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PART THRER THE LOWDOWN ON THE BIG TOWNS ( Confidential!) 6. NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL - ACT II @ -£, embattled and betrayed, still stands our Last citadel of zation. ew York, the wonder of the world, is beset with self-seeking pers and their grubby, grabbing adherents, their eleemosynary pns and their missionaries of malcontent. But it has weathered and storm and remains our one Surviving fortress of post- opoid existence. It contains the remnants of our art, culture, ation, theatre and elegant living. € same social termite elements that toppled San Francisco New Orleans from their gracious cosmopolitan witcheries gnawed at New York, but it is too big for them and it is Hed on granite, re inroads of the three R's—respectability, relief and radical- have Been heavy, but New York has not yet struck its colors. d nr: high hope, because it draws the talent, the brains, t- -nd the energy of the fading world. . «ny, for centuries the emblem of our misrule, yet always ¢ for growth and progress in feeding its own grafting avarice, a coma of disrepute and desuctude. Our Principal officials onpartisan, which means they must grovel before the desert. stragglers of all parties. Twenty ycars of Rooseveltisin has ed us with the noxious virus of vote-ratc hing ordure that de tized the olfactory perception which was an American git At precthation. We are bedevilpd by labor, racial and clase a3) a ~~ & . SENN ewe rete ne AR 2 EERE Sb sy eriny MY, 9 eens) ouitan ln anten san aan an wee t . _—/ ee oe, : hie hii Mat ry AF ge we Cotalane tut vnly ther own ends, contemptuous of ihe rest of us. All this has befallen us ina score of years. ft was not so until the reflex vibsations of the Great Panic tikucheted and drove the timid and the tcriified to cover. They ‘aine out, hands up, to sell their souls for immediate pottage. A jo.den-tongued sorcerer fed it to the weaklings. And the Amer- - ican spirit of game battle was drowned in it, ‘That was, aptly, the period of the fall of Mayor Jimmy Walker, who became a sacrificial goat because he was the symbol of the city-of light. Sure, Jimmy Played along with the lads under the sign of the Tiger. Sure, he signed anything placed before him, for — tis nights were Jong and his days were short. Sure, grateful char- acters shoved bonds down in his pocket. Sure. But he was New Yo-k. He was urbane, scintillant, fastidious, ¢picurean; his latest quip was a laugh for the millions; his latest peccadillo was a wink ancl a grin for them; spokesman for the metropolis, he drew ¢1eers and tears from them. Our Jimmy he was, Our Jimmy in _ the hockshops, in the club-houses and in the cathedrals. He loved Pigne and carnival. He was our last, lost dream, Thereupon, after a year of transition (McKee and O'Brien) the revolution of the polyglot proletariat took over with the strident, giezsy and pharisaical Little Flower, La Guardia. Hé assumed office on January 1, 1934. Only twenty-six days earlier, the Great Experiment had come to an end. Never before or since, in the memory of living man, was the metropolis so wide open. Though the legal liquor closing hour Wis and is 4 4.M., no effort was made to shutter anything that stood rizht withthe cops, City Hall, or, strangely enough, Tammany, though Fiorello was elected as a Tiger-killer, Harlem had one of the §reatest booms of its existence. During P:onibition no one had bothered Negro speaks if they bought their liquor from “Dutch” Schultz, whose booze domain extended there from the Bronx, By 1934, the colored inhabitants had reiched such proportions that, voting in a bloc, they could well tum a city election, Thotigh La Guardia had beaten (on a re- i;ious Issue) Joseph V. MeKee, the hand-picked candidate of Roocsevele and Ed Flynn, the blue-veined FDR quickly took the eUUcr idol into his fold—the alliance having been promoted by Bieunor, who, with Mfrs, Perkins, Hatry Hopkins and che rest uf TY tee oe em ee 4 -Yasyb -aF - + ne ee en Fy —— ws