Al Smith
Alfred Emanuel "Al" Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was Governor of New York, a leading Catholic, and Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928. He lost the election to Herbert Hoover.
Early life
Smith was born to Alfred Emanuel Smith and Catherine Mulvihill and initially grew up in relative comfort on the multi-ethnic Lower East Side of Manhattan, on Oliver Street, New York City. His four grandparents were Irish, German, Italian and English, but Smith identified with the Irish Catholic community and became its leading spokesman in the 1920s. He was a devout Catholic. He was twelve when his father, who owned a small trucking firm, died; at fourteen he had to drop out of parochial school to help support the family. He never attended college, claiming that his higher education was gained observing every species of human at the Fulton Fish Market. An accomplished amateur actor, he became a notable speaker. On May 6, 1900 Alfred Smith married Catherine A. Dunn, with whom he had five children.
Political career
In his political career he emphasized his lowly beginnings, identified himself with immigrants, and campaigned 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.
Smith's first political job was as a clerk in the office of the Commissioner of Jurors in 1895. In 1903 he was elected to the New York State Assembly. When he served as vice-chairman of the commission appointed to investigate factory conditions after a hundred workers died in the disastrous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Smith crusaded against dangerous and unhealthy workplace conditions and championed corrective legislation. In 1911 the Democrats obtained a majority of seats in the state Assembly and Smith became chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. In 1912 he became the majority leader and in 1913 he was elected as Speaker of the Assembly. By now he was a leader of the Progressive movement in New York City and state. His campaign manager and top aid was Belle Moskowitz, an immigrant daughter whose family was from East Prussia.
After serving in the patronage-rich job of sheriff of New York County beginning in 1915, Smith was elected governor of New York in 1918. In 1919, he gave the famous speech, "A man as low and mean as I can picture", making an irreparable break with William Randolph Hearst. Newspaperman Hearst was the leader of the left-wing of the Democratic party in the City, and had combined with Tammany Hall in electing the local administration; he had been attacking Smith for 'starving children' by not reducing the cost of milk.
Smith lost his bid for reelection in 1920, but was returned as governor in 1922, 1924 and 1926. As governor, he became known nationally as a progressive who sought to make government more efficient and more effective in meeting social needs. His young assistant, Robert Moses, constructed the nation's first state park system and reformed the civil service system; Smith later appointed him New York State Secretary of State. During his term, New York strengthened laws governing workers' compensation, women's pensions, and child and women's labor with the help of France Perkins, soon to be FDR's Labor Secretary, and ahead of many States. In 1924 he 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."
The 1928 election
The Republican Party was riding high on the economic boom of the 1920s, which their presidential candidate Herbert Hoover vowed to continue. Historians agree that the prosperity made Hoover's election inevitable. He defeated Smith by a landslide in the 1928 Election.
Al Smith finally secured the Democratic presidential nomination in 1928. He was the first Catholic to win a major-party presidential nomination. (See also John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected U.S. President.) A major controversial issue was the continuation of Prohibition. Smith was personally in favor of relaxation or repeal of Prohibition laws, despite its status as part of the nation's Constitution, but the Democratic Party split North and South on the issue. During the campaign Smith tried to duck the issue with noncommittal statements.
Smith was an articulate exponent of good government and efficiency--but Hoover had an even stronger reputation on those issues. Neither man was touched by corruption. Smith swept the entire Catholic vote, which had been split in 1920 and 1924, and brought millions of Catholic ethnics to the polls for the first time, especially women. He lost important Democratic constituencies in the rural North, and in southern cities and suburbs. He did carry the Deep South, thanks in part to his running mate, Senator Joseph Robinson of Arkansas. Part of Smith's losses can be attributed to fear that Catholics were more loyal to the Pope than to the Constitution, to fears of the power of New York City (then at the height of its influence), to distaste for the long history of corruption associated with Smith's Tammany Hall, and to Smith's own mediocre campaigning. Smith's campaign theme song, "The Sidewalks of New York", was not likely to appeal to rural folk, and his city accent on the "raddio" seemed a bit foreign. Although Smith lost New York state, his ticket-mate Roosevelt was elected to replace him as governor of New York.
Smith felt slighted by Roosevelt during Roosevelt's governorship. They became rivals for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination. After losing the nomination Smith begrudgingly campaigned for Roosevelt in 1932. When President Roosevelt began pursuing the liberal policies of his New Deal, Smith began to work with the opposition. Smith felt that Roosevelt's liberalism was a betrayal of good-government Progressive ideals, and ran counter to the goal of close cooperation with business. Along with other prominent conservative Democrats in 1934 he became a leader of the American Liberty League, the focus of intellectual opposition to Roosevelt's liberalism. Smith supported the Republican presidential candidates, Alfred M. Landon in the 1936 election and Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election.
After the 1928 election, he became the president of Empire State, Inc., the corporation which built and operated the Empire State Building. Smith cut the ribbon when the world's tallest skyscraper opened in May 1931, built in only 18 months. Smith, like most New York City businessmen, enthusiastically supported World War Two, but was not asked by Roosevelt to play any role in the victory effort.
He died on October 4, 1944, at the age of 70, broken-hearted over the death of his wife from cancer five months earlier; he is interred at Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York.
References
- Christopher M. Finan. Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior (2002) is a good biography.
- Robert A. Slayton, Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith (2001), is the standard scholarly biography.
