American Pharaoh (9 page)

In addition to his position as precinct captain, Daley was now working for McDonough in his City Council office. The job of
“secretary” to an alderman was not glamorous. Daley was one of a corps of glorified gofers. But McDonough was a garrulous,
old-style politician who liked to spend most of the workday at the saloon or the racetrack. He was more than willing to have
the hardworking and detail-oriented Daley plow through the draft bills and proposed budgets that regularly crossed his desk.
Working at the City Council, particularly for such a lackadaisical alderman, gave Daley a chance to observe city government
up close. It also put Daley in the political mix, letting him make personal connections with machine politicians from across
the city. Daley’s work for McDonough fit a pattern he followed throughout his career: he apprenticed himself to powerful men
and made himself indispensable by taking on dull but necessary jobs. “I’ll tell you how he made it,” Daley’s friend-turned-rival
Benjamin Adamowski once said. “He made it through sheer luck and by attaching himself to one guy after another and then stepping
over them.”
⁵⁶

In 1923, Daley began taking pre-law and law school classes four nights a week at DePaul University. Getting a law degree while
juggling work and political responsibilities would ultimately take Daley more than a decade. “Daley was a nice fellow, very
quiet, a hard worker, and always neatly dressed,” a fellow student, who would later be appointed a judge by Daley, recalled.
“He never missed a class and always got there on time. But there was nothing about him that would make him stand out, as far
as becoming something special in life. Even then, he misused the language so that you noticed it. He had trouble expressing
himself and his grammar wasn’t good.” But Daley succeeded in law school by the same plodding persistence he brought to every
task he undertook. “I always went out dancing every night, but Dick went home to study his law books,” recalled a friend from
youth who later went on to head the plumbers’ union. “He would never stop in the saloon and have a drink.”
⁵⁷

Daley’s career progressed as his patron, McDonough, moved up through the political ranks. In 1930, the machine slated McDonough
for county treasurer, and when he was elected he brought Daley along as his deputy. As county treasurer, McDonough was even
less conscientious than he had been as an alderman. The dry financial work of the county treasurer’s office offered McDonough
even less reason than the City Council had to remain at his desk. While his boss frequented racetracks and speakeasies, Daley
applied the skills he had acquired in the De La Salle counting rooms to the county treasury. In his new job, Daley learned
the intricacies of local government law and municipal finance, and how to work a budget. And he saw firsthand how a government
office operates when it is inextricably tied to a political machine. He learned how the machine larded the county treasurer’s
office with patronage appointees who were hired for their political work. And he saw how it ensured that county funds were
deposited with bankers who contributed to the campaigns of machine candidates.
⁵⁸

While Daley was toiling away at night law school, he met Eleanor Guilfoyle at a neighborhood ball game. Her brother Lloyd,
a friend of Daley’s, made the introduction. “Sis,” as she would always be known, came from a large Irish-Catholic family in
the neighboring Southwest Side community of Canaryville. She had graduated from Saint Mary High School and was working as
a secretary at a paint company and caring for an invalid mother when Daley asked her out on their first date, to a White Sox
game. “We had a very happy courtship,” Sis once recalled. “I used to meet him after law school and go to the opera.” “Of course
I knew Dick was bound to succeed — even when I first met him,” she would say later. “Anyone who would work in the stockyards
all day long, then go to school at night was determined to get ahead.” Daley pursued marriage as he pursued everything else
in his life — carefully, even ploddingly. Their courtship lasted for six years, until he had finished law school and had begun
to establish himself professionally. The couple married on June 17, 1936, when Daley was thirty-four and Eleanor was twenty-eight.
It was three years after his graduation, and the same year that he entered into a law partnership with an old friend, William
Lynch, the politically minded son of a Bridgeport precinct captain.
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CHAPTER

