Who Was Alfred E. Smith?
The man who the Alfred E. Smith Dinner is named for.
A Roman Catholic politician in the U.S. elected Governor of New York and the Democrat Party candidate for U.S. President in 1928
An 'anti-prohibition' of alcohol figure who nonetheless helped lay the groundwork for the prohibition of other substances, such as with his participation in the smear campaign against cocaine. Such disregarded the vast differences between the drug in ultra concentrated forms versus the dilute forms, thus establishing the market protection for Tobacco derived cigarettes via Rome's Pharmacratic Inquisition (see more) better known as the 'war on drugs'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Smith
Alfred Emanuel "Al" Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American statesman who was elected Governor of New York four times and was the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928. He was the foremost urban leader of the efficiency-oriented Progressive Movement and was noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as governor in the 1920s. He was also linked to the notorious Tammany Hall machine that controlled New York City's politics; was a strong opponent of Prohibition,
which he did not think could be enforced, and was the first Catholic
nominee for President. His candidacy mobilized Catholic votes—especially
of women, who had only recently received federal suffrage. It also
brought out the anti-Catholic vote, which was strongest among white
conservative Democrats in the South.
As a committed "wet" (anti-Prohibition) candidate, Smith attracted
not only drinkers but also voters angered by the corruption and
lawlessness that developed alongside prohibition.[1]
Many Protestants feared his candidacy, including German Lutherans and
Southern Baptists, believing that the Catholic Church and the Pope would
dictate his policies. Most importantly, this was a time of national
prosperity under a Republican Presidency. Smith lost in a landslide to
Republican Herbert Hoover, who gained electoral support from five southern states. Four years later Smith sought the 1932 nomination but was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt,
his former ally and successor as New York Governor. Smith entered
business in New York City and became an increasingly vocal opponent of
Roosevelt's New Deal.
Early life
Smith was born and raised in the Fourth Ward on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; he resided here for his entire life.[2] His mother, Catherine (Mulvihill), was the daughter of Maria Marsh and Thomas Mulvihill, who were immigrants from County Westmeath, Ireland.[3]
His father, Alfred Emanuele Ferraro, took the anglicized name Alfred E.
Smith ('ferraro' means 'blacksmith' or 'smith' in Italian). The elder
Alfred was the son of Italian and German[4][5] immigrants. He served with the 11th New York Fire Zouaves in the opening months of the Civil War.
Al Smith grew up with his family struggling financially in the Gilded Age; New York City matured and completed major infrastructure projects. The Brooklyn Bridge was being constructed nearby. "The Brooklyn Bridge and I grew up together," Smith would later recall.[6] His four grandparents were Irish, German, Italian, and Anglo-Irish,[7] but Smith identified with the Irish-American community and became its leading spokesman in the 1920s.
His father Alfred owned a small trucking firm, but died when the boy
was 13. At 14 Smith had to drop out of St. James parochial school to
help support the family, and worked at a fish market for seven years.
Prior to dropping out of school, he served as an altar boy, and was
strongly influenced by the Catholic priests he worked with.[8] He never attended high school or college, and claimed he learned about people by studying them at the Fulton Fish Market,
where he worked for $12 per week. His acting skills made him a success
on the amateur theater circuit. He became widely known, and developed
the smooth oratorical style that characterized his political career. On
May 6, 1900, Al Smith married Catherine Ann Dunn, with whom he had five
children.[9]
Political Career
In his political career, Smith built on his working-class beginnings,
identifying himself with immigrants and campaigning as a man of the
people. Although indebted to the Tammany Hall political machine, particularly to its boss, "Silent" Charlie Murphy, he remained untarnished by corruption and worked for the passage of progressive legislation.[9] It was during his early unofficial jobs with Tammany Hall that he gained renown as an excellent speaker.[10]
Smith's first political job was in 1895 as an investigator in the
office of the Commissioner of Jurors as appointed by Tammany Hall.
