Word: backbench
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...Corned-Beef Dinners. As a backbench state assemblyman beginning in 1904, he won friends among suspicious upstate legislators by entertaining them at weekly corned-beef-and-beer dinners. By 1913, he was assembly speaker, by 1918, New York's Governor. From both offices, he struggled to simplify the ramshackle state government, making New York the classic example of state administrative reform. As early as 1911, he was also engaged in the fight for social reforms (childlabor laws, maximum-work-hour legislation for women, factory safety regulations) that made New York the most advanced welfare state in the nation...