Campaigning With La Guardia

by ERNEST CUNEO

1

WATCHING Fiorello La Guardia in action was sheer nourishment for a young man looking for an education in political know-how. Anybody can get on with anybody else, but to watch someone do it without compromise, being at the same time the focal point of crucial issues — that is something else again. Fiorello’s basic approach was rugged, almost truculent. He always led from strength. “You can’t help it if they don’t like you,” he once said to me, “ but you can compel them to respect you.” From the White House to Dutch Schultz’s headquarters, he was respected as a Two-gun Man.

The anatomy of Fiorello’s political philosophy was based on the individual voter in his district. The election was the payoff, and on it everything depended. All Congressmen accept this; it is an axiom that the best speech on the floor isn’t worth one answered letter to a constituent, insofar as survival in office is concerned. Fiorello’s mail was thoroughly answered, and the most accurate files were kept. The mass of detail, however, was handled by the competent staff, and only unusual matters came to Fiorello’s personal attention.

There was in Fiorello’s district a curious semiclub known as the Ghiboneys, half-clown and halfbully boys, who were uncritically devoted to Fiorello. They were not unlike the early New York City volunteer firemen of a hundred years before, being long on gusto, in boisterous good health, and anxious to plunge into any fray offering good clean fun. Fiorello paid no attention to them except in the election season, but they were invaluable as organizers and guards during the actual contest. They were, in a sense, Fiorello’s Minutemen.

While the personal contact was carefully nurtured, Fiorello’s main concern was policy. He took definite positions and was at great pains to state his reasons for them. These reasoned arguments he forcibly brought to the attention of his district’s voters, paying them the compliment of assuming they had brains in their heads and cared about the issues of the day. This paid dividends; his const it lients appreciated him and were proud of him.

Local pride is a familiar feature in American politics: Idaho was always proud of Borah, Arkansas of Robinson, Mississippi of Harrison, Alabama of Underwood and Bankhead, and so on. Election districts always basked in the reflected glory of representatives who were national leaders. Fiorello enjoyed a great deal of this feeling in the 20th: the Little Flower was a Big Man. But he never forgot to value every vote as though it were a marquise emerald. There is a certain inexorable mathematical progression behind this that is the very essence of ward contests. Each vote switched is two votes lost: one you lose and one your opponent gains; it therefore takes three votes to beat one switch.

Fiorello’s relationship with the Republican Party leadership couldn’t have existed had it not been for the unwritten division of power which existed in New York for years. The Republicans got the national offices, the Democrats the City, and it was anybody’s ballgame in the State. The Republican leaders got the insurance, the Democratic leaders the contracts. The Republicans got trotting, the Democrats horse racing. Obviously, the Democrats didn’t want Fiorello camping out in their back yard; on the other hand, Fiorello in Washington was theoretically boxed by the Republican majority. This held true during most of the twenties, but the sides of the box fell apart in 1929 and Fiorello was all over the lot after that.

As the spring of 1932 began to loosen winter’s grip, Fiorello talked more and more about the coming election, and sometimes he would reminisce about past elections. I particularly remember one story of an earlier campaign when he had run from the old 14th Congressional District. The 14th ran far over to the East Side, in a completely solid Jewish area, and then down into the Village, encompassing a considerable Italian and upper-class American Republican population, and then on to the banks of the Hudson. Fiorello’s Democratic opponent, a man named Sirovich, was fighting a dirty light, accusing Fiorello of being anti-Semitic. Fiorello decided to spike that lie once and for all. He challenged Sirovich to a debate at a Synagogue Forum and pounded at it until Sirovich had to accept.

After they were on the platform, Fiorello specified a condition of the debate: it must be in Yiddish. Fiorello spoke Yiddish fluently, and he had, of course, discovered that Sirovich couldn’t speak it at all. Sirovich went to bat with two strikes against him to begin with and proceeded to look at a third strike without even knowing it.

“Why,” said Fiorello, “that poor boob didn’t even know you keep your hat on in a synagogue, He took his off.”

But Sirovich wasn’t finished. He had pictures of himself in a Jewish velvet hat and a beard distributed all over the East Side; but on the West Side he was pictured as clean-shaven and wore a smart, small-knotted tie. Fiorello said he always deplored the spurious racial issue, but if that was the game Sirovich wanted to play, that was the game he was going to get. So Fiorello put out a lot of special crews who spent all of the night before election transferring the East Side pictures of Sirovich to the West Side and the West Side pictures to the East Side.

