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Fiorello H. LaGuardia Author(s): Thomas Kessner Reviewed work(s): Source: The History Teacher, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Feb., 1993), pp. 151-159 Published by: Society for History Education Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/494812 . Accessed: 31/01/2012 15:24

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http://www.jstor.org Fiorello H. LaGuardia*

Thomas Kessner CityUniversity of New YorkGraduate School

WHEN WOODROWWILSON WAS GOVERNORof New Jersey he received a message telling him that one of the state's senators, a dear friend, had died suddenly. Stunned,he canceled all appointmentsfor the day. Just a few minutes later he received a phone call from a local politician. "Governor,"said the caller, "I would like to take the senator's place." "Well,"said Wilson, shocked by the man's unseemly haste, "You may quote me as saying that that's perfectly agreeable to me if it's agreeableto the undertaker."' For the past forty years City mayoral campaigns have featuredcandidates promising to fill Fiorello LaGuardia'splace. But the "LittleFlower" lies buriedin Woodlawn, and none of the pretendershave been able to resurrectthe type of honest, efficient, and passionately fair governmentthat has made whatone journalistrecently dubbed "Fiorellism" into New York's municipal religion; the metropolis' secular faith that governmentcan be made to do good things for the people ratherthan the politicians.2 It would be tempting simply to exchange stories about this most colorful and flamboyantof New Yorkers, who as he got up in Congress one day to complain about the price of meat began fidgeting throughhis pockets, only to remove a puny cut of steak which he waved before his colleagues as he informedthem thatthis pauper'sportion was beyond the

The History Teacher Volume 26 Number 2 February1993 152 Thomas Kessner means of most of his constituents:"Gentlemen," he said, "we simply musteat. We haveformed the habit."3 Or the timehe defiedan Alcohol Agent to arresthim as he demonstratedto a bevy of reportershow to preparean intoxicatingbrew during prohibition. He readthe comics over the air, took a sledgehammerto the slot machines,taught housewives how to conserveon fats duringwar time, and conveyedthe magical abilityof politicsto instruct,care, transform and energize a generationof New Yorkerswith bracing visions of possibility.4 He cameby his Progressivecredentials through honest experience. He hadlived the life. His parentswere poor immigrants who had come to the UnitedStates in 1880.Born on lowerManhattan, Fiorello was raisedon thewide plains of theAmerican frontier where a tinhom'sdeath might be explainedsimply by, "He neededkilling." In the expansiveWest he formedhis senseof widepossibility. Here also he witnessedfirst hand the mistreatmentof theIndians and the exploitation of immigrantworkers by the railroads.' In 1914he madehis firstrun for electiveoffice only to be defeatedin his bid for a Congressionalseat by a Tammanystalwart. He wouldnot lose anotherCongressional election until 1932. Over these years he becamethe leaderof a corps of urbanProgressives who insistedthat prosperitydrunk America could not substitutea cashregister for a heart andkeep its moralbalance. In 1919 he marriedThea Almerighotti in a marriagethat brought him great happiness and promised to calmsomewhat his bristlingCongressional style. A yearlater Thea gave birthto a baby daughter.But the babybecame ill andThea too was slow to recover.By the endof the yearFiorello knew that his daughterand his wife bothhad the killingdisease of the tenements,tuberculosis. He movedthe family out of the city for freshair and more healthful surroundings, but on May 8, 1921, the baby died. Fiorello had to go alone to bury his infant daughter,and six monthslater he wentback to the cemeteryto buryhis wife. The soft joy of his life was gone and a journalistwrote, "He was withoutambition except to forget."6 Somemen aredefeated by circumstances,others become hardened by tragedy;in a few, adversitymolds sensitivity,sympathy and character. Adversitymade him common with the people he represented.Other men, he would say, had their families. He had only his politics, and the commonpeople to whomhe dedicatedit. Streakedby the vulnerabilityof his losses he brokewith his conservativeparty to fightfor a Progressive social agenda.7 In 1929,LaGuardia ran against James J. Walkerfor the mayoralty.He was defeatedby the largestmargins in 's history.His strident charges of corruption and