s late Bill Roper he organized the Woodrow Wilson Independent League. After the War, during which he investigated munition plants for the Department of Justice, he tried several unsuccessful business ventures, hit a low in 1926 as investigator for a religious group prosecuting concessionaires at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition who broke Sunday closing laws. The following year he joined forces with WillB Hadley and his rise began.

Today he has his onetime partner at a disadvantage, for Davis Wilson is a hot campaigner. Husky, red-faced, hoarse-voiced, he flails with his arms, thinks nothing of making six speeches a day, once fainted from exhaustion during a radio address. He, too, campaigns for a 5¢ fare, throws in promises of cheaper gas and electricity for good measure.

Meantime, to add a mite to the general confusion, a grand jury indicted 27 of Philadelphia’s 28 city magistrates (eleven Democrats, 16 Republicans) for improperly disposing of serious criminal cases.

The charge was that during 1934 they had disposed of 90,000 cases, including nearly 17,000 charges for serious offenses, without entering the cases on their dockets. The one magistrate exonerated was reported to have handled only six criminal cases in two years. Since several of the magistrates indicted were standing for renomination, and one, accused of failing to docket 12,600 cases, was Louis Hamberg, Republican ward leader, the indictments were considered to have added additional complications to the coming primary.