03 The Irish in America: Long Journey Home: Up From City Streets

major funding for this program was provided by Jefferson smurfette corporation around the world we're known for our paper paper board and packaging products and paper recycling we are proud of our Irish heritage through our association with Jefferson smurfette group funding for this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual financial support from viewers like you member in the 1880s over the Lower East Side of Manhattan over the tenements that housed the Irish of New York the signature work of the age was rising the Brooklyn Bridge it was Irish labor that built it Irishman who died in the East River mud but there was one Irish boy from the east side streets who got to climb with his dad to the top of these towers even before there was a road between them when the bridge was just a narrow catwalk of wooden slats swaying over river and city he was scared to death but he would never forget it he could see the great city hole even if he couldn't feel its future coming at a time when the Irish would rise to run New York to rule it from the sewers to the skyline that boy on the bridge was Alfred East Smith and his story is the story of the Irish in New York he would stand at the peak of their achievement and from the high position he detained he would try to cross an even larger divide try to build a bridge between his people and the new country they chose that would be his most fearful crossing but his story starts here at the base of this tower where the bridge made the streets of his youth into chasms of Perpetual shade I'll smith's entire boyhood was spent in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge this family had come and got off there because that's where the ship docked and they went to the first place that could get an apartment and that's where he grew up it was a wilderness of tenements stretching away from the Brooklyn Bridge it was the old neighborhood it was the Fourth Ward it was the very heartland of the Irish in New York and of the Tammany Hall machine it was with exception of parts of Beijing and Calcutta the most crowded square mile on the face of the earth you had stables slaughterhouses tanneries fat and bone boiling factories that were very close to the tenements and the tenements were places where disease was rampant my grandfather Tom told us many people would go to the slaughterhouse and they would buy the hot blood for a penny and they would drink the hot blood of the freshly killed cows because it was believed that was a cure for TB or consumption as they called it at that time and both my grandfather Tom and my grandmother Agnes Ward lost sisters to TB it's noisy it's filthy but it's also a place where Irish kids are seeing people of different ethnic groups they're hearing different languages for the first time it's a place where the whole drama of human life is being enacted on the street it was the biggest rudest and meanest village with its closeness joys and suspicions writ large to the land of opportunity it was but hard-hearted there were jobs but body breaking jobs there was nothing to stop the Irish from climbing and nothing to catch them if they fell on every block in a year there were births christenings weddings and families sunk by injuries drink fights or fire fire was the dread of those tenements their absolute fire traps many women did garment work of various kinds in their apartments and so you had piles of fabric and feathers and all kinds of things that could catch fire very easily you had to get out as quickly as possible because it spreads so quickly the horses would bolt out of the station and the Dalmatians with nipa the horses hooks to keep them running but for little boys the fire engines were the most exciting thing in the world now at that time the great sailing ships would come in they'd all pull up to the pier so that the about spirits would extend over the street and the Irish kids would hang from the rigging of the bow sits right over the street and Al Smith used to do that he'd be watching the sailors come off the ships with their Goods brought from all over the world he was most interested in the fact that they'd bring these animals from all sorts of ports and at one time he ended up with four dogs two parakeets a monkey and a goat on South Street and initially they were kept in the Attic until his mother said to him you've got to find another place Al's father taught him how to swim he tied a rope around the boy's waist and threw him into the East River that's how you learn no squawking and no bathing suit they wouldn't want it said they were putting on airs Al's dad was known on those New York docks my grandfather's father was a very large man well over six feet tall he was a trucker and he worked six days a week well into the night and then he'd have to be up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning the one exception to his workday week would be Sundays that was set aside exclusively to be with his family even the day of rest started early in fact with a Saturday night bath then in the morning you'd button on a clean collar for your glad rags just in time for mass Sunday dinner was the one meal when all sat down together and welcomed friends nothing spoke better of a man and his work than a fine roast that could stretch for two or three more Al's father was proud to provide after dinner al and his father were out the door Sunday with a family had to include bullies you'd have to imagine Tom Foley's salome crowded Sunday afternoon there were no women there's my grandfather as small as he was and his father as large as he was sitting down at a table with Tom Foley some of the other party regulars and they'd sit around and talk about local fourth District politics here was another measure of Al's father he could sit down with Foley big Tom as they called him and not just for his blacksmith bulk Foley was a proprietor a solid man and the district's Tammany boss a wheel in the biggest engine of power at the Irish of New york-new in the 1880s and 90s we are in the golden years of Tammany Hall gold in more ways than one I might add the Machine was organized very much like the Catholic Church with the boss as the Pope and then the district leaders were the bishops and then the precinct leaders were the parish priests who were tending to the faithful Tammany was a creature of its times a machine they called it awesome and modern but it's still conducted business face-to-face and within the neighborhood jobs contracts money you gave out to family and friends that was the first rule take care of your own the boys were simply functionaries in the vast democratic party but in the neighborhood they were stars with her swell coats and derby hats if your power stretched just a block and a half still a Tammany man was someone to be the precinct captains were the one with the the closest connection with the people and he was from the neighborhood they knew him they knew where he came from an Ireland or where his parents came from in Ireland they knew his background they had grown up with him he was one of us he knew everybody by name by first name he knew their foibles he knew everything about them and if paddy McSweeney was thrown in jail for being drunk well he knew that paddy had a tendency a weakness as they called it you know or as they another way they described it just one fault he was a fine man but he just had one fault he might slip the cop five dollars and get paddy out of jail paddy would come home and swear he would never take another drop he was circulating through the ward all the time there was a wedding he always showed up at that and