insistence on reform threatened to Fiorello H. LaGuardia 153 make a seriousthing of government,while New Yorkerswere quite happywith good timesand their insouciant Beau James, but by 1933the devil-may-careworld of ragtimeprosperity was shatteredby thecrashing of the stock marketand 'sdisclosures of systematic municipalcorruption. How,Samuel Seabury asked Tammany loyalist Sherrif Thomas Farley, hadhe managedto builda savingsaccount of morethan $400,000 on a reportedincome of $8,500?Well, said the good natured Mr. Farley, these savingsrepresented funds that came out of his "tinbox," his wonderful, magical"tin box." The genialpractitioners of honestgraft had focused theirlimited political intelligence and imagination on "seein'my oppor- tunitiesand takin' them,"on sackingthe municipalitythey had been pledgedto serve.Little wonder that they had failed to developa govern- ment appropriateto New York'ssize andcomplexity. 's New Yorkwas notmerely corrupt, it lackedthe freshness and vision with whichto meetthe challengeof modemtimes.8 New York's322 squaremiles representedperhaps the most densely packedand intricately divided cityscape in theworld. Commerce, industry, and a surgingresidential population competed with the city's bulging office districtsfor limitedspace, all in a relentlesslyuncharted fashion. Completionof the fifty-six-storeyChanin Building and the seventy- seven-storeyChrysler in 1929was followed a yearlater by the 102-storey EmpireState. Built upon privateinitiative these soaringmasterpieces createdsafety and congestion problems that had profound public effects, butno communityimperative guided or limitedtheir development. Here in this world class city, the only authoritativemaster plan for metropolitandevelopment was conceived by the privatelyorganized RegionalPlan Association of New York,and paid for by theRussell Sage Foundation.Amidst the crises of the times, municipalgovernment de- mandedcreativity, imagination and a largeconception of publicrespon- sibility; and all New York had was JimmyWalker and his "tin box brigade."By 1934hard times prepared them for LaGuardia. His firstadministration, all agree,was his best.He cameinto office as if driven.Every day broughtnews of some new scourgethat had been defeated,some new outrageuncovered and eliminated. The town seemed to be overrunwith little fat men in sombrerosputting out fires,opening parks,chasing "tinhoms and gangsters,"and running up to Albanyfor authorityto do more. LaGuardiainherited a crippledcity. A humiliatingbankers agreement had placed a consortiumof money lendersabove its elected officials. Morethan 230,000 were unemployed; one in six New Yorkerssubsisted on relief.And they had no confidencein government."I am,"LaGuardia 154 Thomas Kessner

lamentedsoon afterhis election,"a captainof a brokenship who must patchand repair and struggle continually to keep it afloat."But keeping New Yorkafloat was the leastof his goals.He didnot succumbto small enthusiasms;he broughtinto office an agendafor the comprehensive transformationof city governmentexpressed in five largegoals: 1) Restoringthe city's fiscalhealth and winningback its political independencefrom the bankers' consortium; 2) Developinga humane and fiscally prudent relief program; 3) Cleaningout municipal racketeering and corruption; 4) Establishinga merit-based civil service for an efficient and modem municipalgovernment; and 5) RebuildingNew Yorkinto a modem,aesthetically pleasing, effi- cientlylaid out city. Traditionallymayors had negotiated with governors and aldermen, not with presidentsand cabinetsecretaries, but LaGuardiaunderstood that the key to manyof his planslay in Washington.He hadbeen a friendof theNew Dealin Congress,and public works chief Harold Ickes welcomed his election. "His careerin Congress,"Ickes wrote aboutLaGuardia, "showsthat he has realability and high courage.... He oughtto give New York a greatadministration." Nonetheless, when the MayorElect first came to Washingtonto discussfederal assistance for his strappedmu- nicipality,Ickes sent him home with a bluntmessage: "Go home and balanceyour budget, your credit is no good."'9 Withinthe firstone hundreddays the new FusionGovernment which LaGuardiaheaded pushed through an EconomyBill that trimmedthe budgetand pared the municipalworkforce, established a humanerelief policy, launcheda wide rangingattack on corruption,and expanded the meritbasis of the civil service.With this done,LaGuardia turned to his ambitiousprogram for the federally assisted reconstruction of New York.