"Same Old Tammany"

Some 500 Democratic politicians of Manhattan last week packed into their new Tammany Hall on Union Square. For 90 minutes they milled anxiously through the reception room, the ballrooms, chewing cigars, shaking heads, muttering. Suddenly a door opened at the head of a narrow iron stairway. A man appeared and yelled out: "Curry!" Loud and long did the Tammany leaders cheer. There were free drinks that night in many a downtown speakeasy.

The district leaders of Tammany were glad because John Francis Curry is one of their own kind. He had been elected chief of Tammany over the potent opposition of Alfred Emanuel Smith, between the Tammany district "boys" and whom there is a wide difference, a difference springing from causes which Smith and Tammany bitterly dispute.

Leader Curry came down to the reception room, seated himself in the big "boss" chair of Tweed, Croker, Murphy, Olvany. "This feels good," he purred.

John Francis Curry arrived from Ireland on Manhattan's west side as a babe in arms 55 years ago. His father was a cattle dealer. He went to work as a messenger boy, ran errands for prominent men. In those days, to be prominent was to be a politician. Young Curry became a politician, too; rose to be a leader in the Fifth District. He was athletic (hurdles, leaping). He was affable and discreet. He early learned that the foundation of popularity in a crowded community is doing little kindnesses for many people. When he challenged the authority of the Fifth District's aging Boss McMahon, he was so strong that the old man retired before sure defeat. Boss Curry did not crow. He smiled quietly instead, did more little favors, "played the game."

When Tammany Leader George Washington Olvany resigned six weeks ago (TIME, March 25),'the bitter difference between Tammany and its greatest son was clearly exposed. Tammany said Smith had "the big head"; that his talk about a "New Tammany" cloaked his personal ambition to be President. Smith said Tammany was small-minded; he suspected it had cut his presidential vote in the city for local, selfish ends of its own. Out of politics himself, he wished Tammany would elect as leader some man of wider experience than a district leader-- someone like New York's Senator Wagner, for example--someone who could continue Tammany's influence in the National Democracy.

New York's dapper, smart-cracking Mayor James John Walker, between whom and Mr. Smith little love is left, gave his support to the district leaders. Mr. Curry's election followed. Said Boss Curry: "It's the same old Tammany. ... I have always been opposed to vice and gambling."

The Curry leadership pointed positively to Mayor Walker's renomination. At the same time it indicated a mayoral opening for some Manhattan Republican of real stature. The potent, arch-Democrat New York World, carefully styling itself "the independent press," promised to abandon Tammany unless the Republicans, too, played oldtime, small-apple politics. Nationally, the return of Tammany to type augured the return of the South to dominance in the Democracy.