Fiorello’s pre-campaign maneuvers were textbook illustrations of nimble political footwork. In 1932, he perceived that there would be a Democratic landslide in New York. He set out, therefore, to get the nominations of both major parties, and but for the stupidity of one man, Tammany’s Jimmy Hines, he would have succeeded. Very shrewdly, Fiorello was trying a tack: that is to say, he aimed to use the very wind which was blowing against his nominal party to elect him.

To do this he intended to capitalize on his standing as the champion of the Progressives, and have the Progressives urge his nomination on the Democrats. The Democrats knew they needed the Progressives, but they did not know how much. The Progressives urged strongly, but they did not demand. A few years later and they might have; and a lot of history would have been written differently. As it was, their surge carried Fiorello up to the last barrier, Jimmy Hines, where it broke on his adamant refusal. John L. Lewis, William Green, and Senator Robert Wagner went heavily to bat; but Jimmy said no, and his was the decisive say at Tammany Hall.

Not giving Fiorello that nomination which would have kept him in Washington was the worst mistake Hines ever made. Fiorello wanted desperately to go back to Congress, and it is my personal opinion that he would have made the greatest Speaker in American history. But it was not to be; Tammany, knuckling under Hines’s pressure, wouldn’t allow it. Having no place else to go, Fiorello later went to City Hall; and Jimmy Hines, in accordance with the findings of twelve good men and true, later went to Sing Sing.

La Guardia had little campaign money, but unlike the party machines, he did not consider this a matter of life or death. It was useful, even very useful, but if you didn’t have it, you had to do the best you could without it. What you did have to have was plenty of shoe leather; and Fiorello’s volunteers canvassed every vote in the district. La Guardia was very finicky indeed about campaign contributions. He took great precautions to see that everything was scrupulously on the up-and-up. I don’t believe he ever saw a dollar which went into any of his campaigns; of one thing I am certain: he wanted not five cents’ worth of help from the “Interests” — from “Them.” In his first mayoralty campaign a year later, his campaign fund was absolutely broke. His staff was about to be evicted from its headquarters when in marched a bright young lieutenant with a check for $25,000 — signed by the president of a big New York utility. La Guardia read the check, tore it in two, handed it back, and said, “Tell him I’d rather have my headquarters in the back of a Mack truck.”

But to get back to the 1932 campaign: I was with him a great deal during the whole of it, and a more shrewd, knowing, intuitive, and consciously artful politician I never hope to see. There was always method to his madness, from grand strategy to a minor skirmish. The crux of his theory he once summed up for me in two sentences: “The tide of history sweeps the radical of today into the Presidency of tomorrow. Kites rise against the wind.”

2

FIORELLO’S campaign had for me an epic quality of almost Homeric proportions. He made it seem that way. He was the dauntless captain of a gallant, horribly beleaguered ship, and though we yawed on the very brink of eternity, yet because of his supreme skill and courage we did not go under. It was theatrical; it was also awe-inspiring.

My services in the campaign were assumed. Bundles of ordered campaign literature arrived and I signed for some. Fiorello told me not to do that, because money was very limited, and everything had to be checked in a central place. Otherwise, diversity of control would result in our buying things we couldn’t pay for. He also told me that if I signed for anything I’d be liable, and he mentioned a City Court decision so holding. It made me feel very uneasy, however, to see him concern himself about a $68 order when he was fighting for his political life.

Then Fiorello told me that in the campaign I was to be a speaker. Speaking on street corners was certainly nothing new in political campaigns. In fact, street corner stumping sounded a little unattractive intrinsically, and I wondered if I might not be getting some kind of brush-off.

But it was nothing of the kind; quite the contrary. In Fiorello’s district, it was an important position and an important trust. It was more than a promotion, it was an elevation. Even the office began treating me as if I had been transmuted from lead into something approximating gold. At the time I could see neither rhyme nor reason to all this. It seemed to me that nobody ever paid much attention to political speakers in general, and even less to street corner speakers in particular. However, as soon as I was aware of the prestige involved, I played it to the hilt and assumed the airs of a man of very considerable importance whose capabilities have belatedly been recognized.

Fiorello said that my speaking would start any day now and to get ready. I asked him what he wanted me to talk about and he seemed a little surprised, and said, why anything I pleased. The implication was that I was thoroughly conversant with the situation and could play the whole thing by ear. “Get together with Marc,” Fiorello said, and waved me out. I felt fine.