State legislature
Smith was first elected to the New York State Assembly (New York Co., 2nd D.) in 1904, and repeatedly elected to office, serving through 1915.[8] After being approached by Frances Perkins,
an activist to improve labor practices, Smith sought to improve the
conditions of factory workers. He served as vice chairman of the state
commission appointed to investigate factory conditions after 146 workers
died in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
Meeting the families of the deceased Triangle factory workers left a
strong impression on him. Together with Perkins, Smith crusaded against
dangerous and unhealthy workplace conditions and championed corrective
legislation.[10][11]
The Commission was chaired by State Senator Robert F. Wagner
and co-chaired by Smith. They held a series of widely publicized
investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking
3500 pages of testimony. They hired field agents to do on-site
inspections of factories. Starting with the issue of fire safety, they
studied broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory
environment. Their findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating
labor in New York state, and gave each of them a reputation as leading
progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class. In the
process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to
progressive endeavors to help the workers.[12]
New York City's Fire Chief John Kenlon told the investigators that his
department had identified more than 200 factories where conditions
resulted in risk of a fire like that at the Triangle Factory.[13]
The State Commission's reports led to modernization of the state's
labor laws, making New York State "one of the most progressive states in
terms of labor reform."[14][15]
New laws mandated better building access and egress, fireproofing
requirements, the availability of fire extinguishers, the installation
of alarm systems and automatic sprinklers, better eating and toilet
facilities for workers, and limited the number of hours that women and
children could work. In the years from 1911 to 1913, sixty of the
sixty-four new laws recommended by the Commission were legislated with
the support of Governor William Sulzer.[16]
In 1911, the Democrats obtained a majority of seats in the State
Assembly; and Smith became Majority Leader and Chairman of the Committee
on Ways and Means. In 1912, following the loss of the majority, he
became the Minority Leader. When the Democrats reclaimed the majority
after the next election, he was elected Speaker for the 1913 session. He became Minority Leader again in 1914 and 1915. In November 1915, he was elected Sheriff of New York County, New York. By now he was a leader of the Progressive movement in New York City and state. His campaign manager and top aide was Belle Moskowitz, a daughter of Jewish immigrants.[9]
Governor 1918-1928
After serving in the patronage-rich job of Sheriff of New York County, Smith was elected President of the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York in 1917. Smith was elected Governor of New York at the New York state election, 1918 with the help of Murphy and James A. Farley, who brought Smith the upstate vote.
In 1919, Smith gave the famous speech, "A man as low and mean as I can picture",[17] making a drastic break with William Randolph Hearst.
Publisher Hearst, known for his notoriously sensationalist and largely
left-wing position in the state Democratic Party, was the leader of its
populist wing in the city. Hearst had combined with Tammany Hall in
electing the local administration. Hearst had attacked Smith for
starving children by not reducing the cost of milk.[18]
Smith lost his bid for re-election at the New York state election, 1920, but was again elected governor in 1922, 1924 and 1926, with James A. Farley
managing his campaign. In his 1922 re-election, he embraced his
position as an anti-prohibitionist. Smith offered alcohol to guests at
the Executive Mansion in Albany, and repealed the Prohibition
enforcement statute: the Mullan-Gage law.[19]
Governor Smith became known nationally as a progressive who sought to
make government more efficient and more effective in meeting social
needs. Smith's young assistant Robert Moses built the nation's first state park system and reformed the civil service, later gaining appointment as Secretary of State of New York.
During Smith's term, New York strengthened laws governing workers'
compensation, women's pensions and children and women's labor with the
help of Frances Perkins, soon to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Labor Secretary.
At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, Smith unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president, advancing the cause of civil liberty by decrying lynching
and racial violence. Roosevelt made the nominating speech in which he
saluted Smith as "the Happy Warrior of the political battlefield."[9]
Smith represented the urban, east coast wing of the party as an
anti-prohibition "wet" candidate while his main rival for the
nomination, California Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, stood for the more rural tradition and prohibition "dry" candidacy.[20]
The party was hopelessly split between the two. An increasingly chaotic
convention balloted 100 times before both men accepted that neither
would be able to win the two-thirds majority required to win, and so
each withdrew. The exhausted party nominated the little-known John W. Davis of West Virginia. Davis lost the election by a landslide to the Republican Calvin Coolidge, who won in part because of the prosperous times.
