Once Upon a Time in New York

by Herbert Mitgang

  In his finest heartfelt style, Walker concluded:

  “Since the day of my birth, I have lived my life in the open. Whatever shortcomings I have are known to everyone—but disloyalty to my native city, official dishonesty or corruption, form no part of those shortcomings. It is sound American doctrine that the will of the people as expressed by their votes is not brushed aside to satisfy prejudice, a craving for publicity, or personal dislike, of political complainants. I respectfully submit that all the charges herein should be dismissed on the merits.”

  The next morning, July 30,1932, The New York Times editorialized:

  “Mayor Walker’s answer to Governor Roosevelt consists, like all Gaul, of three parts. One is a stump speech about the Republican ‘plot’ to remove him from office and about the malevolence and dishonesty of Judge Seabury. This is irrelevant surplusage and may be ignored. Another part is the impressive array of official precedents assembled by his lawyers to show that even if the Mayor were guilty of offenses in his first term, they would be invalid as grounds for removal in his second term. The third part, his denial of various charges, is so one-sided as to recall the story of the penitent who felt assured that his good deeds were such that the Almighty was heavily in his debt.

  “No one doubts Mayor Walker’s alert mind and ready grasp of affairs—when he can bring himself to give them his attention. His adroitness and lightning-like seizure of every point in his favor appear on almost every page of his reply to the Seabury charges. But it raises many questions with regard to the actual evidence, which Governor Roosevelt will have to consider carefully and judicially.”

  The tenor of editorial comment around the country was similarly unfavorable. The Baltimore Sun said that the mayor’s effort to blame his troubles on partisan motives was “irrelevant.” The Richmond Times-Dispatch branded the mayor’s reply “slightly hysterical” because he tried to prove “his life was an open book.” The Buffalo Evening News sarcastically said: “Perhaps if the Mayor’s official reply fails to keep him in office, he can offer it as the season’s best novel. Certainly it has all the appropriate characters, incident and plot.”

  Then Walker got an important lucky break. The federal government dropped nearly all of its income-tax investigations of city officials with large bank deposits, “for lack of evidence on which prosecutions could be based.” The mayor’s hefty “beneficences” from Paul Block were cited as an example of untaxable income, since gifts were not subject to a tax levy. Incredibly, former Sheriff Thomas Farley and others in the “tin box” brigade avoided scrutiny by the tax collector.

  Reporting on the reasoning behind the government’s decision, The New York Times said that George Medalie, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, refused to comment on the action by the Internal Revenue Service. However, “other sources in the Federal building” said that the government could not find “present proof of the original source of the money.” These sources said that “transfer of funds to a bank from savings accumulated earlier blocked the government from taking action” without starting grand jury proceedings. The explanation sounded deliberately vague and muddled.

  In a cynical time, some New Yorkers assumed that someone high up at the 1RS had been “reached.” Medalie himself was a respected prosecutor with a clean reputation. After two years of legislative and judicial hearings, with thousands of pages of testimony and no “tin box” convictions of city or state officials, it is more likely that the federals simply didn’t care to open this can of worms all over again.

  So as F.D.R. settled into the governor’s chair, the entire citywide corruption investigation had narrowed down to the trial of Jimmy Walker. People all over the United States were focused on the room where the Democratic presidential nominee challenged New York’s still-beloved mayor.

  During Roosevelt’s presidential bid, other matters of importance were happening at home and abroad. It was a time that poet W. H. Auden labeled “a low dishonest decade” and philosopher Isaiah Berlin called “the dark and leaden ‘thirties.”