he never missed a funeral they'd be sitting in consoling the widow or the children and all of a sudden when the doorbell rang and the door opened up and there he was there was the local representative it was like stop everything everything went to a hush here he comes he's here and he going to pay his respects to the corpse and then he leave wouldn't stay too long just the fact that he was there was enough for the family and that's sort of there was an an element of pride that he came to my father's wake that meant something so come with me and I will treat you days and I'll sit you down and I will fill your kin and along the street all the friends I meet say there goes Muldoon he's a solid man I control the twos I control the island my constituents they all go there and they ask every single person in this district remember Mary Moran what we did for you when you ran out of coal last winter and Mary Moran would tell John her husband John get out there involved bought the straight ticket these Ward Heelers weren't about social policy or the fate of Nations in this village Washington was a million miles away a place you'd hear about from newspapers if at all by age 12 Al Smith was a newsboy shouting out the headlines to his neighbors Grover Cleveland takes over the White House Geronimo surrenders and the great John L Sullivan shakes hands with the Prince of Wales the papers yield at al a half cent each most of his earnings he carried home though sometimes he'd hold back a nickel for the vaudeville show that was the people's entertainment and like politics and Irish growth industry the stars al watched on stage had come from the same tenements he knew Maggie Klein was a shoe factory Foreman's daughter who ran away from home to join the theater up in the cheap seats of the Newsboys were most devoted fans she Swagger's on to the stage and she grabs it like a street fighter holding a corner against a nasty crowd and she starts to go in to throw him down McCluskey the song about an epic boxing match was down that then McDevitt's on the corner on the street other was to be a prize fight on both parties were to meet to make all the arrangements make sure everything was right McCluskey and the Negro were to have a finish fight so when she sings throwing down McCluskey everybody knows was throw him down McCluskey they rattled their seats they pound on the floor they sing along the Newsboys take their bundles of papers and they slam them down on the floor so you hear the sound of McCluskey's opponent hitting the canvas vaudeville was magic acts crooning love songs and dancing bears it was the crudest ethnic humor Italian gigolos Irish drunks and Hebrew misers played by and for the immigrants themselves but it was American modern hard knuckled brassy and fast there was a too wonderful Irish guys named Russell they dressed up as servant women with little short skirts and they took beating each other over the head with brooms because the audience sang the songs along with the entertainers and if they didn't like somebody they booed and wham-o out would come the hawk it was just a continuous pandemonium but soon there were no nickels to toss into a theater till before Al Smith turned 13 his father got sick too weak to truck his loads his friend Tom Foley got him a job on the Brooklyn Bridge but a year later even that was too much Alfred senior emerged from his house only once on Election Day 1886 when he walked to the polls to vote the straight Democratic ticket and then collapsed on his way home just before he was 13 years old Val Smith's father died and the family was penniless because the father had had an illness all his savings had been used up to pay for the illness there was nothing left for this family the only thing that permitted the family to bury his father was the help that they got from Tom Foley and in fact Tom Foley paid for the burial of his father Al Smith's mother's choice was whether she was going to try to keep the family together or ask for charity in those days if you asked for charity the first thing that the state did was take your children away and put them in an institution anything was better than that an Al Smith sister Mary remembers them coming back from the funeral now al was not quite 13 Mary was 10 years old and Mary remembers the mother saying I don't know where to turn and she remembers Al Smith saying I'm here I'll take care of you it was very common on the Lower East Side for children to begin work as young as seven eight years old sometimes younger my grandfather never knew his father his mother was left a widow at 24 with six children so she took in laundry to support the family but as soon as the boys could work they were newspaper boys in the city they were bootblacks they did everything to bring pennies into the family no one could count the children on the streets of New York in the 1880s they'd beg for work street sweeping tool cleaning fetching buckets of beer or a gang of Irish kids would fight the Jews for turf for jobs they'd sleep on steam grates over the underground press rooms on Park Row and sell papers that came out at dawn Al Smith was lucky he had a home and his mother found work making umbrellas still that wasn't enough al had to work the streets too he left school before he had actually finished the eighth grade and started a job as a truck chaser earning about $3 a week he would take messages and delivery orders from the company headquarters and run through these crowded streets of the Lower East Side trying to find the truckers that wasn't making them enough money so he went to work at the Fulton fish market what he did was unload these huge very heavy barrels of fish rolled them up this long ramp into the fish market unpacked the fish and then go back for another barrel he stored it every morning at 4 o'clock in the morning and he worked till 5 o'clock in the afternoon and he did that six days a week of course he had dreams of something else at night he'd make the rounds of Bowery theaters to see if they could use him in a crowd seen his parish priest Father Keane was always after Smith for charity plays L was young but he never forgot a line and he seemed to grow in front of a crowd it was often said by people who knew him that he put the ham and Hamlet and he moved his way up to getting speaking parts and then taking on leading roles and he loved it when he would be in these plays they always had him play the villain and he played it so dramatically that the kids would hiss him as he walked through the streets the next day and he couldn't stay in that because he liked everybody to like Smith bought a scrapbook and carefully pasted in his reviews he rehearsed at night and played on weekends to warm applause still Monday found him back in the sheds with the fish he was hefting and hauling for six years Tammany was the clear road up for the Irish but al was an entertainer and small not much good in a fight the way the Irish climbed at the New York polls was more like gang war this was the age of dick croaker he was the boss of Tammany Hall the master of Manhattan but he hadn't got there by his wits alone as a boy kroger lived in a shanty in what is now Central Park and he became the leader of a gang the tunnel gang the gangs were recruited to get off the vote they will go off polling place to polling place it was time for the hospitals it was breaking of heads it was a assault and battery broken legs broken heads broken noses and that's how they control the vote croaker made his name with a brawl at the polls in 1874 one of the opposition toughs got shot and Kruger was charged with murder he beat the charge in court but after that no one took on dick