Undeterred, Smith returned to fight a determined campaign for the party's nomination in 1928.
1928 election
Reporter Frederick William Wile made the oft-repeated observation
that Smith was defeated by "the three P's: Prohibition, Prejudice and
Prosperity".[21]
The Republican Party was still benefiting from an economic boom, as
well as a failure to reapportion Congress and the electoral college
following the 1920 census, which had registered a 15 percent increase in
the urban population. The party was biased to small town and rural
areas. Their presidential candidate Herbert Hoover did little to alter these events.
Historians agree that prosperity, along with widespread anti-Catholic
sentiment against Smith, made Hoover's election inevitable.[22] He defeated Smith by a landslide in the 1928 election, carrying five southern states in crossover voting by conservative white Democrats (since disenfranchisement of blacks in the South at the turn of the century, whites dominated voting.)
The fact that Smith was Catholic and the descendant of Catholic immigrants was instrumental in his loss of the election of 1928.[8]
Historical hostilities between Protestants and Catholics had been
carried by national groups to the United States by immigrants, and
centuries of Protestant domination allowed myths and superstitions about
Catholicism to flourish. Native Protestants had viewed the waves of
Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Italy and eastern Europe since the
mid-19th century with suspicion. In addition, many Protestants carried
old fears related to extravagant claims of one religion against the
other dating from the European national wars of religion. They feared
that Smith would answer to the Pope and not the US Constitution. White
rural conservatives in the South also believed that his close
association with Tammany Hall,
the Democratic machine in Manhattan, showed he tolerated corruption in
government (and overlooking their own brands). Another major
controversial issue was the continuation of Prohibition,
which was widely considered a problem to enforce. Smith was personally
in favor of relaxation or repeal of Prohibition laws, as they had given
rise to more criminality. The Democratic Party split North and South on
the issue, with the more rural South continuing to favor Prohibition.
During the campaign Smith tried to duck the issue with noncommittal
statements.[23]
Smith was an articulate proponent of good government and efficiency,
as was Hoover. Smith swept the entire Catholic vote, which had been
split in 1920 and 1924 between the parties; he attracted millions of
Catholics, generally ethnic whites, to the polls for the first time,
especially women, who were first allowed to vote in 1920. He lost
important Democratic constituencies in the rural North and in southern
cities and suburbs. He did carry some of the Deep South, thanks in part
to the appeal of his running mate, Senator Joseph Robinson from Arkansas,
but he lost five southern states to Hoover. Smith carried the ten most
populous cities in the United States, an indication of the rising power
of the urban areas and their new demographics. In addition to the issues
noted above, Smith was not a very good campaigner. His campaign theme
song, "The Sidewalks of New York",
had little appeal for rural folks, and they found his 'city' accent,
when heard on the "raddio," seemed slightly foreign. Smith narrowly lost
New York state, whose electors were biased to rural upstate and largely
Protestant districts. But in 1928 his fellow Democrat Roosevelt (a Protestant of Dutch old-line stock) was elected to replace him as governor of New York.[24] James A. Farley
left Smith's camp to run Franklin D. Roosevelt's successful campaign
for Governor, and later Roosevelt's successful campaigns for the
Presidency in 1932 and 1936.
