Word: curleyism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...debut, Curley swept the city with a wave of reform that left his critics gasping. He built schools, playgrounds and beaches; he hired new doctors for the city hospital; he extended the transit systems and pulled down old elevated lines, making thousands of jobs. When the banks in Boston refused to lend him money for this spending spree, he bolted traditions and borrowed from banks all over the country. Those were the days when newspaper editorials hailed him as the first great leader to emerge from the Boston Irish...
...Mayor of Boston, Curley is forever at words points with the Boston Finance Commission. The Commission (or the Fin Com as it is most commonly called) is a five-man board appointed by the governor to keep a constant eye on the city's financial condition. Since the state government was Republican during most of Curley's administration, the Fin Com was generally very hostile to him; even during his first administration when the late Senator David I. Walsh, a democrat, was governor, the members of the Fin Com bitterly fought Curley's spending. But, for all their efforts...
...Curley Not Invincible...
...political hold which Curley has kept over Boston has been a very strange thing; losing as many times as he has won the race for mayor, he can hardly be called invincible. Yet after every defeat, when his opponents predicted the end of bossism in Boston, Curley has displayed remarkable resiliency and come back to win again. One reason undoubtedly is that he leaves the city in such a poor financial condition when he is defeated that the burden of reform overwhelms the next mayor. The two men that shared the mayoralty with him during the Twenties, Malcolm E. Nichols...
...Curley so popular? The big reason is his colorful individuality. When he first ran for mayor, he bolted every other ward boss in the city--a trick commonly thought of at the time as political suicide. As soon as he was mayor, he jarred the banks by his out-of-town borrowing. He has made and broken political friendships with nearly everyone in Boston politics since 1900: Ely, Fitzgerald, Daniel B. Coakley, ex-governor Robert F. Bradford, Tobin and David I. Walsh. In no term as mayor has he built up a strong personal machine such as those operated...