The Epic of New York City (88 page)

 

Chapter 43

J
AMES
J. W
ALKER
was born on June 19, 1881, in a flat at 110 Leroy Street in Greenwich Village. From boyhood he was steeped in Tammany politics; his Irish-born father had been a Tammany alderman, assemblyman, and leader of the old Ninth Ward. Jimmy Walker was reared in a nice house, went to a parochial school, never attended college, played professional baseball, acted in amateur theatricals, learned to play die piano, and yearned to compose popular songs.

He went to work for a music publishing house in 1908 and wrote the lyrics for “Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?” which earned him more than $10,000 in the next 30 years. Then, bowing to his father's wishes, Walker abandoned his career on Tin
Pan Alley and entered politics. In 1912 he was elected to the New York state assembly. Later he was sent to the state senate, where he became Democratic floor leader.

“I really was moving against my own desires most of the time, and the inner conflicts were great,” Walker told his friend Gene Fowler. The ambivalence left Jimmy Walker a neurotic, who feared crowds and cars, felt uneasy in elevators, shrank from slaps on the back, perspired at night, and had hands always cold to the touch and sometimes clammy. He camouflaged his tensions behind a façade of gaiety and charm. A skinny fellow who weighed only 125 pounds during periods of especial strain, Walker stood 5 feet 8½ inches tall, had a flat belly, had practically no hips, and tried to disguise his string-bean appearance by wearing suits that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders.

Considering himself a fashion plate, but always dressed in ultra-Broadway style, Walker designed his own clothes and owned hundreds of custom-made ties. He was a close friend of actors, who taught him the theatrical trick of using his left hand to pick his handkerchief from the left-hand pocket of his jacket, instead of crossing his right hand over his chest. He lighted denicotinized cigarettes with a monogrammed gold lighter. His lean face, sharp nose, and flashing grin gave him a foxlike look. He parted his brown hair on the left. His flushed cheeks gave rise to remarks about his drinking habits, but although Jimmy Walker imbibed, his florid complexion was part of his heritage. He scorned Prohibition, declaring “this measure was born in hypocrisy and there it will die.”

During his early Albany years he shared a hotel room with Al Smith, whom he admired. Smith, a devout Catholic and a man of moderate habits, worried about Walker's playboy tendencies. But the quick-witted Walker, despite his frivolity, racked up a good record during his fourteen years in the state legislature. Typically, he married a pretty chorus girl, and typically, he was more than two hours late for his wedding.

With the approach of the 1925 mayoralty election Mayor Hylan let it be known he was eager to serve a third term. However, most citizens had had their fill of the bumbling and bewildered Hylan. Tammany Hall opposed Hylan because it was tired of Hearst's attempts to run the city from his California estate. Governor Al Smith, too, was disenchanted with Red Mike. A Walker for mayor boom was launched by some of Jimmy's Broadway friends, and Smith
somewhat reluctantly agreed to Walker's candidacy. Hylan shouted that Walker intended to make New York an open city for gangsters, thieves, prostitutes, and dope peddlers, but Walker defeated Hylan in the Democratic primary. In the citywide election Walker easily beat his Republican rival, a fountain-pen manufacturer, named Frank D. Waterman.

Jimmy Walker took office on January 1, 1926, as the city and nation basked in prosperity. Approaching the dais to be sworn in, he bowed to his wife and relatives and to the Tammany bigwigs, who were much in evidence. During the campaign Walker had said time and again that because Tammany Hall had created him he would never forget it. On the dais stood a radio microphone, and Jimmy Walker became the first mayor of New York whose inaugural ceremony was broadcast. While he was speaking, a woman fainted nearby. Walker rushed to her side and asked for a glass of water, which he put to her lips. People listening to the broadcast were puzzled by the sudden silence at City Hall, and within thirty seconds hundreds telephoned to ask if the new mayor had been assassinated. There was a sigh of relief when Walker returned to the microphone and finished his address.

After the formalities were over, Mayor Walker strode jauntily into the mayor's office in the west wing of City Hall. He gazed at the Colonial desk that had become his. He eyed the mellow furnishings. Catching sight of a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette hanging over the mantelpiece, Walker arched his eyebrows and pretended to speak to it: “If I may borrow a phrase, I wish to announce, ‘Lafayette, we are here.'” The playboy had become the leader of a metropolis of nearly 6,000,000 citizens. He had never held any administrative position in the city government. He admitted that he knew nothing about many of the city's problems. To City Hall reporters he confessed, “I've read not more than fifteen books from cover to cover.” When they asked how he had managed to amass so much information, he replied, “What little I know, I have learned by ear.”

In those days City Hall was covered mainly by hack reporters. They adored Walker because he shot craps with them and always made good copy. They let him hobble them by insisting that most of his remarks be off the record. When serious matters were debated by the board of estimate, Walker won headlines with glittering wise-cracks while the issues of the day went largely unnoticed. Never arising before 10
A.M.
and sometimes suffering hangovers, Walker's
charm often wore thin when he had to buckle down to city business. He would scold a citizen for taking one minute more than the allotted five minutes to discuss a proposed measure and then would keep sweating crowds waiting in board chambers while he dallied an hour and a half over lunch. Savage and coarse at times, Walker shouted down many an unfortunate person who aroused his ire. Once a man interrupted the mayor by shouting, “Liar!” Walker snapped, “Now that you have identified yourself, we shall proceed.”