~' LaGuardiahad assembledgroups of engineers,architects and other expertsto plan new projects."I wanthelp fromthe people who know something,"he toldthem, "rather than from the politicians." Even before he wassworn into office, LaGuardia presented Washington with proposals for subways,bridges, airports, slum clearance,street repair, and .Each project was carefullydetailed with a firmprice tag anda prudentprojection for the use of relieflabor. And each promised to leave a publicmonument to theNew Deal uponits completion." HistorianBernard Fay had remarkedin the twentiesthat New York was the only city wealthyenough to rebuilditself everyten years.It was no longer rich enough,but LaGuardiaenvisioned a massivebuilding programthat would enhance the quality of city life and providehundreds Fiorello H. LaGuardia 155 of thousandsof jobs. It was the thirties,tough times, when most mayors werebegging to get a schoolor a bridge,and he insistedthat he wantedto makeurban life into a "greatliving adventure,with playgrounds, parks, museums,libraries, and parkways," to matchthe grandaesthetic spirit of the Europeancities he hadknown as a youth.'2 In Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco,federal money went into uselessboondoggles or for buying votes. So completelydid Massachusetts StateTreasurer Charles Hurley control CWA (Civil Works Administration) federalappointments that the pressreferred to CWAas Charlie'sWork- ers Administration.Little wonder that Hopkins and Ickes took LaGuardia seriously.Within weeks of his election,LaGuardia brought home an allotmentof 200,000 federallyfunded jobs, twentypercent of the entire federalCWA program. The new city administration initiated four thousand separateprojects, ranging from the constructionof coveredmunicipal marketsand refurbishingof city parks,to developingshelters for the homeless and clearingslums. Just a few weeks into Fusion, national studies describedLaGuardia's management of federalprojects as the mosthonest and effective in thecountry, and a statereport concluded that "NewYork City is remarkablyfree from political control or influence."13 LaGuardiaunderstood that the time of the self sufficient,wholly independentcity had passed.New Yorkcould not pay for relief, social servicesand new parksand bridges. But by makinghis city into a grand showcasefor urbanand social initiativeshe won the federalsupport to underwritehis dreams."He has a confidentialrelationship with President Rooseveltenjoyed by no Democrat,"reported the AlbanyTimes Union. "Thedoors of the WhiteHouse open at his radiantapproach, and the Presidentis never too busy to sit down and have a chat with him." Roosevelt himself said of his foxy friend:"Our Mayor is the most appealingman I know.He comesto Washingtonand tells me a sadstory. The tearsrun down my cheeksand tears run down his cheeksand the first thing I know he has wangledanother $50 million."The CWA, WPA (WorksProgress Administration) and PWA (Public Works Administration) alone spentmore than$1.1 billion on Fusion'sfirst five yearsin New York.14 He claspedhis city to Washingtonin a waythat changed the historyof Americancities forever.New York became a laboratoryfor federal initiativesand the leaderof a coalitionof citiesthat thrust urban needs to the centerof the 'srecovery policies. With grant funds pouring in, the City threwnew bridgesover the watersand dug tunnelsunder them,erected new reservoirs,sewer systems, parks, highways, schools, hospitals,health centers, swimming pools, and superair terminals.For the first time New York offered its poor public housing, its working class 156 Thomas Kessner a unifiedtransit system, and its artistsand musicians special training and subsidies.Government too was modernized.The outdated1898 Charter was replacedby a freshNew Compactthat centralized municipal powers, consolidateddepartments, eliminated unnecessary borough and county offices, andstreamlined the workingsof the Citygovemment. Max Webermakes a penetrating,I think crucial, distinction in the art of leadership.He speaksof an"ethics of responsibility"and an "ethicsof conviction."The ethicsof responsibilitydemands that a leaderteach his peopleunpleasant truths, explain the limitsof knowledgeand of human nature,and help them understand the true cost of governmentalprograms. Theethics of consciencecalls for the bully pulpit, exhorting the people to live up to theirmoral duties. LaGuardia brought these two elementsof leadership,the accountantand the preacher,in as close an alignmentas anymayor in modemtimes.15 In 1941, afterhaving worked closely withhis Fire Commissionerfor seven yearsand learning