Word: curleys
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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What stopped Curley from being a good governor was his attempt to gain power enough to form a state machine without setting up an efficient organization to do it. He tried to see everyone in the State and pass out jobs to everyone when the jobs just didn't exist; the Brahmins, looking out of their Beacon Hill bay windows were shocked by the long queues of unemployed emanating from the State House doors. That was the kind of thing that worked in City Hall, but couldn't possibly work on such a scale as the State of Massachusetts demanded...
...case of the Commissioner of Agriculture is the best example of his poor judgment; an experienced executive was replaced by a grocery salesman from Fitchburg who got the job for getting Curley in the Grange and for making him an honorary member of the Mashpeo Indian tribe. Payson Smith, such a noted educator that Harvard hired him on the spot, was dismissed as Commissioner of Education in favor of a small-town Superintendent of Schools. Thomas H. Green, to whom Curley himself once referred to as one of "the James brothers" was made head of the Civil Service. Case workers...
Worse than these administrative sins, however, in the light of popularity, were the childish escapades of the governor and his entourage when they drove around the State in their limousines. Twice, policemen in the procession ahead of Curley were killed in crashes; three deaths were caused directly by men in State cars. Mayor Mansfield of Boston dubbed Curley the "Hit and Run Governor." It was in this connection that one of the most famous of the Curly quips came. A reporter suggested that one of Curley's night trips to a disaster scene during the 1936 floods, was a little...
...Curley's name because nationally known when he shrewdly backed Franklin D. Roosevelt in the national Democratic convention and then campaigned vigorously for him in the election race. However farsighted, the action was politically dishonorable; Alfred E. Smith, Roosevelt's opponent for the nomination was an enormous favorite in Boston. So popular was Smith that for months after Curley's break with him, the Boston people wouldn't turn out to hear Curley speak. In that year, the State democratic convention sent Governor Ely as head of the delegation to Chicago to vote for Smith's nomination...
...Curley had met Roosevelt at a luncheon at the home of Colonel Edward M. House ("the president-maker") in Magnolia, Mass. After the luncheon, when the group faced the press, Curley told the newsmen point-blank that it was going to nominate Roosevelt for President, But, so strong was Massachusetts feeling for Smith, that Curley was not even elected to the delegation to the convention. Instead, he went to Chicago alone and there executed one of the shrewdest tricks in recent political history. He approached the delegation from Puerto Rico, talked them into giving him their standard...