2

A House for All Peoples

T
he Democratic machine that Daley had joined was largely the invention of a Bohemian immigrant named Anton Cermak. Cermak was
born in 1873, outside Prague, and came to America at the age of one. His family settled in Braidwood, a coal town sixty miles
southwest of Chicago. As a teenager, Cermak headed for the big city and settled in Lawndale, a West Side neighborhood where
Russian and Polish Jews and Bohemian Christians lived together in relative harmony. Cermak supported himself as a peddler,
selling kindling from a horse-drawn wagon, but he was drawn to politics and quickly showed an aptitude for it. Cermak was
a leader of his tightly knit Czech community, and with its backing was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1902.
He was also helped early in his career by another important constituency: supporters of alcohol. In turn-of-the-century Chicago,
the battle between Prohibitionists and “wets” was the defining political schism. Cermak’s zealous anti-Prohibition advocacy
quickly earned him the nickname the “voice of liquor.” As he rose to greater power, the liquor interests — notably a powerful
saloonkeepers’ trade association — always remained at the heart of his political base.
¹

The most important thing big liquor did for Cermak — more important than providing financial and electoral support — was to
introduce him to ethnic coalition politics. Like many divisive political issues, Prohibition was a proxy for deeper social
insecurities. The anti-liquor cause drew its strongest support from native-born Americans, and many Chicago immigrants regarded
it as a thinly veiled assault on them and their way of life. Chicago’s badly fragmented immigrant community — divided by language,
religion, and in many cases Old World enmities — united in opposition to this blue-blooded assault on their neighborhood saloons.
In 1906, the German-language newspaper
Abendpost
brought Chicago’s disparate immigrant groups together into a pro-liquor coalition. This alliance eventually grew into the
United Societies for Local Self-Government, a multi-ethnic lobbying group. By 1919, United Societies had more than one thousand
ethnic organizations and one-quarter of a million people affiliated with it. Cermak was the group’s secretary and its leading
spokesman, which put him at the forefront of the most powerful pan-ethnic political coalition Chicago had ever experienced.
Cermak had by now begun to shift his own political focus away from Spring-field and back to Chicago. In 1922, after two decades
in the state legislature, he was elected president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. It was a powerful post, as was
reflected in the nickname he soon acquired — “the mayor of Cook County.”
²

Cermak had discovered the power of ethnic coalition-building at a particularly opportune moment. By 1930, the city’s population
had soared to 3.3 million and its ethnic composition was changing rapidly. Immigrants were flooding into the city, and white
Protestant families had begun fleeing to the surrounding suburbs. Nearly two-thirds of Chicago’s population was now either
foreign-born or born to immigrant parents. Chicago’s political power was starting to shift from a Protestant monolith to a
more eclectic assortment of ethnic groups, many divided from each other by language and religion. More than ever, there was
a need for a leader who could unite these groups into a coherent political force. Cermak, fresh from his success with United
Societies, decided to build a political organization to serve as a “house for all peoples.” He began with a solid base in
his own Czech community, and had strong ties to the city’s Germans. He also was on good terms with the city’s Jews — as president
of the Cook County Board, he had created a kosher section of the county poorhouse — and enlisted Moe Rosenberg and Jake Arvey
of the 24th Ward organization to the cause. Ethnic coalition building serves many larger purposes including, as political
scientists have noted, the important work of managing conflict among competing groups. But in Cermak’s case, panethnic politics
also served his own personal ambitions. As a member of one of the city’s smaller ethnic groups, he would not have gone far
simply as a Bohemian politician. Cermak’s “house for all peoples” gave him the opportunity to appeal for the votes of all
of Chicagoans. The genius of Cermak’s approach became clear in 1928, when Democratic Party chairman George Brennan died. Brennan
had been heir to the city’s old Irish Democratic organization, and all other things being equal, another Irishman would likely
have been chosen to succeed him. But Cermak drew on his multi-ethnic support to wrest away the party machinery from the Irish.
The first real test of Cermak’s new style of politics came in 1931, when he accepted the Democratic nomination to run for
mayor.
³