Vito Marcantonio dropped into the office occasionally. He was an Assistant United States Attorney then. Fiorello, so the story went, had heard him deliver a ringing oration as a high school student and had thereupon tucked him in that very drafty spot under his wing. Marc was expected to check in with us that very day. He came and was closeted with Fiorello. I buttonholed him as he was leaving and told him of my conversation with the Major. We walked down the corridor together.

Marcantonio’s appearance in those days was unusual: he was slight of build, and since his feet were giving him some trouble he favored one leg. His hair was long and lank, and came over his forehead. His face was painfully thin, with very prominent cheekbones and sunken cheeks, giving his jawline a sharp, angular thrust. His eyes were large and intelligent, his mouth large, and his lips full. He had the Bourbon look of combined sensuousness and asceticism. Marcantonio, since, has been regarded as a follower of the Communist Party line. Whatever his inclinations in this direction may have been — and I shared none of them — he was still one of the smartest cookies I ever encountered, one who could trade political punches blow for blow with any comer. He was a really tough guy.

I told him that the Major had asked me to speak, and asked if he had any suggestions as to what I should say. He said no, just give ‘em hell, shoot the works, there was nothing to it, it was simple. I asked to whom I should give the works and he said that we took no guff from anybody. I wondered how I could decide whom not to take guff from. Marc said we would start the next night and to meet him at the F. H. La Guardia Club uptown.

That night I started amassing and reviewing material relating to the failure of the City Trust Company. It was a small bank in Harlem which through the faithlessness of its officers had gone broke, losing all the savings of the people of small means in the district. Into this dismal picture Herbert Lehman had stepped with a gift of a million dollars — a tremendous gesture which saved thousands of families. That, however, did not excuse the downright criminality of the bank’s officials — who, incidentally, were active members of the Democratic Party in the district. They, I thought, would make a good Target for Tonight.

No one disturbed me the next day at the office; it was understood that I was working on my speech. I intended to join the F. H. La Guardia Club that night; indeed, it was taken for granted that I would, now that I was a member of the shock troops.

What happened at the club that night is difficult for me to describe. There was a little room on the bottom floor, off the street, with ten or twelve men in it, and a small coffee urn on a counter. I didn’t, know any of the men there, but I was expected. They couldn’t have been kinder, but it was painfully obvious that they did not regard me as one of them. After the first awkward moments, conversation came to a dead stop. When I essayed some very small talk, one spokesman would politely answer me. Everyone seemed frightfully ill at ease, myself most of all.

I have an impression that we presently went to the second floor, where a typed application on ordinary newsprint was handed to me. I read the first paragraph, a sort of preamble which promised unconditional loyalty to the policies and leadership of Fiorello La Guardia, past, present, and future, in language which all but said Now and Forever, Amen. Sweat collected on my forehead. I knew I couldn’t sign it. Hell, I disagreed with Fiorello twice a day, and he didn’t seem to mind at all. He would understand why I couldn’t sign.

I excused myself and went to Marc. I told him I wouldn’t sign a declaration like that, not if if were for my own father. I felt anguished.

Marc was breezy, “Well, forget it, for God’s sake,” he said. “If you don’t want to sign it, don’t sign it. Come on, let’s get going. It’s late.” I felt very grateful to him. We left, and I never went back there again.

3

THE 20th District ran from about 100th Street to somewhere up around 120th, and from Lexington Avenue over to the East River. Its heart was 116th Street. It encompassed at that time a large Italian and a considerable Puerto Rican population. It included many huge tenements, where yellow lights shone dimly from the backs of long, dark corridors deep within. The black store windows of small ventures which had gone under stared out onto the shabby streets like empty eyeball sockets. Nearly all the buildings seemed insubstantial and oddly nightmarish, like the settings in the German movies being shown about that time.

But though the backdrop was depressing, the people weren’t. Their economic situation generally was bad, of course, but the average person seemed not nearly as wretched as those who had gone downtown to seek out Fiorello for personal help. In fact, the denizens of the area gave the impression of throbbing life. They were active, determined not simply to survive but to go on loving life itself. Kids ran in droves. Tolerant, amiable, goodnatured mothers looked on with the air of having completed self-evident, all-fulfilling missions in life. Pushcart transactions were at once traditional ceremonies and enjoyable battles of wits. There was plenty of color too, and a surging movement on the sidewalks like endless combers on a sandy beach. It seemed to me that most of the people I saw were complete extroverts in comparison with the sufferers downtown — the engineers and architects on their cheerless, futile rounds, seeking nonexistent employment and revealing in their drawn faces the extent of their inner damage. This was especially true of the young college graduates. With experts of standing out of work, they didn’t have a chance.