Kruger focus simply took over Tammany Hall when Honest John Kelly died there was a vacancy there was a vacuum quote people argue now who's going to be our leader Crocker just walked in and sat at the desk and there one who's going to come and take this away from me he ruled as heroes but now the whole city was his turf for Tammany politics was business and Crooker wandered into every business from mr. van der Bilt's railroad to the draymen who picked up dead horses in a sixth war let's say a man wanted a job as a policeman the first thing he'd do would be to see who we knew who knew the district leader very often some money might change hands in the 1880s the going price was $300 and then even after we got a job everybody on the public payroll had to pay one or two percent and hired jobs how to pay even more to Tammany Hall and then an election day all of the district leaders went to Tammany Hall and they call this dough day and everybody was handed maybe thirty forty fifty a hundred thousand dollars to pay voters and to grease the wheels of commerce not all the money went back to the streets boss Crooker ended up with a mansion off Fifth Avenue an upstate farm for his racing ponies he summered in Europe rode to Democratic conventions in his private Pullman car in his heart croaker hungered to be a gentleman what he became instead was a scandal he met a man he couldn't beat an uptown preacher named Charles Parker's Parkhurst gave the most famous sermon in New York City history against the police and Tammany Hall but he didn't just rail from his Madison Square pulpit he hired a detective six dollars a night and toured the streets for evidence saloons after-hours brothels a homosexual bar and everywhere policeman looking the other way the preacher capped his tour with a visit to a French circus girls unclothed playing leapfrog on the stage his detective played the Frog Tarara boom-de-ay Tarara boom-de-ay dr. Parker's on the floor plainly frog with the [ __ ] Tarara boom-de-ay Tarara boom-de-ay well naturally every newspaper New York and we had dozens of these that this was sensational stuff they appointed a committee of the legislature and they got people to testify and the descriptions were shocking the police weren't just taking bribes they were collecting profits for the Tammany leaders who had organized the gambling rings the liquor trade prostitution how could decent people live in a city where everything was for sale now church folk were joined by good government types businessmen all the reading classes and newspapers that serve them Crooker became the national symbol for everything wrong with boss politics the cities and all the grabby Irish stealing their way to power my grandfather knew that if you want to get ahead in the fourth ward stick around Tom Foley because Foley could give jobs out and very good ones too for Al Smith like any Eastside boy corruption wasn't the problem the problem was reformers goo Goo's goody-goody Protestants meddling in one of the few businesses the Irish had Tammany would run on the slogan to hell with reform and they'd win along the way it picked up a new recruit in the 4th Ward nobody ever said that Al Smith went into politics at the beginning to help his people politics Tammany Hall was a way out and what he would do for Tom Foley he would wait around the saloon and hope that big Tom as he was known would give him a contract it was a contract it was a little errand for Tammany Hall it was going to a police station and letting them know that they were enforcing the parking restrictions - strictly against the big campaign contributor it was going to a brothel and letting them know that there was going to be a police raid that afternoon so they should close up he did they asked Foley if it was a job he'd rather not do he did it Smith was 22 when Foley found him a paying job serving Jury subpoenas $15 a week wasn't much more than he'd earned as a laborer but if he played his cards right he'd never work with his back again he liked being known now as Tom Foley's man as he liked his growing stage Fame he'd gathered the neighborhood kids at the saloon and buy them all beer or sarsaparilla and Smith bought himself a Swallowtail coat and with his new trademark a cigar clamped in the side of his mouth he had his picture made a bit of class that was the ticket a man in public life had to show some dignity stage Irishman portrayed the Irishman as a bumbling drunk illiterate ignorant ready to stop anything for a fight or a jar he was very childlike and childish totally erratic drank a lot sign very loudly fought at the drop of the hats and wept copious tears about his poor old Irish mother for all the power that the Irish now held power was a long way from respect every one of these retains ends at a Donnybrook with people so in some cases literally being thrown out of the windows this was the image that the Irish had in the 1870s and 1880s but in theatre as in politics the Irish were taking over they were theater owners now mpresario 'he's the brightest star of the day was ned Harrigan who got rid of his old pati act and all the old world plays he put the Irish Americans on stage and gave them a human face if you want for information or in need of merriment come although would be socially to Murphy's tournament where he owns a row of houses in the first board by the dock where Ireland's represented by the babies are Knobloch they're the Weyland's and the failings from sweet on liccardi they're sittin on the railing with a children on their knee all gossiping and talking with a friends all in the flock singing lit the sally waters with the babies on the block it's good morning to your landlord sure now how are you today 1 Patrick Murphy sq IRA comes down the alleyway one devoted fan was Alfred he's Smith even decades later he could wile away a train ride of 2 or 3 hours with the songs of Harrigan's comic hero Dan Mulligan maybe in Mulligan's Rhys Smith recognized some of his own Mulligan was the focus of ten straight hits as he stumbled up from hapless immigrant to saloon keeper on the Lower East Side to solid man Dan Mulligan's a man of the neighborhood he knows everybody on the street everybody knows him he likes a drink after work he likes to sit out on the stoop and talk to his neighbors everyone in the audience knew Dan as they knew themselves he joked with his friends about the Chinese he schemed against the German butcher locked Muller he stuffed the ballot box and even jumped in himself to become a New York alderman finally with his wife Cordelia hauling him by his news surge suit he climbed all the way out of the old neighborhood and landed uptown on Madison Ave in Mulligan alley on his front stoop dan Mulligan is completely at home but you take him up to Madison Avenue after he moves there you settle him into a fancy dining room in a suit that doesn't quite fit he's completely out of his element he doesn't know what to do the stage directions tell us that he can't even stand up straight he can't even walk right as though he was entered a whole new world puts the cuspidor on the table no no can't have that puts it down the floor puts his napkin in the cuspidor takes a drink out of the goldfish bowl he grabs loaf of bread he breaks it across his knee he takes the little crumb brush and the wife Cordelia is watching and the next thing is he just start combing he's thinning hair with it that was another of Harrigan's inside jokes every Irishman knew it was the women nurses and teachers now who knew the world and its finer things it was the women who spurred their families uptown for men respectability didn't come easy Al Smith knew he met a girl an Irish American girl