Jimmy's churlish behavior, loyalty to Tammany, and willingness to appoint political hacks did not dim the affection most people felt for their debonair mayor. He didn't mind being dubbed the late mayor because of his tardiness. He actually enjoyed being called the nightclub mayor. He was, as Gene Fowler said in
Beau James
, “a man of rainbow charm.” Douglas Gilbert wrote in the
World-Telegram
: “New York wore James J. Walker in its lapel, and he returned the compliment.” He had a twinkle in his eyes and a quip for every visiting celebrity—such as aviator Charles Lindbergh, channel-swimming Gertrude Ederle, and Queen Marie of Rumania—who reached City Hall after riding up Broadway amid the soft hail of ticker tape.

Tammany tightened its grip on the city as Walker neglected the serious side of his job. Reviving frauds common during Boss Tweed days, politicians and criminals teamed up, favors were sold, and the municipal corporation inched toward bankruptcy. In this blithe era nobody worked very hard—least of all the city magistrates whose court sessions averaged only 3 hours and 11 minutes a day. During his first 2 years in office Walker took 7 vacations for a total of 143 days, visiting London, Paris, Berlin, Bermuda, Canada, Havana, Hollywood, San Francisco, Atlanta, Florida, Louisville, Houston, and Rome. Stopping in the Italian capital in 1927, Mayor Walker had a half-hour audience with Benito Mussolini as a movie crew recorded the scene.

Walker gave pleasure, but he took freely as well. In 1929 his salary was boosted from $25,000 to $40,000—almost three times that of a member of the President's Cabinet. When LaGuardia attacked Walker for this, Walker flashed his boyish smile and joked, “That's cheap! Think what it would cost if I worked full time.” He lived ever more extravagantly and sank into debt. Once he said, “If I earn a million dollars this year, by the end of the year I'd have spent one million, ten thousand dollars.” To high-living free-spending
New Yorkers, Jimmy Walker became a symbol of their way of life. They relected him mayor in 1929. One week before the election the stock market felt its first tremor. Soon were heard the first rumblings of a great judicial scandal. Walker had been riding high, wide, and handsome. Now he was riding for a fall.

In the late 1920's a segment of America had become one vast permanent floating crap game. Waiters and plumbers, motormen and grocers, seamstresses and chauffeurs, actors and writers—at least 1,000,000 Americans—gambled in the stock market. They bet on whether stock prices would rise or fall in a short period of time. They were more interested in the stock market pages than in the sports pages of newspapers. The little man had discovered that he could speculate in securities with borrowed money by buying on margin. The big man in the know seemed to encourage this speculation.

In 1928 President Coolidge said, “No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time.” Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover prophesied that “with the policies of the last eight years we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” Irving T. Bush, owner of the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, declared that “we are only at the beginning of a period that will go down in history as a golden age.” Bernard Baruch said that “the economic condition of the world seems on the verge of a great forward movement.”

New York City alone had more automobiles than all of Europe. Fifth Avenue's opulence was rivaled only by Park Avenue, where apartment rentals of $40,000 were not uncommon. Between 1919 and 1929 land values here increased by 75 percent. Real estate taxes provided about four-fifths of the city's revenue in 1928. National productivity increased; the output per wage earner grew 43 percent between 1919 and 1929. During the same period the use of telephones doubled, 1 out of every 3 American homes owned a radio, electrical goods sold as fast as they could be made, and there was an average of 1 auto for every 5½ Americans.

The other side of the coin was less bright. Of the nation's wealth 90 percent was held by 13 percent of its citizens. Installment buying had increased, and buy-now-pay-later had become an accepted way of life. Corporations and investment trusts lent carelessly to stock-brokers
for speculative purposes. There was an overproduction of capital goods.

People were convinced that prosperity was eternal. Wall Street branch houses increased. A New York actress converted her Park Avenue apartment into an office and played the stock market by telephone. A broker's valet made nearly $250,000. Brokers' offices were so crowded that it was difficult for a customer to find a spot to watch the posted quotations. Columnist Franklin P. Adams saw three famous artists in a restaurant and walked up, hoping to engage them in an intellectual discussion, and found the trio discussing the Federal Reserve Bank. Alexander Woollcott, the drama critic and author, got “hot tips on the market from big shots.” Comedian Groucho Marx took tips on investments from such diverse authorities as Bernard Baruch and a theatrical wardrobe woman.

Then came Thursday, October 24, 1929, remembered as Black Thursday. The New York Stock Exchange opened at 10
A.M.
with prices steady. United States Steel was quoted at 205½, a point or two above the previous closing. For a few minutes all prices remained firm. Then brokers began unloading margin accounts, which their customers no longer could cover. Selling started with the roaring confusion of a river breaking through a dam. Nearly everybody wanted to sell, and almost nobody wanted to buy. All seemed to be getting out. By 11
A.M.
the market had degenerated into a mad scramble of sales, and by 11:30
A.M.
panic had set in.