To this day, the dislilied agony of the depression, to me, is symbolized by a spotlessly clean white collar frayed to its very threads. Poverty, whether on Morningside Heights or in Harlem below it, is destructive; but the man from the Heights suffered a paralysis of soul that seemed unknown in Harlem. It may be that Morningsiders died inside attempting to conceal their troubles, while the Harlemites openly, unashamedly, and healthily pooled theirs.

Marc and I climbed into the back of a big delivery truck equipped with a movable loudspeaker and ordinary wooden benches along the sides. Bunting festooned the outsides, and pictures of Fiorello with Republican eagles at the four corners completed the decor. A small crowd cheered as we drove off. The truck jounced downtown a few blocks, where a very large mob was awaiting us. We went slowly through the crowd, turned into a side street and stopped. The tail gale was let down, and the microphone was moved to the very end of the truck. All was ready. The crowd eddied up to the edge of the tail gate; the street was packed with people on all sides of us.

I sat on the bench, reviewing my notes, as things got underway. I remember the purplish arc light, and the shadow of a wire in front of it swinging back and forth like a pendulum. I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I thought I’d be.

Marc muttered over his shoulder that I was on next. Then I did feel a little queasy. Marc was doing the introducing. I got up and stood alongside of him. I heard myself described as a distinguished young visitor who was thoroughly familiar with all the grave national problems of the day and who enjoyed the confidence of our great leader, Fiorello H. La Guardia. Short cheer; your mike. I grabbed it and started to talk.

It was generally agreed in newspaper circles that La Guardia and Bob La Follette had the most informed, socially conscious electorates in the country. It was an education to me, during that campaign, to see the concentrated attention which was bestowed on every speaker. There was no nonsense about the content of speeches. They could not be general: the sense of the meeting was that either you had something to say or you hadn’t. The red carpet that might have been laid out for you could be snapped out from under your feet at any moment if you failed to live up to your billing.

I opened up on the City Trust, as I had planned. I had intended merely to outline it in general, but I found such rapport that I was able to go into it in detail. From the record, I named the names and charged the crimes. The Democratic leaders were heavily involved and I cited chapter and verse. The obvious conclusion I hammered home: Who could be found to oppose the election of La Guardia save those content to send a thief to office? “Thief” is as strong a word in Harlem as anywhere else. I was greatly satisfied with the reception I received, but I saw Marc looking at me narrowly.

Marc then took over the microphone and there ensued what can only be described as a mass phenomenon. He started slowly and spoke for some time. Then abruptly he struck his heel on the truck bed; it made a loud hollow noise and the crowd stirred. The cadence of his talk increased, and soon the heel struck again. And again the pace quickened. I sensed rather than heard the reaction of his listeners. His voice rose and now the heel struck more often with the beginnings of a real tempo. It began to sound like a train leaving a station. The crowd mirrored his growing excitement. At the climax, Marc was shouting at the top of his lungs and he was stamping his foot as hard and as rapidly as a flamenco dancer. The crowd pulsed to the rhythm and at last found their release in a tumultuous, prolonged roar of applause. Because it was good theater, it was also great politics.

When I saw Fiorello the next day, I could tell he was not pleased, “Ernest,” he asked, almost plaintively, “what the hell did you do up there last night? ”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just attacked the City Trust banditry, that’s all.”

Fiorello sighed. “Now They will be pouring money in there to beat me. He looked both gloomy and nettled.

“Who?” I asked in amazement. “Who’ll pour in money against you because of my speech?”

“Why, Wall Street, the Big Banks.” He made a sweeping gesture. “They were fighting me generally, but now it’s personal. The Big Banks have done the same damn things as the City Trust, and now you’ve gone and frightened them at just the wrong time. Money will pour in against me. Well, it can’t be helped now.”

I just couldn’t picture the boards of directors of the big banks downtown scurrying into executive session because of an obscure speech by a law clerk on a street corner in Harlem. I said as much.