whose family had started out on the Lower East Side but had done well in the world father was a contractor they moved up to the Bronx it's a big social step up to move from the Lower East Side to the Bronx the Dunn's were really what you'd consider lace-curtain Irish Katie Dunn was a blue-eyed dark-haired very svelte young lady a well-dressed well-educated well-mannered and was very different from the other girls in the fourth ward and my grandfather saw this in her and rather than court the girls down the fourth ward he decided that this was the kind of person that was going to be his wife someday but definitely she was what you'd consider uptown upper-class material Katy was pleased to entertain him in the parlor at her piano singing after the ball or say au revoir but not goodbye but her family wasn't happy not at all they'd given Katy education French lessons music manners the best and al hadn't even gone to the eighth grade he was DS Dems and dough's straight from the New York docks now al wasn't going to change that the way he talked was good enough to make a crowd in a theater cheer and now that Tom fully put him on the stump to speak well al could give a hell of a speech whether he knew the candidate or not you know they said of Al Smith his voice has trumpets in it and this even in the heartland because the 4th Ward was the heartland of Irish eloquence in America even in a district of great orators Al Smith was something very special in his 20s Al Smith could have gone in one of two directions in his life he could have gone into theater he had opportunities there he loved the theater he could also go into politics he loved politics and he had a knack for that as well but the stage wasn't respectable not in the Dunn's of you al came courting for years before he understood his choice Cady or his acting then he didn't hesitate she was everything he wanted he decides to go into politics because for Al Smith politics is an honorable profession and he thinks it's appropriate for a life with a woman that might lift him up out of the world on the Lower East Side and take him to ever wider circles Alfred and Katy were married May 6th 1900 in a ceremony just as upright as the piano in the dens parlor when there was a Tammany suite the custom of the Fourth Ward was the housewives would go out to their Stoops and they would tie to the railings to brooms to symbolize the Tammany sweep they would build bonfires the bonfires would be one in two stories high tear my grandfather tell it he would be with all the other kids out stealing everything that they could burn vegetable stands would go in the bonfire they would run into restaurants they would steal tables they would steal chairs and he said it would be so hot he burned just standing next to it one year after Al Smith was married scandal finally sent boss Crooker off to Europe for good and that was Smith's chance the new boss at Tammany was Charles Francis Murphy who brought to politics the new vogue for respectability he wanted a new breed of candidate Tom Foley put Al Smith in as Assemblyman 2nd district he was popular after all hard-working with a gift of gab that was all-around Irish the Smith could also play on his father's German or Italian roots if the occasion came up he didn't need to campaign but he canvassed block by block and steamrolled his opponent 5 to 1 in his triumph he told the morning telegram politics was easier than acting and as he'd been such a corker on stage it shouldn't be any trick in Albany to bask in the political limelight he's not educated young man very unsophisticated and now he is in the grand high ceiling chamber of the New York State Assembly he's one of the junior Assemblyman and he's a Tammany man Tammany Assemblyman was supposed to vote the way he was told and do very little else if he has an opinion nobody wants to hear it the first two years he's up there he does not give a single speech this greatest of speech makers and every day on his desk are plumped down another pile of the bills the legislation that is going to be taken up that day this is a man who never read very much used to say and I think he wasn't exaggerating much than in his whole life he only read one book cover to cover the life of John L Sullivan and of course legislation is very arcane it's filled with paragraphs and subparagraphs and clauses and modifying clauses Al Smith didn't understand what these thing anything in them and he's totally lost in Albany there was a strip of bars and bawdy houses called the gun that's where Tammany Assemblyman spent their evening of course Smith went along but when he left the saloon he would go back to his very cheap room in the boarding house was a rickety desk and on that desk would be piled the stack of bills that had been on his desk in the assembly chamber that day and he would start reading them he would start at the top and read his way through he would read about a bill authorizing some damn in a little upstate district you would read about some highway construction project upstate somewhere he could hear the singing and the raucous voices as the other Assemblyman made their way home but he would sit there I still read him the bill at one of his windows faced the Capitol and he could see the lights go out one by one he still read my grandfather realized that nothing in the forth would ever prepared him for this task it overwhelmed him and it wasn't long before he missed Katie and his kids and really wanted to go back home again New York was where the Irish could be comfortable after two sessions Smith couldn't think of anything he'd gotten done in Albany he was still seated in the back row he had a big family now and still no money he went to Tom Foley and said he couldn't make it bring me home the next day had breakfast fully made him an offer I can make you the city building superintendent and without another word Smith knew he'd never have money worries again Foley looks at him and he says now you can have that job if you want it it's yours but if you take it you'll never be a really big man I think you can be a big man and in a week Al Smith comes to town falling says I want to go back Smith wanted that more than money to be a big man his first committee assignments weren't promising banking and forestry alas he'd only been in a bank once to serve a jury notice forests he'd never been in one but Smith was learning his trade every week for years he'd hosted dinner corned beef cabbage and beer for three or four assembly friends up Staters or even Republicans at Keeler's restaurant Smith would hold court with stories of the tenement life jokes skits song and late at night now he knew what to read the budget hundreds of pages thousands of line items no one read at all except Al Smith now silent Charlie Murphy starts to hear about Al Smith and he asks to meet him and they have a long conversation with Murphy's people sitting on one side and at the end one of them comes over to Murphy and says that's a bright young man he's got a lot of ability it's too bad he's not a college man and Murphy says if he was a college man he wouldn't be Al Smith and Murphy starts to push Smith up the ladder after eight years Smith's committee was Ways and Means al had his hands on the money bills and from New York 14th Street headquarters Tammany had more and more jobs for him we don't like that new business tax killer we need some upstate votes against that patronage reform whatever the Machine needed Al Smith worked to get it done his name was back in the newspapers too they called him the henchmen of Tammany Hall March 25th 1911 it's 4:30 in the afternoon someone walking by Washington Square Park saw smoke coming