Al Smith

The Brooklyn Bridge went up in view of 174 South Street, where Alfred Emanuel Smith was born, and he liked to say the two of them grew up together. His father, a truckman whose own father had come from Italy, died when Smith was 13. At 14 he left St. James parochial school to support the family — the eighth grade was the end of his formal education — and worked seven years at the Fulton Fish Market for 12 dollars a week, hauling crates and studying the men who came through. Asked later about his degrees, he said the only one he held was F.F.M. Tammany Hall gave him his first job in 1895, and every job after that.

On March 25, 1911, 146 workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and the Assembly machine politician sent to investigate came back a reformer. Smith served as vice chairman of the state Factory Investigating Commission alongside Frances Perkins and Robert F. Wagner, and its findings produced dozens of new labour laws. Elected governor four times, he rebuilt the state around them: workers' compensation, limits on the hours of women and children, public housing, public power, parks. By common account at the time, no state government in the country was better run.

He was the first Catholic a major party ever nominated for president, and the campaign against him in 1928 was conducted openly on that ground. Klansmen burned crosses along the route of his campaign train. Protestant ministers told congregations that the Pope would move to Washington and rule the country from a fortress there — a survey of 8,500 Southern Methodist ministers found four who backed him. Because he wanted Prohibition repealed, he was called a drunkard. Hoover beat him 444 electoral votes to 87, taking Texas for the first time in its history and North Carolina, Virginia and Florida for the first time since Reconstruction. Historians still argue over the arithmetic: how much was religion, how much was four years of Republican prosperity, and how much was a Fourth Ward accent coming out of a farmhouse radio.

Roosevelt gave the speech that nominated him in 1924 and took his place in Albany in 1928. Four years later Smith ran against him for the nomination, lost, and then watched the New Deal federalize the reforms he had built as governor. He decided it went too far, joined the American Liberty League, and by 1936 was on the radio attacking a Democratic president and endorsing Alf Landon. His own party never took him back. What he had instead was a skyscraper: as president of Empire State, Inc. he broke ground on St. Patrick's Day 1930, opening the world's tallest building 13 months later. He died of a heart attack on October 4, 1944, five months after his wife.

Al Smith's life against the full span of the corpus.

• New York Factory Investigating Commission labour laws law
  Sixty of the 64 laws the commission recommended were enacted between 1911 and 1913 1913
• Repeal of the Mullan-Gage Act law
  Ended New York state enforcement of Prohibition 1923
• New York State park system other
  Built under Robert Moses — the first state park system in the country 1924
• Reorganization of the New York state government law
  A cabinet-style executive branch and the state's first executive budget 1927
• Empire State Building building
  Smith headed Empire State, Inc. and ran the construction 1931

• 1886 aged ~13 His father dies and the household loses its income Smith was 13. Within a year he had left school for good.
• 1895 aged ~22 Takes his first Tammany job, in the office of the Commissioner of Jurors
• May 6, 1900 aged 26 Marries Catherine Ann Dunn They had five children. She died in May 1944, five months before he did.
• 1904 aged ~31 Elected to the New York State Assembly from the Lower East Side He served there through 1915 and was Speaker in 1913.
• March 25, 1911 aged 37 The Triangle Shirtwaist fire kills 146 garment workers Smith became vice chairman of the Factory Investigating Commission that followed.
• November 5, 1918 aged 44 Elected governor of New York for the first time He lost in 1920 and won again in 1922, 1924 and 1926.
• November 6, 1928 aged 54 Loses the presidency to Herbert Hoover, 444 electoral votes to 87 Hoover took Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee out of the Solid South, and carried New York as well.
• May 1, 1931 aged 57 The Empire State Building opens His grandchildren cut the ribbon. President Hoover switched on the lights from Washington.
• October 4, 1944 aged 70 Dies of a heart attack at 70 Thirty-five thousand people stood outside St. Patrick's Cathedral for the funeral.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945
  32nd President who led the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. brought forward, then opposed
• Frances Perkins 1880–1965
  First woman in a presidential cabinet and labor secretary who helped create Social Security, minimum-wage, and workplace protections. worked with
• Herbert Hoover 1874–1964
  Engineer and relief administrator whose presidency was consumed by the onset of the Great Depression. defeated by
• Boss Tweed 1823–1878
  Boss of Tammany Hall, whose ring looted New York City while it fed and naturalized the city's immigrants. Tammany predecessor
• Fiorello La Guardia 1882–1947
  Broke Tammany, rebuilt New York on New Deal money, and read the funnies on the radio during a strike. rival
• John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
  35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program. cleared the way for