Fiorello shook his head. “No,” he said, “the Democratic leaders are probably downtown right now, collecting thousands.” I had mad visions of fleets of armored cars rushing gold bullion uptown posthaste, with Morgan and Aldrich wringing their hands and praying it was enough. It was, I thought, too silly for words. Yet the idea was enormously flattering. I felt like a young Disraeli, regretful that his first speech had upset the balance of power in Europe but determined to be resolute about it all. “Well,” I soothed, “let’s wait and see.”

Presumably the Money Barons refused to be stampeded into parting with their cash, because nothing was ever heard of it again. I decided, however, to concentrate thereafter on Fiorello’s voting record and his Congressional leadership. There was material enough there. Heaven knew, because Fiorello had taken a position on practically every bill before Congress during his tenure of office.

4

THE speakers were eventually assigned to specific trucks, and the trucks made specific stops. Most of the speaking took place between 8 and 10.30 P.M. Fiorello himself would often speak at the final gathering of the evening, and he drew immense crowds. He was eloquent, factual, and sincere; he always ended on a fighting note, and he had them with him all the way.

Our “enemies” deliberately scheduled a meeting one night for the same time and place as a meeting we had announced, at which Fiorello was slated to speak. Fiorello got there early and climbed up on the truck with us. A large crowd of La Guardia supporters was on hand. Sure enough, as the appointed hour drew near, a huge mob of people accompanied by a band could be heard coming up the Avenue. Our opponents stopped about a block from the edge of our crowd. Between the two groups stood one lone policeman. Suddenly both crowds became absolutely silent. They faced each other like two shaggy, unfriendly animals.

“Ernest,” said Fiorello, very quietly, “go and tell that cop we were here first and we’re staying. Tell him,” he said, “that if the Law can’t protect us, we can protect ourselves.” I rose to go but he caught me by the sleeve and added, “Get tough with him. And if you have to hit. him, don’t hesitate.”

My stomach muscles froze. “You mean hit the cop?“ I bleated unbelievingly.

“Yes,” said Fiorello. “Punch him in the eye if he tries to finagle us.”

There is an old superstition among newsmen that it is very bad luck indeed to sock a New York cop, and I had seen strong evidence, as an ex-reporter myself, in support of it. But down I clambered from the truck and made my way through the crowd; or rather, a way opened for me. I passed the outer fringe of our followers with all the enthusiasm of a space cadet leaving the earth’s gravitational field in a faulty rocket. Just before I reached the cop, I looked back at Fiorello under the arc light, and he nodded his head vigorously by way of reassurance. I straightened my shoulders, walked the rest of the way, and aggressively stuck out my jaw.

“Listen,” I snarled, “La Guardia says we were here first and we’re gonna stay here. If you can’t enforce the law, we’ll do it for you.”

lie was a bulky young Irishman, about my age. He poked his face right into mine. “You listen,” he said. “I got eyes. Tell him to keep his shirt on. And I don’t need no help from nobody.” He turned on his heel, faced the other crowd, and, moving his arms as if he were shooing chickens, he started walking toward them. “Beat it,” he said to them. “Go on, beat it.” They hesitated for a moment, then broke. A couple of blocks away, their band struck up and they all marched off. I was dizzy with relief. There was no question about, it, Fiorello would have resorted to violence then and there had it been necessary.

That select corps of La Guardia zealots, the Ghiboneys, usually convoyed the trucks in groups of three or four in case we were molested. Often, we were. One night, Marc and I noticed that little knots of people were forming within the crowd; something had happened. Suddenly Marc said, “They’re dropping bricks from the roof!” There was a great swirl. Our men, presumably Ghiboneys, dashed into the nearest tenement and ran up to the roof. We could hear them shouting back and forth as they made their way through the forest of chimneys, hunting for the miscreants. At that point a scuffle started near the tail gate. Suddenly Marc launched right out into the air and landed on top of a milling group. These tactics appalled me because (a) you can’t lick a bunch by mixing with it, (b) if you ever go under you’ll never get up, (c) Marc wasn’t built for street fighting, and (d) if you’re ever going to get a knife in the ribs, this is where. But obviously I couldn’t just stand there, so I took a deep breath and leaped after him, roughly shoving people aside until I got to him. He was flailing away at a great rate.

“Get going!” I yelled. “Get going!” and I shoved a few smaller people back. A vague circle cleared around us. Marc gave everybody a verbal lashing, and like two ruffled bantam roosters we climbed back on the truck. To this day, I don’t know what Marc thought he was breaking up, or whom he thought he was assisting.

