Smith, Alfred E.

Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944) was four-term governor of New York State and the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate. In his era, he became the leading advocate in the political arena for urban immigrants, arguing that they should be considered part of mainstream American society.

Smith came to this viewpoint in large part because of his upbringing. He was descendant of immigrants; his paternal grandparents were Italian and German, his maternal grandparents both Irish (he adopted an Irish ethnic identity). The young boy grew up on the east side of Manhattan, playing down by the docks on the riggings of sailing ships, watching the building of the Brooklyn Bridge from his tenement windows.

The future governor was hardly an exceptional youth. Smith attended a local Catholic school, St. James, but had to drop out in the seventh grade after the death of his father and the need to earn a living. He worked at a variety of jobs in the urban economy, the most famous of which was a stint at the Fulton Fish Market; in later years he declared himself a graduate of “FFM.”

The lad was a good talker, however, and he gravitated to the orators and antics of the local branch of Tammany Hall, rising in the ranks. In 1903, they ran him for assemblyman, and given that endorsement, he won handily.

Smith started out poorly—uneducated and ill informed, he was a hack legislator. After several years, however, he made the decision that would change his life, to excel at his new profession. Al (no one called him “Alfred”) studied every bill, every law, until he became master of the New York State government, eventually serving as Speaker of the Assembly. He also, along with Robert Wagner, led the Factory Investigating Commission that followed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and successfully championed reforms in fire and industrial safety.

Smith was elected governor four times, in 1918, 1922, 1924, and 1926. His greatest accomplishment was administrative reform, taking an archaic system and turning it into a modern bureaucratic structure through such means as an executive budget and organizing agencies into a departmental cabinet. In addition, he advocated social reforms such as housing, parks, hospitals, and utilities regulation. Above all, Smith pioneered a vision of tolerance and inclusion, later referred to as pluralism, during the difficult times of the 1920s, when bigots from the Ku Klux Klan held high positions in many states.

In 1928, his background and beliefs caught up with him. Smith, a Catholic, urban, Tammany-based Irishman who opposed Prohibition, became caught up in cultural wars, as many Americans did not believe that someone like this should become president. His [Page 734]opponents told voters, for example, that if Smith won, he would have all Protestant marriages annulled and the children rendered illegitimate, and he would bring the Pope to Washington and have him run the United States. Many people believed fables like these, and Smith lost to Herbert Hoover by a margin of 21,393,993 to 15,016,169 in the popular vote, and 444 to 87 in the Electoral College.

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