  In that tenebrous summer of 1932, the world was spinning perilously. All over the United States, the chiffon sounds of the Jazz Age were being drowned out by the death rattle of the Depression’s tin cups. Pundits said the outcome of the confrontation between Roosevelt and Walker might well determine who would be the next president. The trial’s first day was the lead story in The Times. But the adjacent page-one articles on the same day dominated the columns even if they received less play than the Walker trial in the newspaper of record:

  HITLER IS EXPECTED

  TO BE CHANCELLOR

  IN CABINET SHAKE-UP

  ROME OFFICIALS WELCOME REPORT

  THAT ITALY MAY QUIT THE LEAGUE [OF NATIONS]

  SPAIN QUELLS REVOLT

  OF ARMY ROYALISTS

  Three fascist dictators—Hitler, Mussolini, Franco—for the price of one paper (The Times then cost 2 cents). As for the authoritarian Soviet Union, Stalinism was also represented on page one:

  RUSSIA TO SELL BONDS HERE;

  TRADE INCREASE FORECAST,

  WITH RECOGNITION NEARER

  The subject of another story, one buried on an inside page of The Times, would change the world of energy and warfare, but hardly anyone realized its perilous significance then. It was headlined:

  NOBEL PRIZE WINNER

  MAKES ATOM ‘TALK’

  The unsigned story said that Dr. Arthur H. Compton, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work in physics, had told a rapt audience at the College of the City of New York that the tiny atom was “the ultimate unit of matter.” Two thousand people watched as Dr. Compton produced, inside a tube the size of an ordinary lightbulb, a temperature equal to that of “the intense heat which rages on the surface of the sun.”

  The physicist concluded, “Man is high and mighty when compared to an electron but he sinks into insignificance when compared to the mighty cosmos. It takes as many atoms to make a man as it takes men to make up the sun. Chance controls the future and no one can predict what will take place in the future. . . .”

  Compared to the lead story, these seemed little more than distractions. It was clear that the next president would simultaneously have to handle domestic instability and threats to American interests abroad. Was Roosevelt up to the job?

  One of the European observers who sensed that Roosevelt had the required toughness was Isaiah Berlin. The British lecturer-diplomat wrote that, compared to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, F.D.R. had “all the character and energy and skill of the dictators, but he was on our side.”

  John Gunther, who came out of the tough Chicago school of journalism, had covered the American political landscape for many years. As a journalist and author, he was trusted and famous all over the country. Gunther saw the Roosevelt-Walker hearings as a contest between two vastly different heritages, personalities, and ways of life. He pointed out that Walker was a Catholic, a Tammany stalwart, an Al Smith devotee, and “a character who was full of the most fetching idiosyncrasies.” In all fairness, he wondered if Jimmy Walker was plainly corrupt or simply “a gay dog having a wonderful fling.”

  The difference between the two antagonists amounted to the difference between two visions of responsible governance. One represented the spoils-system past, the other the social-minded vision of a New Deal for Americans.

  Gunther pointed out that Roosevelt, an Episcopalian, bore a famous name as the fifth cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a blueblood who had gone to Groton and Harvard and to Columbia Law School, had become a New York state senator, served as assistant secretary of the Navy, and represented the Navy Department at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. After being struck down by infantile paralysis, polio, at the age of thirty-nine, he remained an invalid for the rest of his life. Gunther noted that Roosevelt conquered his physical tragedy by “a triumph of pure grit, the conquest of flesh by will and spirit.”

  Nevertheless, the standard-brand Walker sup
porters in New York City and in the state legislature did not think they had much to fear from Roosevelt’s abilities as a jurist examining their man’s financial affairs. They regarded Roosevelt as little more than a Hudson River Valley patrician. But they underestimated his record in Albany and what he stood for.

  As a Democratic governor in a Republican-dominated legislature, Roosevelt had sponsored laws for the improvement of labor conditions, for old-age pensions, farm relief, and public works to employ the hungry and the poor. He had established the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to assist the jobless and needy, making New York the first state to grant unemployment insurance. His state administration became the proving ground for the future National Recovery Act.