out of the ash building they then saw what looked like a bundle of clothing being thrown out the window and then in this moment of horror people realized that it was actually a young girl who was jumping out of the window of the ash building to escape the fire smoke was coming off her body and very quickly one after the other of these young girls started jumping out of the windows someone flicked a cigarette and it caught on one of those piles of highly flammable fabric and it started to burn very very quickly one young man went to pick up the fire hose and the woods was rusted shut people jammed against the door and as they passed out from smoke inhalation their bodies piled against the door and those who were behind them were unable to get at the door some tried to go on the fire escapes I think something like 30 young women died when one of those fire escapes collapsed Al Smith was stunned to hear of the fire many of those who were killed were his constituents in this crisis politicians couldn't get by with personal visits of condolence money to help with the burials everyone in New York knew the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire killed a hundred and forty six and those deaths could have been prevented in Albany the legislature proposed a panel to investigate some of the most distinguished names in the state Al Smith signed onto that bill and added one name to the Commission his own the factory commission trips were Smith's higher education now he was traveling with Blue Bloods bankers labor leaders professors for the first time he could see the smokey Great Lakes steel mills primitive leather works in the Adirondacks canneries ware farm children worked all the day light up to their hips and waist Smith was really quite horrified I think like many people who came from the city he couldn't imagine that it was possible the conditions for workers in rural areas were actually even worse than they were in the city they were in some upstate Factory and they wanted to see the children under the age of seven where they worked and the owner of the factory said no I have no children under the age of seven and then they discover that he's loaded all the children into an elevator and put the elevator between floors so they wouldn't see them and the people on this commission watched Al Smith they watch his face when he sees this elevator full of children remember Taos Smith who as a boy had to work so hard himself to keep his family together you Smith's own hard experience gave him authority that other commissioners couldn't match on this terrain he'd found a place where he could loom large in politics and as the investigation entered its second year there was another reason they all turned to him in Albany the Democrats had taken over and Smith was on his way to Speaker of the House if flaws and lives were going to change someone had to command the votes now reformers brought their ideas to Smith and he brought the ideas to 14th Street mr. Murphy Murphy was very sober quiet he never talked as a matter of fact his conversation consisted of three things yes no or I'll look into it and he used to have lunch at Delmonico's each day in a private room and I like this touch he ate at a table with four Tigers head claws he just wanted to remind you that you were talking to the head of Tammany Hall the Sachems of Tammany would meet at Delmonico's with mr. Murphy at the head of the long table there were platters heaped with oysters beer cigar smoke spittoons but younger men were talking now mr. Murphy of course just listened there was a lathe with his Reformers ideas a state fund to pay men hurt on the job shorter hours for women and children all the old Sachems heard were goo goo trumpets reformers Big Ideas came to nothing but Murphy heard different he heard votes and he looked down the table of the young man he gave him the go-ahead to sponsor the social welfare legislation that he wanted there's a tremendous bond between Al Smith and Charlie Murphy Charlie Murphy is not a saint by any means he makes a fortune in politics but he also knows that if Tammany is going to survive it has to help people's lives improve in material ways or else it's just going to become a dynasty with Murphy's power behind him Smith was a legislative weapon braying orders gaveling down the opposition always moving bills he'd eat at the rostrum and shout out the vote with food still in his mouth when Republicans tried to exempt canneries from a bill requiring one day of rest Smith marched to the lectern I have read carefully the commandment thou shalt observe the Sabbath day nowhere did I see the words except in canneries then he sat down the debate was over with the same skill he once used to block reform Smith now bent the legislature to his new agenda he rammed through 36 laws for the factory commission he would provide the new model but the American workplace people knew who Al Smith was now here is a man who is loyal to Tammany Hall who was totally regular yet here was a man that the citizens union who had once given him the lowest rating was now giving a very high rating here was a man who was getting favorable editorials in the New York Herald and silent Charlie Murphy understood that perhaps this young man would be the instrument that would change the image of the Irish in America they would slap each other with these sticks and they used the exaggerated broom you know Oh Maggie Maggie and they might find a bottle of liquor in the Masters cabinet and they'd sneak a little bit of it and then they'd get tipsy a lid start lifting up their skirts and dancing they were doing it as a joke but a lot of the people who saw it didn't see anything funny in it at all especially I can tell you my family didn't because my grandmother was a domestic servant and she was nothing like that on the vaudeville stage for 30 years John and Jimmy Russell had been cheered and well paid as slap-happy Irish servant girls but in this new century the Irish were living different lives and their image had to be different to wages for Irishmen were now equal to all other whites in America and with literacy levels of 95% no one could call the Irish dumb immigrants anymore not even the Irish themselves they want images out there that are going to acknowledge the fact that they are now teachers and nurses and politicians and policemen and judges in 1907 the sons and grandsons of the Irish domestics gathered 300 strong and packed a Russell brothers show when the curtain came up on the men in drag they were pelted with eggs potatoes and rocks John and Jimmy Russell were stunned they didn't understand that the audience wasn't there for them anymore and they were boos and catcalls and the audience told them no uncertain terms that it's over it's not funny anymore John and Jimmy Russell left New York ruined this wasn't about individuals a couple of jobs for the boys there were bigger issues at stake that's what mr. Murphy was showing at Tammany Hall when he cut off the old Muldoon's and their old ways Murphy decreed there'd be no more police graft no prostitution no gambling no vice he didn't care how much it brought it of course there was grumbling even revolts but Murphy wouldn't Bend now he was after a prize he couldn't get with Irish votes alone he needed every nationality every worker all the poor he meant to build a great movement and the face of that movement would be Al Smith 1915 he had him nominated for sheriff of New York City Smith won of course in 1917 Charlie Murphy had Alfred E Smith nominated as President of the Board of Aldermen for the city of New York and of course house with one and in 1918 silent Charlie Murphy rested from the