Society for History Education 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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Society for History Education is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The History Teacher. 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 New York 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 New York City'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 Samuel Seabury'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. Jimmy Walker'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