Another time, I was talking at the mike on a dark, cavernous side street when someone threw a baby carriage off the roof. It missed me, landing on the cab of the truck like a clap of thunder. Glass smashed and a roar went up from the crowd, but no one was hurt. I had jumped several feet into the air, hanging on to the microphone, and as I landed I shouted into it with masterful irrelevancy: “I can lick any bastard in the crowd!” The melee soon subsided, the Ghiboneys again swarmed up to the roof, but again no one was found. It was widely agreed that I had made a great fool of myself, and the story stuck to me.

An elderly lady came into the office one afternoon, apparently a shopkeeper of small means. She was on a mysterious errand; she said she wanted to give the money, this time, to Mr. La Guardia himself. “ This time?" frowned Fiorello. “Show her in.”

She explained to him that one of our ward leaders had asked her for $25 for a secret La Guardia campaign fund and she had given him $15. The balance she had made up her mind she would hand to Fiorello himself, to be sure he got it. Fiorello called in one of the girls, and the woman told her story while it was taken down. La Guardia explained to her that he wanted to keep our records straight. It was immediately typed up, and La Guardia read it to her. He told her if what she had said was true, he would like her to sign it. She signed.

Then Fiorello phoned the police commissioner and asked him to investigate. The commissioner apparently asked why, because Fiorello barked, “Because there’s a chance one of my leaders may be a crook!” That, I thought, took real political guts.

5

FIORELLO was a dynamo throughout the campaign — absolutely tireless. People waited to see him in long lines, and he saw every one of them. He kept tabs on the smallest detail, but could switch from a trivial registry question to a fiery speech concerning basic issues on no notice at all. He was everywhere at once, encouraging, strengthening, and inspiring us all.

In the last days before the election he told me that I was to function as a Deputy Attorney General of New York. Each side was allowed a few to patrol the election. I went downtown and was sworn in. The night before election I will never forget. Fiorello sent for me and we went off by ourselves behind a big screen. His powerful jaw was set. He said, Ernest, what are you going to do if they try to steal the election tomorrow?” His eyes glittered with a thousand lights.

I was almost hypnotized; I know I had difficulty swallowing before I could speak. “Listen, Major,” I said, “I look an oath and I’ll live up to it. I know a crime when I see one. Nobody has to tell me what to do!”

“What will you do?” he persisted.

“I’ll arrest them,” I said angrily, “or get killed trying to.”

He put his hand on my arm. “No,” he said, “we don’t want arrests, we want votes. If they rush the machine, knock them away from it. Then cast as many votes for me as they stole. You hear? Arrests don’t matter; but the votes they steal do! Vote for me till they knock you out! Tomorrow,”he continued, “I’ve given you a post of honor. Ernest, it’s dangerous.” I was about to deprecate this when he said slowly, “They might shoot you. You could be killed.”

Well, Jesus, I thought. “For God’s sake, then, give me a gun!”

“No,” Fiorello said deliberately, “you can’t have a gun. I’d sooner see you dead than tried for murder. You can’t have a gun. And,” he added sharply, “I don’t want you to got one anywhere else. You hear? If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to, but you can’t lake a gun. Understand?” He must have been reading my mind; I had been thinking why ask him, somewhere I’d get a pistol that night. Now that was out. I promised I wouldn’t get a gun, and we parted.

But I got sorer and sorer the more I thought about it. I tried to catch his eye, but he evaded me.

I went over later in the evening and tapped him on the shoulder. “No gun,” he said levelly, without even looking at me, and went right on talking to the person he was with.

Fiorello’s climactic speech that night was unforgettable. The finale of every La Guardia campaign was a great ceremony. It always took place at his Lucky Corner, 116th and Lexington. Thousands of people were on hand, a moving demonstration of faith by people who regarded Fiorello not only as their own champion, but as the champion of humanity as a whole. There was almost a religious fervor about it. Fiorello spoke, and his soul was in every word. Never had his integrity, all his gifts, found better expression. He was a charging lion. As he concluded, a searchlight played down on him from somewhere above. And at the end, the tumult of the crowd was such as must have toppled the Walls of Jericho.