hands of the Upstate Democratic leaders the nomination for governor and he gave the nomination for governor - Alfred E Smith fire all that day and he trains were coming up from New York long special trains filled with the people from the old paper so the people from the fourth ward they spent the night drinking celebrate my dog Oh well then me and mainly O'Rourke tripping the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York it was the sidewalks of New York that Al Smith had just brought to the governor's mansion he was up from city streets and his inauguration was the triumph of the Irish in America it was the complete integration of the Irish not just as a political power but as a force for political progress in America Charlie Murphy summons Smith to his country estate and Murphy says to Smith Tammany is going to be asking you for a lot of favors but if we ever ask you for something that you think is going to keep you from being a good governor tell me and the request will be withdrawn Tammany freed Smith from the demands of the organization he wanted him to prove that an Irishman could be a great governor Smith when is the job like a dock worker saying what he meant and using muscle when something got stuck he decorated his office with two large spittoons he moved five kids into the mansion along with a menagerie of dogs cats rabbits and then chimps and a giraffe but the feature of his administration that drew the most comment was his inner circle the Republican Robert Moses the blueblood reformer Francis Perkins and his number one advisor mrs. Moskowitz he'd spotted her in the campaign a googoo who'd advised him from the shadows they'd be inseparable for 15 years I think my grandmother and Al Smith were an odd couple she was Jewish she came out of the progressive URIs social reform the Tammany guys didn't know quite what to make of her they didn't understand the perspective that she was bringing into Al Smith's government they were probably rather threatened by her if you picture in your mind what is a scene at a typical Tammany strategy session right this is a bunch of Lorsch I have to say it they all seem to be red-faced large red-faced men many with big mustaches a lot of them with gold cap teeth a lot of them with big cigars and a lot of beer was being drunk and in a corner now is fell Moskowitz always knitting not looking up just knitting and had to be heard all the expletives and and they all the ideas were flung around and so forth he turned to her and say what do you think misses him and she'd tell him what she thought and nine times out of ten I would say I agree with her now they hated that they hated it that she was Jewish they hated that she was a woman ah another Jewish adviser of his was Joseph Proskauer who they called prosti they called her maaske and they had this ditty which they sang it was an ironic angry ditty Pross key and muskie are the new brains of Tammany Hall Smith and his brain trusts were creating a new sort of politics it wasn't Irish Jewish or tribal in any regard it was based on the conviction that all the immigrants in fact all working people would rise together and with governments help in four terms as governor Al Smith would pour a billion yards of concrete erect a million tons of steel but he would also change the focus of government with rent controls subsidized housing and hospital care limits on the price of power heat telephones there would be a tenfold pay hike for teachers and equal pay for women teachers no one ever ruled Albany as he did still from time to time Smith would jump a train and go back to the old neighborhood to walk across the Great Bridge and see his mother in Brooklyn Heights or to join the boys from the Harrigan Club singing songs from the dan Mulligan plays while a steamship carry them out to Jersey for the annual clambake and Smith would take in the new place to buy the 1920s when Al Smith had taken over the governor's chair George M Cohan had taken over broaden ten productions in a single year i hankie do to do or die I will a nephew of my uncle July I've got the Yankee Doodle sweet peas my Yankee Doodle joy Yankee Doodle came to London just to my commode I am my Yankee Doodle boy it's one of the big transitions and popular entertainment an irish-american a son of a group that was deemed unamerican unpatriotic in the middle of the 19th century is suddenly defining for all Americans what it means to be an American his girl is a Yankee Doodle joy he is a Yankee Doodle boy born on the 4th of July now how American can you get the New York Dandy was high style high hat snap brim grace pets and the best rest of all was Beau James a Tin Pan Alley songwriter turned politician and did pretty well he was the gaudiest ornament of the Irish Golden Age his honor James J Walker he's a fun mayor he pen demised the Nair do well of New York City he was a household name you'd seen in the newsreels dad like 150 suits each suit had two pairs of pants and so forth and he was a legend Al Smith was mr. New York State and Jimmy Walker was mr. New York City I represented it you might say the moral side of the Irish the attempt to clean up Tammany and Walker represented the wild Irish the wide-open City that's how many bosses that said LLL let the good times roll New York was rolling in money and ambition so much of it Irish Joe Kennedy brought his bootleg in Hollywood millions to Wall Street where he made millions more f scott Fitzgerald held court at the Plaza at Madison Square Garden the champ Jack Dempsey rule and when the money rained all the Irish went with contractors couldn't lay brick fast and pave or wire or late - in time for the Irish city inspector the Irish photographer from the newspaper Irish streetcar conductors were writing winners in the market some of their brokers are Irish too even Al Smith got swept along when you'd come to town now he wouldn't go home to Oliver Street he'd take a couple of sweets at the Biltmore he had new friends finance Sears reformers whispered that Smith had gone swanky but the Irish loved and Walker the bad boy they loved him more he was described as part beau Brummell part guttersnipe and Robert Moses describes Jimmie Walker coming into his office and is this pile of mail on his desk and he says any checks in there and the secretary says no and he sweeps all the letters of the desk onto the floor he always had a smile on his face he was always dancing he always had a glass of champagne in his hand he defied all of the canons of respectability and morality New York was America's Champagne town the bubblier for the fact that champagne was illegal in Jimmy Walker's New York the rules didn't apply anything was for sale that's what turned out Smith against him for Smith there was more than morality at stake after mr. Murphy's death in 1924 Al Smith was himself the boss of New York Democrats he was the most admired governor in any state and he meant to build a record that would resound across the country we offer one oh well who not only deserve success but commanding victory yes inhabit the heavy warrior in his last year's mr. Murphy had pushed tammany power past the borders of New York in alliance with other big state bosses making deals with the right-wing Democrats of the south Murphy laid the foundation for the third great Irish institution in the new world first the church in America then the labor movement now the New Democratic Party southerners workers and immigrants together they would dominate US politics through most of the century on the steps of this Capitol where 25 years ago I first came into the service of the state I accept my party selling within this building I learned the principles the