  “Roosevelt found himself in a trying predicament,” Gunther, a friend of both Eleanor and Franklin, declared. “Either he had to turn a blind eye to what was being revealed, or throw Walker out. To choose the latter course meant that he would mortally affront Tammany and prejudice his political power in the indispensable key stronghold of Manhattan. Tammany ran New York City; but Democrats elsewhere in the nation, particularly the dry South, hated Tammany.

  “Many conservative Democrats had become bitterly anti-Roosevelt by this time and, along with the Republicans, they sought to smear him with the Walker mud. Roosevelt did not dislike Walker personally, and Walker has blamed himself for his churlish behavior to the Governor. In any case, this was one of the most ticklish tests F.D.R. ever had to face.”

  On the eve of the Albany hearings, suddenly the mood of the depressed country was diverted by another gloomy event: a clash between World War I veterans and the Hoover administration in Washington. The House of Representatives had approved an immediate $500 payment, in certificates or cash, to each of the 3.5 million ex-soldiers, -sailors, and -marines. But President Hoover threatened a veto, saying, “The urgent question today is the prompt balancing of the budget.” The Senate refused to act.

  Nearly ten thousand unemployed men—they came from Brooklyn and Atlanta, from Denver and San Francisco, from Tampa and Dallas and farms and towns in between—rode the rails, hitchhiked, and marched on Washington. They set up tents and soup kitchens in the open air off Pennsylvania Avenue and along the banks of the Potomac, within sight of the Capitol and the White House, demanding an immediate bonus for their service. To have fought in the war and returned home, only to see their wives and children near starvation during the Depression, was too much. The ragtag ex-soldiers became known as the Bonus Army, but they preferred to be called the Bonus Expeditionary Force, in a play on the American Expeditionary Force that had fought the Huns in the trenches of France.

  In a communiqué addressed to their countrymen as much as to Congress, the BEF explained: “The crux of our fight for payment of adjusted service certificates may be summarized in a few words. We feel that the American veterans who offered their lives for their country are due the same consideration as the bankers and railroad owners whose property was protected during the late war. Through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, this class has received billions of dollars of federal aid. All we ask is payment of a just debt.”

  The conservative American Legion denounced the bonus encampment, declaring that the veterans were inspired by Communists, a sentiment echoed and exaggerated in Washington by General Douglas A. MacArthur, the Army chief of staff. Responding to President Hoover’s plan to call out the Army and remove the veterans, Congressman Fiorello La Guardia, a World War I major, sent an open telegram to Hoover: “Soup is cheaper than tear bombs and bread better than bullets in maintaining law and order in these times of Depression, unemployment and hunger.”

  President Hoover was not heartless; he ordered the Army to provide the veterans with tents, food and medicine. But General MacArthur, resplendent in full regalia as though directing a major military operation against a foreign enemy, waved his swagger stick and ordered his troops to lay down a gas barrage against the bedraggled veterans and burn down their tents. In doing so, he defied Hoover’s explicit orders not to cross the Eleventh Street Bridge and attack the main Anacostia camp. The country shuddered at the sight of tanks, cavalrymen, and infantrymen with drawn bayonets moving against the unarmed veterans on Pennsylvania Avenue. The attack against his own countrymen was not the egotistical MacArthur’s finest hour. (In a future war, a president with more spine, Harry S. Truman, was to fire him as commander in Korea for arrogance and exceeding his authority.) MacArthur’s aide Major Dwight D. Eisenhower suggested to his boss that the action against the veterans was inappropiate, but was ordered to get into full dress uniform and join him.

  After the veterans were routed, Governor Roosevelt concluded that General MacArthur and Huey Long, the demagogic Louisiana governor who resigned in 1932 to become a U.S. senator, were the two most dangerous men in America. Roosevelt was on record as advocating a state bonus for the World War veterans because relief was a matter of entitlement. “The time for platitudes is past,” Roosevelt said. “The bonus money must be appropriated immediately.”

  The hearings in Albany were to last three weeks, until September 1,1932. Thirty-four witnesses testified. Only Jimmy Walker really mattered.

