Word: curley
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...most telling criticism is, perhaps, Curley's persistently devisive influence on Boston. "Curley's stock in trade," Handlin wrote in his recently-published Al Smith and His America, "had been the appeal to the narrow clannishness of his group. Unlike Smith he had consistently labored to widen rather than to bridge the differences between the Irish and their fellow citizens...
Ward boss or Governor, Curley was not a man to fiddle with reforms or constitutions, the ways of doing things. His brief attempt to pack the Massachusetts courts by removing all judges over seventy did not get past the over-seventy members of his Council. More often he took what was given, Ward 17 or Boston society, and moved around in it a little faster than anyone else. Limiting himself to what he could get out of a thing, he made few forays into the more creative spheres of machine building or organized social planning. Like his social security...
...this reason that Curley had constantly to carry on diversionary actions. They were like his planted hecklers and the stickers, "Vote for Curley: a Humble Man," pasted onto the pretentious posters of an opponent. Curley had no extensive scheme, mental or political, with which to becloud events. With him it was a day to day activity. That is why he was so dependent on patronage powers, and his influence faded so quickly when he went to Washington...
While Handlin finds his influence divisive, Schlesinger noted last year in a review of Curley's own book, I'd Do It Again, "his sublime satisfaction in the successful struggle of the Irish community of Boston for political and social influence." It would be no academic feat these days to suggest that the two may be reconciled: that, in the name of all that is most Irish, Curley was urging his fellows to assume in political influence, social prestige and fact, with Curley, mind you, always at their head, a posture indistinguishable from that of the old proper Bostonians...
Criticizing Curley is nothing new for Lyons, who has also mentioned the divisive, racial character of his appeal that is less prominent now than it was twenty-two years ago. He than wrote in The Nation, "The intolerance of the Irish politician in Boston for any sharing of politician in Boston for any sharing of political power or political liberties can be compared only to that of the early church magistrates of New England. Curley's regime is frankly racial beyond anything known else-where in America...