functions and the purposes of government and to know that the greatest privilege that can come to any man is to give himself to a nation which has it read him and raised him from obscurity to be a contender for the highest office in the gift of the people when now Smith was nominated a wave of enormous pride swept through the Irish American community it was almost like a euphoria in lower Manhattan they couldn't believe it that he would have the nerve to do such a thing it was one thing to to acquire a certain amount of political power in your own Irish neighborhood in the Lower East Side when Al Smith went to Albany it was like my god we're almost at the top of the known now we were going to show the rest of the nation what one of our guys could do Eastside Westside all through the USA they say these are mother dream of having a son like him without ashamed staining his name men are proud to be allowed to know and call him left side all through the USA they say Al Smith had never seen the vast territory he meant to govern and he was fighting a wave of Republican prosperity but he was just as cocky as he'd been on his way to Albany a quarter century before he'd proven he was a corker at this game so what if the experts said he had no chance Smith had his drama to suck his boyhood in the tenements his rise through hard times it was the log cabin story for the modern age the way Smith saw it the immigrants and their children hadn't just become Americans now they were America what America was bound to become yellows yellows done that game here he comes all together give a kid let's all Ltd side at all the most exciting with me of course when I was in eighth grade him during the Al Smith campaign was up daddy came home and told us at dinnertime that the Smith campaign train was going to go through our town so on a big day we put on our Girl Scout uniforms there were being crowds of people a lot of men and overalls and that kind of thing but I was a little bit embarrassed by him which I never confessed to my father because he he was so very New York he didn't seem quite well as an awful word to use but refined to me quite cultivated and he was so alien to that Minnesota landscape the organ would begin to play the sidewalks of New York and out would come Al Smith waving his brown derby cigar and hand smiling a beaming smile at the crowd with his rollin walk partly a strut partly a roll he would make a performer's entrance the stage thanks a lot for the audience thanks for the appreciation that was Al Smith in the heartland but of course the Heartland was not New York like Smith Herbert Hoover knew the country was going Orban but Hoover also knew the fear that inspired in small-town folk that's why he was so busy reminiscing about the old Iowa farm where he'd wile away the afternoons near the old swimmin hole Smith had had his background used against him before and always came out on top yes sir I'm a graduate of FFM he denounced with a vaudevillian wink the Fulton fish market here's a hat that's well known in New York City and all of its sidewalks our East Side West Side all around the town in the adjacent territory now if you'll remove that mall becoming how do I put this one on and what goes with it he wasn't going to be an imitation wasp which some people you know we're urging the Irish to become instead he said I am what I am and take me or leave me I'm an American and I'm an Irishman and the two are not in conflict Jim Foley told me the story Pauly was one of Smith's campaign managers and he came to Smith and he said how look at the list of people on this train there isn't anything but Irish names we got to do something about this we're going out to see everybody else in this country so specific Oh Jim you're right I'll take care of that so a week later folly gets a new list he looks at it and it's all Irish names again so it goes back to Spence's I thought you were going to change this list he says I did look aimed at seven of these guys of Protestants Smith's insularity told in his policies he'd never studied tariffs so he asked a couple of businessmen and came out with a high tariff policy that could have been Hoover's he even asked his business friends about immigration and then recommended that America move to close her doors to the world his positions didn't make sense with who he was maybe that didn't matter he was Catholic wasn't he people knew what that stood for there were a lot of rumors about Smith that he was involved in political corruption in league with the saloonkeepers and and that he had his hand out for bribes and things like that and he was portrayed as the personification of a big-city evil someone who was Tammany Hall wringing wet and a Roman Catholic we had a Protestant minister he would get up in the pulpit on Sunday morning and rail against the Pope and tell us all particularly young people that if Al Smith a Catholic were to be elected that the Pope would be over on the next boat and would take over the government of the United States well Rogers tried to make fun of the issue they said folks the Pope ain't gonna move over here if Smith's elected president he said I've been over there to the Vatican he said it taken more than four years to move all that stuff how could the chief of the United States kneel to kiss the Pope's ring even educated Protestants thought a Catholic must have divided loyalty and the uneducated they waged their own campaign Smith's on fire he crosses burning in the fields by 28 the clan was was more abundant on its last legs but Smith's nomination revived it it was clearly the religious issue more than anything else one of the places that Governor Smith had to speak was in Oklahoma City and by the time he arrived he felt that he was going to face a very hostile audience and indeed he did he met a very cold reception in the streets of Oklahoma City is sort of deafening silence from the people in the sidewalks in the railway station and so on so he decided again against the advice of his councillors that he would scrap the speech he was going to give and make the main theme the religious issue there were about 30,000 people in the hall they were making a constant noise during the time that he spoke so that he felt that he could hardly even make himself heard his voice sounded angry defiant and defensive he said this shouldn't even be an issue he said no Catholics should vote for him because of his religion but anyone who voted against him because of religion wasn't a good American that didn't go down well my grandmother who was listening to the speech on national radio hook up back in in Albany called the hotel where she knew Al Smith was staying and left a message please call me as soon as you get in because she was afraid that he was being attacked there was so much hostility in the air and noise over the radio that she was convinced that his life was in danger Smith looked out at the stony faces in the front rows and the air seemed to come out of him he could see there was no way to win these crowds out here it became clear to Smith really clear for the first time that there was nothing he could do nothing he could say no proof he could adduce that would convince them that he was fit to be President of the United States and that was a tragedy for Al Smith and he knew that there was nothing he could do to change it Will Rogers rota I'm sending a wire to the Pope unpack after Al Smith lost I was very sad and I was afraid if I went up Main Street people would meet me and jeer at me and taught me have various miss having lost it was a feeling that it was my loss as well as his my father told me a story about the day after the defeat was a postman all have