The Irish Road to the White House

The story of how the Irish rose to the top of American politics.

If there’s a moment from which to date the evolution of Tammany from a local political machine – which reflected the defensive crouch of Famine immigrants determined to deliver themselves from attempts by their soi-disant moral betters to control and shape their behavior – into an aggressive national force for progressive social change, it was March 25, 1911. On that day, 146 garment workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian women, perished in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, in lower Manhattan. As a state legislator, writes Smith biographer Robert Slayton, “Smith had learned about the nuts and bolts of the political system, [but] what he lacked was a cause, a rationale for using that expertise. The Triangle Fire would provide that and more, as it would fundamentally alter how he viewed the very role of government in American life.”

Three months after the fire, the legislature set up a nine-man Factory Investigating Commission to examine working conditions across the entire state. The chairman and vice-chairman were Senate Majority Leader Robert Wagner and Assembly Speaker Al Smith. (Cynics dubbed them “The Tammany Twins”). The commission was exacting in its investigations and eventually produced over 25 bills. The resulting legislation revolutionized the work place and created protections and safety measures that extended the role of government in unprecedented ways.

It didn’t stop there. The legislature moved ahead on everything from the passage of once-unthinkable stock market regulations to widow’s pensions and public power, from the state primaries to the direct election of U.S. senators. “By blessing the Factory Investigating Commission and endorsing the vote for women,” concludes David Von Drehle in Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, “Murphy helped chart the future of American liberalism…In the generation after the Triangle fire, urban Democrats became America’s working-class, progressive party.”

Under Murphy and Smith, Tammany became an agent of progressive change, and given New York’s position in the American economy, the influence of legislation passed in Albany had national impact. Murphy raised no objections when Smith brought Jewish progressives like Belle Moskowitz and Robert Moses into his inner circle; Murphy was, said Ed Flynn, “as vitally interested in Smith’s social reforms as anyone around the Governor.” But his motivation was always practical rather than ideological. He believed that using the power of the state to improve people’s lives in material ways – guaranteeing decent working conditions, shielding workers from injuries, regulating the employment of women and children, protecting the old from falling into poverty, extending public education – was, quite simply, good politics.

In 1918, Al Smith was elected governor of New York State. He lost his bid for re-election in 1920, but was returned to office in 1922 and served until 1928. During those years, he continued to build on his progressive record in the assembly. He overhauled and modernized the entire structure of state government, bringing it into the twentieth century; passed massive bond issues for hospitals, housing, roads; undertook a dramatic expansion of state parks and invested new funds in education. A model for the kind of dynamic government action that Franklin Roosevelt would undertake as president, Smith’s achievements have often been referred to as “the Little New Deal.”

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Nster.com