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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Born of a very poor family in 1874, Curley's first home was near the city hospital, in the mud-flats of South Boston. It was an environment of native Irishmen, hod-carriers and widow-scrubwomen; a savage place where you had to be tough to be honest and cunning to be dishonest. Curley, at the outset of his career, fell in the middle. He was a politician, and therefore cunning, almost from the beginning, but in contrast to the previous ward leaders he demanded that his constituents get something for their vote. Eventually, after numerous intermediate positions of ward...
...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...
...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, and despite cases of graft that were obvious even to the public, it was not until 1940 that they were able to make...
...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...
...gift for public speaking. Originally, he was only a commonplace orator but he sensed the need for inspiring speech-making even before he was mayor. He studied nights under a Professor Staley at a public speaking school in Boston. Staley comments that Curley was so unrefined when he first went to the school that the young man had a very difficult time convincing the professor to keep him. Curley soon became Staley's best pupil, and even now, the teacher still sends written comments to the mayor on each of his speeches. What ever you would expect a politician...