first hand the qualityof the man'scourage, he firedhim for going easy on inspectorswho hadaccepted gratuities. "No relentingfor anyone anytime,"he would say and mean it. Assistant Commissionerof MarketsCarl Kimball once arrivedlate for a ceremony attendedby the Mayor.The next day he receiveda news clip fromCity Hall. It describeda Japaneseofficial who had been tardyfor a public functionand had committed harakiri. "That," penciled in the Mayor,"is whatI call class."'6 Commissionerswere on call twenty-fourhours a day. Threeo'clock one morningSanitation Commissioner William Careypicked up his phone to hearthe familiarcareening soprano. Did Careyhave a snow alarmplan, Fiorello wanted to know."Sure, I'm called as soonas thefirst flake falls,"said the Commissioner."Wonderful," shouted the skeptical Mayor,"stick your head out the window,"and hung up." He thrivedon the theatricalgesture, the comics, the funny hats, attendingfires and calmingthe riot tom streetsof Harlem.These andhundreds of similar imageswere his momentsof communionwith his fellow New Yorkers; photo opportunitieswith the intentof parable,translating the abstract workingsof governmentinto immediate significance for the men, women andchildren of his city. Andto celebratethe new New York,he puton a fairdedicated to the Worldof Tomorrow. LaGuardiawanted New Yorkersto be happy,to enjoya senseof ease andsecurity, to live in decentquarters and raise healthy children. But he also wantedthem to be good.He declaredunrelenting war on gamblers, closedthe burlesques,cleared racy magazines from the newsstands(un- derhis powersof "garbagecollection) and endlessly preached the virtues of traditionalvalues. Frustrated by whathe considereda hostilepress, he Fiorello H. LaGuardia 157 turned to the radio as a means for unfiltered communication with his constituents.Millions of New Yorkerstuned in every Sunday to munici- pal radio station WNYC to hear the Mayor advise, instruct, cajole and entertain.He told them what to buy, how to raise their children, what to wear, how to save money, what to do in case of a Germanattack, what to serve on meatless days, how to resolve family disputes. The tone was strikinglyintimate and fatherly.In what became the best rememberedact of his mayoralty,LaGuardia one Sunday asked his audience to bring the kiddies aroundand then proceededto give a dramaticreading of the Dick Tracy comic strip that would have run in the Sunday papers but for a newspaperstrike. It was Walter Lippmann who said that LaGuardiatook the human sympathythat had been the abiding strengthof Tammany and infused it into the tradition of good government. He brought his city wonderful things, but what he failed to do was to consider sufficiently the impact of these gifts. New York's modem infrastructurewas built in unusualtimes with federal funds, when the Depression and LaGuardia'srelationship with President Roosevelt opened new, but limited, possibilities for co- operation between Washington and New York. But they placed a huge burdenon the city budget.'" When World War II put an end to these projects, LaGuardiarealized that the City was on a treadmill.It could not pay for maintainingits newly built environmentmuch less plan its continued growth without steady infusions of new support. He prepareddetailed plans for a peacetime programof $1.25 billion in federallyfunded public improvementsfor his city. But the federal governmentwas not preparedto spend in good times as it had spent duringthe Depression. And when the special era that had been cemented by an unusual personal relationshipbetween the Fusion Mayor and the New Deal Presidentpassed, the City was left with a style of expensive progressive government to which it had become accus- tomed, but which it would only now have to get used to supporting largely on its own. By the time LaGuardialeft office, "thewhole of the city's machinery," Rexford Tugwell wrote, "was breakingdown from sheer lack of funds," and Fiorello was cooking the books in order to avoid presenting the people with the cost of all of his good intentions.Liberal government was expensive and he was not candid aboutjust how expensive.19 Unrealistic about the City, he was also unrealistic about himself. By the end of his second term he had accomplished much of his agenda in New York and he began to crave a broaderimportance. There was talk of a cabinet position, the Vice Presidency on the next national ticket, even the Presidency if, as was expected, Roosevelt was to retire. Franklin 158 Thomas Kessner