Chicago’s Republican mayor, William Hale Thompson, was a colorful combination of populist, political boss, and friend to the
city’s criminal element. “Big Bill” Thompson was born in 1867 into Boston’s Brahmin aristocracy. His family moved to Chicago
a year after his birth, and his father quickly built a real estate fortune. Thompson had an itinerant youth, running away
from home to avoid attending Yale University. When Thompson returned to Chicago, he discovered politics, running for alderman
in 1900 and winning. Two years later, he was elected to a seat on the influential Cook County Board. In time, he attracted
the attention of leaders of Chicago’s fledgling Republican machine, who were looking for a mayoral candidate. He “may not
be too much on brains,” an influential Republican declared, “but he gets to the people.” Thompson beat a reform candidate
in the 1915 Republican mayoral primary, and with strong support from Germans, Swedes, and blacks went on to win the general
election. He brought a quirky charisma with him to City Hall. Chicago’s new mayor thought nothing of putting aside municipal
business to organize an expedition to photograph a reputed tree-climbing fish. Thompson’s most enduring contribution to Chicago
politics, however, was the introduction of large-scale patronage and graft to city government. The newspapers wasted little
time in coining a new word — “Thompsonism” — for the corruption and scandal that had settled on City Hall. Thompson’s patronage-backed
Republican machine fast became a formidable force in both city and state politics. But its influence was short-lived: the
defections started among middle-class Chicagoans, who were becoming disaffected over reports of corruption in government.
Thompson also lost working-class voters by his support of Prohibition, which more than 80 percent of Chicagoans opposed in
a 1919 referendum. In 1923, after two terms, Thompson decided not to run again, and he was succeeded by a Democrat. After
four years out of office, Thompson was elected to a third term in 1927, but just barely, winning 50.4 percent of the vote.
⁴

The Thompson-Cermak race got nasty quickly. Thompson had long been haunted by rumors linking him to Al Capone and other prominent
Chicago gangsters. During the election, the rumors gained strength, after one of Thompson’s top city officials, a friend of
Capone’s, was indicted for conspiring with merchants to cheat the people out of $54 million by the use of short weights. Despite
his own scandals, Thompson accused Cermak of being in league with bootleggers and gamblers, and charged that he had “saved
six million out of a $10,000 salary.” But Thompson saved his most pointed attacks for Cermak’s humble origins. It would be
an embarrassment, Chicago’s WASP mayor declared, for the city to be led by “Pushcart Tony,” an immigrant who had gotten his
start selling firewood. “He don’t like my name,” Cermak replied. “It’s true I didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but I came
over as soon as I could.” With the ethnic changes that had overtaken Chicago, Cermak’s side was where the votes were. He ended
up winning, but Thompson’s critics felt vindicated when, after Cermak’s death, one of his many safe-deposit boxes was discovered
to hold $1,466,250 in cash.
⁵

The victorious Cermak continued shoring up his “house for all peoples.” As mayor, he reached out to the city’s Irish, an important
political constituency that was still smoldering over being ousted from political power by a Bohemian. Cermak tapped Irish-Catholic
politician Pat Nash to succeed him as chairman of the Democratic Party. The move was well received among Irish Democrats,
but it was largely for show: Cermak continued to exercise the powers of Democratic boss. The one group that continued to resist
joining the Democratic machine was Chicago’s black population, who traditionally voted Republican, the party of Lincoln, the
emancipator. In the 1931 mayoral race, the five wards, out of fifty, that went for Thompson all had substantial black populations.
⁶

Cermak moved into City Hall early — on April 9, 1931, two days after the election and thirteen days before his inauguration
— and undertook a systematic decimation of the Republican patronage army. He fired up to three thousand temporary workers,
many of them blacks who had done precinct work for Thompson, and declared war on the South Side gambling and prostitution
rackets that had generously supported black Republican elected officials. The Black Belt was turned upside down in the early
months of Cermak’s mayoralty, as the police swooped in. Cermak admitted freely that he was turning on the heat because the
black community had made the mistake of throwing its lot in with the Republicans. “On Friday and Saturday nights, the police
stations were crowded with Negroes that had been arrested in gambling raids,” recalled a longtime Republican ward committeeman.
“And when the aldermen would try to intercede for them, they would be told, ‘The minute you people find out there’s something
besides the Republican Party, come back and talk to us.’ That was one way to make them Democrats, and he did.” At the very
least, it was a start. The real black political realignment was still a few years away, and it would be triggered by national,
not local, politics.
⁷