done his block an Irish immigrant and he came out and he took down the American flag he brought into his house and he never flew it again it was a crushing blow that that left so many people totally confused but as the Irish Catholics always did they turned to their church and the church berated them for seeking earthly goals rather than heavenly goals you're not supposed to go for the gold here on earth supposed to the go for the gold in heaven and you shouldn't have even gone for that shame on you for the Irish Smith's campaign and its failure had brought shame another Irish defeat to be nursed entails for a generation until a new fresh champion could lead them to the White House for Al Smith there was nowhere to go at home where his own shame was deepest while the aristocratic Franklin Roosevelt had swept into office as New York's governor the man who'd hand-picked him ran far behind it was devastating for him he was sort of like mr. New York he never forgot it it sorted gnawed Adam for many many years he took it very hard he was embittered by it for the rest of his life so are many of his followers you know Smith summed it up by saying I I guess the time hasn't come when a man can say his beads his rosary in the White House he showed how far the child of immigrants could go in America and yet he showed how far that they they still had to go the name is a kind of a secret maybe after I started some of the folks around my own age No watch the song is but you'll all know the car all the night that I struck New York I went out for why and for people with for me they all would say it's better Wi-Fi you'd go down Broadway but there was the Bowery ablaze with lights I was out for to see the sight I were the devil's own nights and I never know Mary Al Smith was 55 years old the prime of life for a public man he'd risen in his fortunes as he never could have dreamed home was now an apartment on Fifth Avenue his neighbors were Rockefellers Vanderbilt's Smith's business friends were planning a building of a hundred and two storeys the Marvel of the age and they asked al to head the company with a title that became him president of the Empire State he would find the job boring his love wasn't the building but the Empire State itself governor Smith I mean Al and mrs. Smith and Bob Moses and my friend this day is notable not so much for the inauguration of a new governor as that it marks the close of the term of a governor who has been our chief executive for eight long years which is Rosa Lou and the delightful family of children I left as many animals as I could governor Roosevelt won national acclaim with new social welfare laws modeled on Smith's bills from years past then he climbed aboard the movement to clean up corruption in New York City of course that meant Ammon the star performer New York's biggest show married Jimmy Walker is getting a noisy reception as he arrives for his act after the Depression hit the Irish Golden Age looked tawdry in the hard new light investigation and indictment with a new growth industries like boss croaker thirty years before Jimmy Walker hide himself to the steamship Pier and fled to Europe and disgrace the Irish Paul's were out of City Hall out of American esteem on the sidelines through the New Deal they were you know Muldoon's fine for packing the poles but you wouldn't want him in charge when Roosevelt wins the presidency Smith expected that Roosevelt would bring him into his administration particularly since as rolla's felt said practically everything we've done in the New Deal Al Smith did first in New York and he put out tenders to Roosevelt and Roosevelt made it very clear that he was never going to give Al Smith a job and look what we got when Smith turned against Roosevelt Republicans gleefully put him on display here was Al Smith on the stump attacking the Democratic Party in which he'd spent his life slamming his own hand-picked successor railing against the very ideas that he'd brought forth a decade before my grandmother saw in him increasing paranoia increasing drinking increasing irascible 'ti he was cast adrift he became more bitter and the rich took him in and he he became an exile the story of the last year's of Al Smith's life the life of the happy warrior the happy warrior of the political battlefield are really a story of great sadness Smith we sit afternoon afternoon with nothing to do this man of incredible vitality and energy and he'd be sitting in a big easy chair looking out the window looking West across Central Park there'd usually be a big drink in his hand my grandfather was living right across from Central Park Zoo and he would often take us over there and visit the animal cages when Robert Moses his proteges became poor Commission he built this beautiful zoo and decided to make oven a present to this man that he loved really above all other men Al Smith is it warded this metal which makes him night superintendent of the Central Park Zoo every night he would go over to the cell the doorman at his building in the adjoining buildings got quite used to seeing at 11:30 or midnight this porn she figure in the Brown Derby big cigar sticking out of his mouth walking across to the - down the steps vanishing among the cages have you ever been in love me boys or have you felt the pain I'd sooner be in jail me Sam can be in love again for the girl I loved was beautiful I'd have you all to know and I'm entering the garden where the freight is grow she was just assaulted creature boy that nature did intend to walk right through the world me wise without the Gleason Bend knowledge she where is she nyan I'd have you all to know and I met her in the garden where the parade so his IME pretty Kathleen I'm tired of single life and if you have no objection sure I'll make you my sweet wife she answered me right modestly and card see very low your welcome to the garden where the freight is grow she was just the sort of creature why's that nature did intend to walk right through the war with me wise without the Grecian band nor did she wear a chignon I have you all to know and I met her in the garden where the prettiest blue as IME pretty car Helene I hope that you will look me she wasn't like your city Kara's that singer making free she says I Laxmi pants and tomorrow I let you know if you'll meet me in the garden where the freight is grow she was just the sort of nature wise that nature did intend to walk right through the one of my wise without the grecian Bend now did she wear a chignon I have you all to know and I met her in the garden where the create is war or the parents they consented and we're blessed with children three to wise just like her mother and they care as the image in me and now we're going to train them up the way they are to go far to dig in the garden where the prey is grow she was just the sort of creature wise the nature didn't intend to walk right through the world me wise with all the Grecian bend nor did she wear a chignon I'd have you all to know and I'm entering the garden where the parade is row major funding for this program was provided by Jefferson smurfette corporation around the world we're known for our paper paper board and packaging products and paper recycling we are proud of our Irish heritage through our association with Jefferson smurfette group funding for this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual financial support from viewers like you this is PBS

Channel: vhsclassic90s

Views: 178,507

Rating: 4.7678404 out of 5

Keywords: The, Irish, in, America, Long, Journey, Home, Up, From, City, Streets

Id: dOWfr9Ysuok

Length: 87min 57sec (5277 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2011