Roosevelt'sdecision to run for a thirdterm foreclosed many of these possibilities.Roosevelt, nonetheless, understood Fiorello's need for a broaderstage, and he appointedLaGuardia Director of the Office of CivilianDefense with quasi-cabinetrank. But while LaGuardiawanted new challenges,he couldnot disciplinehimself to tradeaway some of the powerhe held. He assumedthe Directorship,and ran for a thirdterm as mayorat the same time, persuadedthat he could do bothjobs equally well. He couldnot, and the spectacle of a haggardLaGuardia spending three daysin Washingtonon civil defenseand dragging himself back to runthe Citygrated on New Yorkers'nerves. He finallyagreed to give up OCD buthe was a manwho neededalways some new challenge,and with the nationat war, he wantedto be on the front.He badgeredRoosevelt to appointhim to a militaryposition, and there was serious talk of a generalshipeither in Italyor NorthAfrica. He orderedhis uniformand waited,but the call never came. It was his greatest personal disappointment. This complex,endlessly interesting, fiercely ambitiousintemperate manpursued his ambitionswith a fiercedirectness that can be extremely dangerous.His governmentrepresented a dangerousstyle of personal rulehitched to transcendentpurpose. Perhaps even in a democracythat sort of leadershipis necessaryto createthe sweepingchanges that he forged.This is, of course,the formulafor dictatorsand demagogues, and thethirties were a timewhen they flourished. Yet it is verymuch a partof LaGuardia'sstory that he generallyrespected the prudentbarriers that democraciesplace in the way of authoritarianleadership. He builtmodem New York,provided relief to a depressionwracked populationin heroicproportions, and fastened upon the City a sense of civic responsibilityfor the future."A mayorwho cannotlook fifty or seventy-fiveyears into the future,"he wouldsay, "is not worthyof being in CityHall." After he left the mayoralty,LaGuardia directed UNRRA (United NationsRelief and Rehabilitation Administration) in its effortto feed the millionsof refugeesand the displacedpeople left afterWorld War II, but he had become ill and within two years Fiorello LaGuardiadied of pancreaticcancer on September21, 1947. After he was buriedthey opened his Tin Box. It held a total of $8,000 in war bonds and a mortgagedhome in Riverdale.That and his politicallegacy was whathe left behind."He was as incorruptibleas the sun,"Harry Truman said of him. Fiorello H. LaGuardia 159

Notes

* Paper presented at the 1992 annualmeeting of the Organizationof American Historiansin Chicago. 1. Paul F. Boller, Jr.,Presidential Anecdotes (New York, 1981), p. 224. 2. Joe Klein, "TheStrange Career of Fiorellism,"The New Republic,November 13, 1989, pp. 24-27. 3. Lowell Limpus and BurrLeyson, This Man LaGuardia (New York, 1938), pp. 211-212. 4. Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardiaand the Making of ModernNew York (New York, 1989), p. 113 andpassim. 5. Fiorello H. LaGuardia,The Makingof an Insurgent:An Autobiography,1882- 1919 (New York, 1948). 6. Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia,pp. 78-79. 7. Ibid., pp. 80-90. 8. HerbertMitgang, The Man WhoRode the Tiger (Philadelphia, 1963), pp. 240- 241. 9. Mark I. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933-1965 (New York, 1965), p. 28; Adolf A. Berle to FranklinD. Roosevelt, January9, 1934 (FDR Library,Hyde Park,New York);Harold Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, vol. 1 (New York, 1953), p. 126. 10. Leonard Chalmers, 'The Crucial Test of LaGuardia's First 100 Days: The Emergency Economy Bill," New YorkHistorical Society Quarterly,57 (1973), 239-240. 11. New York World Telegram, November 29, 1933; , No- vember 30, 1933. 12. Bayrd Still, Mirrorfor Gotham(New York, 1956), p. 297; TheNew YorkTimes, November 30, 1933. 13. BarbaraBlumberg, The New Deal and the Unemployed(Lewisburg, PA, 1979), p. 32; Joseph Verdicchio, "New Deal Work Relief and New York City" (NYU PhD Dissertation, 1980), pp. 104, 115-117; Roger Biles, The Big City Boss in Depression and War (DeKalb, IL, 1984), p. 77; Charles Trout, Boston, The and The New Deal (New York, 1977), pp. 148-151; The New YorkTimes, April 21, 1936. 14. Albany Times Union, June 28, 1935; The New YorkTimes, October 29, 1940. 15. H. H. Gerthand C. WrightMills, From Max Weber:Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946), p. 115. 16. Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia,pp. 279-283. 17. Ibid., p. 283. 18. OaklandDaily News, November 4, 1937. 19. RexfordG. Tugwell, TheArt ofPolitics as Practiced by Three GreatAmericans (GardenCity, 1958), pp. 28-30.