Next morning I arrived at my assigned location at 5.45. There was already a short line of voters outside. I noticed a little boy playing with a hoop by the door and I thought it was a hell of an hour for a kid to be up. The polling place was a long store with windows on both sides of the entrance. The registration books were to the right as you entered and the voting booths were further back and On the left, over against the walk Near the window to the right of the door stood three young seminary students, representing the Honest Ballot League, as I recall. The inspectors were already seated. Two policemen in bull harness were at their stations near the curlained voting booths.

So was our opponent’s man, a little older than I, and about my size. I took off my topcoat and hung it up.

The voting started. The first, voter came in, checked with the inspectors, and entered the booth. The opposition man brazenly moved the curtain aside with his hand and peered in. I challenged the vote at once and told the cops to make an arrest. They suggested that I just lake it easy. The Tammany man walked out with the voter. I followed. I told the three young clerics to stand by, there was going to be trouble. I went outside and discovered my adversary passing down the line, openly handing out money from a large roll of bills.

liy this time the second voter had completed inspector’s check and was going into the booth. Back came the Tammany man and again he poked his head inside the curtain. And again I challenged the vote, with the same negative results.

A third man came in, checked, stepped into the booth. As the Tammany man raised the curtain to watch his vote I belted him on the jaw with everything I had. He went flying into the machine and collapsed to the floor. All hell broke loose. The two cops jumped me and I locked with one of them. We scuffled and culled and the cop yelled that I was under arrest. I said he was. Neither cop, I noticed, went for his gun: in fact the other cop was now engaged in picking up the fallen man. With the heightened perception one tends to have in moments of crisis, I saw that the young clerics were praying and that the little boy outside was jumping excitedly up and down and waving his hat.

The cop and I had just broken apart, still arresting each other, when a huge limousine hurtled to a screaming stop at the curb. Men tumbled out of it and came running into the store. This is it, I thought. I just stood there, waiting for tin; bullets. I felt naked and my arms were going up and down in short jerks like a pawing bear. “Now and at the hour of our death, Amen,”came fleetingly to mind from out of my childhood. It was all over in seconds. In all, seven men rushed in, their right hands in their pockets. But they wore great big La Guardia buttons in their lapels. They formed a semicircle around me, facing the cops, and just stood there, crouched. Not a word I regained my voice, and from behind my barrier I told the cop again that those first three votes were challenged. He said he’d heard me the first time. The fellow I had hit was on his feet now, and the second cop was helping him wash his face at a sink at the back of the store.

Now another black car roared up, and out jumped Fiorello. He apparently knew all about what had happened because he burst in shouting, “Attaboy Ernest, give ‘em hell!" He tongue-lashed the cops and said they’d go to prison if there was any more nonsense. He said they’d date time for the rest of their lives from the second anything funny happened there again. I saw that the La Guardia men were leaving, and I asked one of them in a low voice where they were from. He whispered, “Friends of Fiorello. Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.”

Fiorello looked defiantly and then motioned for me to leave with him. We got into the car. There won’t be any more trouble there,”he said. Then, “Are you all right?" I started to say that of course I was all right but instead I broke into a torrent of tears. I was as surprised as Fiorello. He said what was I crying for, I had done fine. For a moment or two I couldn’t stop. I had seen football players cry in the dressing room after a tough game, and it isn’t exactly crying so much as a release of tension, but I had never been affected that way before. Fiorello gazed out of the window while I pulled myself together, and for the rest of the ride he was gruffly kind.

He was right; there was no more trouble that day. The fellow I had hit was gone when I went back in the afternoon, but he soon reappeared. It was awkward at first, but it seemed to me that he was actually trying to be friendly. He smiled and I went over and said I was sorry that I had had to belt him. He said to forget it, it was all part of the game. He stuck out his hand and I shook if.

Fiorello carried that particular precinct by less than 50 votes. But it was obvious that overall it was a Democratic landslide from Buffalo to the Battery. By eleven, we knew the bad news. Fiorello had lost a very close race.

I felt terrible. We walked up the dark street together. At t he corner he stopped. “Well, Ernest,”he said, “we did our damnedest. And you can’t do better than that. Now go home and get some rest.”I told him I didn’t want to, and he ordered me to go.

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted desperately to help him. I went on down the block alone and crossed the street. Then I looked back. He was talking to some people who had come along. They parted and he walked on by himself. I followed him, keeping well back on the opposite side of the street, hoping something would occur to me to do, but nothing did. He climbed the steps to his house and walked in, closing the door gently behind him. I never felt so miserable in my life as I did standing thereon that street. I don’t know how long it was before I turned and started the long walk home.