Voter realignment
Some political scientists believe that the 1928 election started a voter realignment that helped develop the New Deal coalition of Franklin D. Roosevelt.[25]
As one political scientist explains, "...not until 1928, with the
nomination of Al Smith, a northeastern reformer, did Democrats make
gains among the urban, blue-collar and Catholic voters who were later to
become core components of the New Deal coalition and break the pattern
of minimal class polarization that had characterized the Fourth Party System."[26]
However, Allan Lichtman's quantitative analysis suggests that the 1928
results were based largely on religion and are not a useful barometer of
the voting patterns of the New Deal era.[27]
Finan (2003) says Smith is an underestimated symbol of the changing
nature of American politics in the first half of the last century. He
represented the rising ambitions of urban, industrial America at a time
when the hegemony of rural, agrarian America was in decline, although
many states had legislatures and congressional delegations biased toward
rural areas because of lack of redistricting after censuses. Smith was
connected to the hopes and aspirations of immigrants, especially
Catholics and Jews from eastern and southern Europe. Smith was a devout
Catholic, but his struggles against religious bigotry were often
misinterpreted when he fought the religiously inspired Protestant
morality imposed by prohibitionists.
Opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal
Smith felt slighted by Roosevelt during the latter's governorship. They became rivals for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination.
At the convention, Smith's animosity toward Roosevelt was so great that
he put aside longstanding rivalries and managed to work with William McAdoo and William Randolph Hearst
to try to block FDR's nomination for several ballots. This unlikely
coalition fell apart when Smith refused to work on finding a compromise
candidate; instead he maneuvered to become the nominee. After losing the
nomination, Smith eventually campaigned for Roosevelt in 1932, giving a
particularly important speech on behalf of the Democratic nominee at
Boston on October 27 in which he "pulled out all the stops."[28]
Smith became highly critical of Roosevelt's New Deal policies and joined the American Liberty League,
an anti-Roosevelt group. Smith believed the New Deal was a betrayal of
good-government progressive ideals and ran counter to the goal of close
cooperation with business. The Liberty League was an organization that
tried to rally public opinion against Roosevelt's New Deal. Conservative Democrats
who disapproved of Roosevelt's New Deal measures founded the group. In
1934, Smith joined forces with wealthy business executives, who provided
most of the league's funds. The league published pamphlets and
sponsored radio programs, arguing that the New Deal was destroying
personal liberty. However, the league failed to gain support in the 1934
and 1936 elections, and it rapidly declined in influence. The league
was officially dissolved in 1940.[29][30]
Smith's antipathy to Roosevelt and his policies was so great that he supported Republican presidential candidates Alfred M. Landon (in the 1936 election) and Wendell Willkie (in the 1940 election).[9]
Although personal resentment was one factor in Smith's break with
Roosevelt and the New Deal, Smith was consistent in his beliefs and
politics. Finan (2003) argues Smith always believed in social mobility,
economic opportunity, religious tolerance, and individualism. Despite
the break between the men, Smith and Eleanor Roosevelt
remained close. In 1936, while Smith was in Washington making a
vehement radio attack on the President, she invited him to stay at the
White House. To avoid embarrassing the Roosevelts, he declined.
Business Life & Later Years
After the 1928 election, Smith became the president of Empire State, Inc., the corporation that built and operated the Empire State Building. Construction for the building began symbolically on March 17, 1930, St. Patrick's Day,
per Smith's instructions. Smith's grandchildren cut the ribbon when the
world's tallest skyscraper opened on May 1, 1931, which was May Day,
an international labor celebration. It had been completed in a record
13 months for such a large project. As with the Brooklyn Bridge, which
Smith had seen being built from his Lower East Side boyhood home, the
Empire State Building was a vision and an achievement constructed by
combining the interests of all, rather than being divided by interests
of a few.
In 1929 Smith was elected as President of the Board of Trustees of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University.[31]
Like most New York City businessmen, Smith enthusiastically supported
World War II. He was not asked by Roosevelt to play any role in the war
effort.[9]
In 1939 Smith was appointed a Papal Chamberlain of the Sword and
Cape, one of the highest honors the Papacy bestowed on a layman. In the
early 21st century, this honor is styled a Gentleman of His Holiness.
Smith died at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital
on October 4, 1944 of a heart attack, at the age of 70. He had been
broken-hearted over the death of his wife from cancer five months
earlier, on May 4, 1944.[32] He is interred at Calvary Cemetery.[33]
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