Al Smith Totally Explained

Everything about Al Smith totally explained

Alfred Emanuel Smith, Jr., known in private and public life as Al Smith, (December 30, 1873 New York City - October 4, 1944 New York City) was elected Governor of New York four times, and was the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928. He was the first Roman Catholic and Irish-American to run for President as a major party nominee. He lost the election to Herbert Hoover. He then became president of the Empire State, Inc. and was instrumental in getting the Empire State Building built during the Great Depression.

Early life

Smith was born to Alfred Emanuel Smith and Catherine Mulvihill and initially grew up in the multiethnic Lower East Side of Manhattan, on Oliver Street, New York City, within sight of the Brooklyn Bridge which was then under construction. His four grandparents were Irish, German, Italian, and English, but Smith identified with the Irish American community and became its leading spokesman in the 1920s. He was thirteen when his father Alfred, a Civil War veteran who owned a small trucking firm, died. At fourteen he'd to drop out of parochial school, St. James School in Manhattan located at 37 James Street, to help support the family. He never attended high school or college, and claimed that he learned about people by studying them at the Fulton Fish Market, a job for which he was paid $12 per week to support his family. An accomplished amateur actor, he became a notable speaker. On May 6, 1900, Alfred Smith married Catherine A. Dunn, with whom he'd five children.

Political career

In his political career, he traded on his working-class 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. 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, following the loss of the majority, he became the minority leader. When the Democrats reclaimed the majority in the next election, he was elected Speaker for the 1913 session. He became minority leader again in 1914 when the Republicans won the majority again, and remained in that position until his election as sheriff of New York County in 1915. By now he was a leader of the Progressive movement in New York City and state. His campaign manager and top aide was Belle Moskowitz, daughter of Prussian-Jewish immigrants.
   After serving in the patronage-rich job of sheriff of New York County beginning in 1916, Smith was elected governor of New York in 1918 with the help of Tammany Boss Charles F. Murphy and James A. Farley, who brought Smith the upstate vote. He was the first Irish-American to be elected governor of a state, though Martin H. Glynn was New York's first Catholic governor, serving in 1913-1914 when he succeeded Governor William Sulzer, who had been impeached.
   In 1919, Smith 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. Hearst had attacked Smith for "starving children" by not reducing the cost of milk.
   Smith lost his bid for re-election in 1920, but was reelected as governor in 1922, 1924 and 1926 with James A. Farley serving as his campaign manager. As Governor Smith 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; later he was elected Secretary of State of New York. During his term New York strengthened laws governing workers' compensation, women's pensions, and child and women's labor with the help of Frances Perkins, soon to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Labor Secretary, and ahead of many states. At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, Smith 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

It was reporter Frederick William Wile who made the oft-repeated observation that Smith was defeated by "the three P's: Prohibition, Prejudice and Prosperity" .
   The Republican Party was riding high on the economic boom of the 1920s, which their presidential candidate Herbert Hoover pledged to continue. Historians agree that the prosperity along with anti-Catholic sentiment made Hoover's election inevitable, although he'd never run for office. He defeated Smith by a landslide in the 1928 election.
   Smith 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 as was Hoover. But as Smith became known for saying in his campaign, "Let's look at the record." 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 from Arkansas, and he carried the ten most populous cities in the United States. Part of Smith's losses can be attributed to fear that as president, Smith would answer to the Pope rather than to the Constitution, to fears of the power of New York City, to distaste for the long history of corruption associated with Tammany Hall, as well as to Smith's own mediocre campaigning. Smith's campaign theme song, "The Sidewalks of New York", wasn't likely to appeal to rural folks, and his city accent on the "raddio" seemed a bit foreign. Although Smith lost New York state, his fellow-Democrat Roosevelt was elected to replace him as governor of New York. Ironically it was James A. Farley who left Smith's camp to run Franklin D. Roosevelt's successful campaign for Governor, and later Roosevelt's successful campaigns for the Presidency in 1932 and 1936.

Voter realignment

In long-term perspective Al Smith started a voter realignment. He helped launch the end of classless politics that ushered in the New Deal coalition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. As one political scientist explains, "...not until 1928, with the nomination of Al Smith, a northeastern reformer, did Democrats make gains among the urban, blue-collar, and Catholic voters who were later to become core components of the New Deal coalition and break the pattern of minimal class polarization that had characterized the Fourth Party System." Finan (2003) says Smith is an underestimated symbol of the changing nature of American politics in the first half of the century. He represented the rising ambitions of urban, industrial America at a time when the hegemony of rural, agrarian America was in decline. He was connected to the hopes and aspirations of immigrants, especially Catholics and Jews. Smith was a devout Catholic, but his struggles against religious bigotry were often misinterpreted when he fought the religiously inspired Protestant morality imposed by prohibitionists.

Opposition to Roosevelt

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 believed the New Deal 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 political opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal. Smith supported the Republican presidential candidates Alfred M. Landon in the 1936 election and Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election.
Although personal resentment was a motivating factor in Smith's break with Roosevelt and the New Deal, Smith was consistent in his beliefs and politics. Finan (2003) argues Smith always believed in social mobility, economic opportunity, religious tolerance, and individualism.

Civilian life

After the 1928 election, he became the president of Empire State, Inc., the corporation which built and operated the Empire State Building. Construction for the building was commenced symbolically on March 17, 1930, per Smith's instructions, as president of the corporation. Smith's grandchildren cut the ribbon when the world's tallest skyscraper opened on May 1, 1931--May Day--built in only 13 months. As with the Brooklyn Bridge, which Smith witnessed being built from his Lower East Side boyhood home, the Empire State Building was a vision and an achievement constructed by combining the interests of all rather than being divided by interests of a few. Smith, like most New York City businessmen, enthusiastically supported World War II, but wasn't asked by Roosevelt to play any role in the war effort.
In 1939 he was appointed a Papal Chamberlain, one of the highest honors the Papacy bestows on a layman.
Smith died at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital 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.

Namesake

Alfred E. Smith Building, a 1928 skyscraper in Albany, New York
Governor Alfred E. Smith Houses, a public housing development in Lower Manhattan, near his birthplace
Governor Alfred E. Smith Park, a playground in the Two Bridges neighborhood in Manhattan, near his birthplace
Alfred E. Smith Recreation Center, a youth activity center in the Two Bridges neighborhood, Manhattan.
Governor Alfred E. Smith Sunken Meadow State Park, a state park on Long Island
PS 163 Alfred E. Smith School, a school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan
PS 1 Alfred E. Smith School, a school in Manhattan's Chinatown.
Al Smith Dinner, a fundraiser held for Catholic charities and a stop on the presidential campaign trail
Smith Hall, a residence hall at Hinman College, SUNY Binghamton.
Alfred E. Smith Vocational High School in the South Bronx.

Electoral history

1928 United States Presidential Election

Herbert Hoover (R) 58.2%

Al Smith (D) 40.8%

Norman Thomas (Socialist) 0.7%

William Zebulon Foster (Communist) 0.1%

In fiction

In Harry Turtledove's alternate history series Timeline 191, in which the Confederate States of America wins the American Civil War, Al Smith becomes the third Socialist President of the United States in 1936. In 1941, during his second term, the Confederacy invades the US, starting World War II. Smith is killed by a Confederate bomber in 1942 in his bunker in Philadelphia.

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