  “I wish to say one thing before leaving for Albany,” said Walker. “I go with a clear conscience. Not one of the complaints contains the statement of any person that I have ever been false to the trust which the people bestowed upon me in two elections by overwhelming majorities. Those who are trying to bear false witness against me cannot prevail against the people of the City of New York. This is not the case of the joint legislative committee against James J. Walker. It is the case of disappointed but ambitious politicians who are trying to defeat the expressed will of the voters by the use of ouster proceedings instead of ballots.”

  A trial balloon was floated by the Walker camp: if he was removed by Governor Roosevelt, he himself would run for governor, with Tammany support. All the politicos knew that Roosevelt was supporting Herbert H. Lehman, his lieutenant Governor, to replace him, and that Tammany support was essential in New York City.

  Another political move developed in the press to support the besieged mayor. The day before the hearings began, Walker was pleased to read an editorial in William Randolph Hearst’s New York American. It was signed by “The Chief” himself. Hearst wrote that the removal of the mayor would be a violation of the home-rule principle and that New York City voters could very well decide at next year’s election whether or not Mayor Walker should be retained in office.

  There was a nuance here to be read between the lines. Hearst had contributed to Governor Roosevelt’s nomination for president by helping to swing the ninety votes of California and Texas to him, after which Speaker Jack Garner was nominated for vice president. He now had influence with Roosevelt and was calling in one of his chips. Hearst felt that his own position in New York, where several of his newspapers and prosperous magazines were based, would be strengthened if he bridged the Democratic party’s split and thus enhanced his role as a backroom political peacemaker.

  At Grand Central Terminal, five thousand people showed up to see the mayor off and wish him well. A few scattered boos were mixed with the cheers. Fifty policemen cleared a path to Track 34, where a private car had been attached to the Ohio State Limited, departing at 4:05 P.M. for Albany and points west. With the mayor were his lawyers, John J. Curtin and John J. Glynn, and his City Hall aides. Curtin was the senior partner in the firm with Glynn, who was Al Smith’s nephew.

  Allie Walker, carrying her white poodle, Togo, arrived with her husband in his official limousine. They alighted on the Vanderbilt Avenue side of the station, where a crowd was collecting on the upper-level concourse.

  “Atta boy, Jimmy!” “Get in there and fight!” “Give it to ‘em, Mayor!” “Good luck, Jimmy!” As each wave of enthusiasm died down, an undertone of boos and hisses became audible, to be drowned out immediately by another surge of cheering. Time and again, Walker halted to pose for pictures and quic
k interviews by friendly reporters on the tabloids. His outfit did not disappoint; he was dressed in a gray business suit with matching gray shirt, tie, and collar. He carried a sailor-type straw hat, which he waved to the crowds.

  Among the many persons who shook his hand while he waited for the train to pull out, five minutes late, was Joe Jacobs, the suspended manager of the German heavyweight Max Schmeling. Schmeling had lost the title to Jack Sharkey, on a close decision. After Jacobs wished him good luck, Walker replied:

  “Thanks, Joe. I hope they don’t hand me down the same kind of a decision you got.”

  Although they were no longer living together, Mrs. Walker decided to accompany her husband to Albany, to make it appear that they were reconciled. Nobody was fooled. He still lived in the suite at the Mayfair Hotel; she resided in the Walker house on St. Luke’s Place. To the boys at Lindy’s and the other hangouts where the Broadway crowd knew the score, it seemed like hypocrisy for the mayor to use Allie to gain sympathy for his plight. But the public admired her courage and devotion. Betty Compton was deliberately kept out of sight.

  “I would rather be here beside my husband than sit at home and not know right away what was going on,” Allie Walker said. “You know I feel that the Seabury investigation was very unfair and unjust to the Mayor. My name was mentioned in the testimony and I would have been glad to testify if I had been called. But I was never called. I will be at the hearing tomorrow, right beside my husband.”