Compromise & Clerkship

beaming.* All the powers which the Mayor had asked for himself were to be given to his Board of Estimate. Since the Mayor himself controls the Board, the compromise did not seriously impair his program, and it minimized the dangers of '"dictatorship" by spreading the power. The bill was promptly drafted and sent to the Legislature. Having boldly and publicly stepped in front of the Mayor's own program, the Governor assumed at least half of the responsibility for the city's rehabilitation --a program that is currently the most important in State politics. It was therefore quite as essential for him to reach a compromise as for Mayor LaGuardia. And having reached it, it was even more essential that he get the measure passed. This was no easy job. The Upper House has a Democratic majority of one, but they are mostly Tammanymen who waged a bitter fight against Lehman (& Roosevelt) two years ago. The Lower House is Republican but two factions of Repub licans spent eight days quarreling over the election of a clerk. Finally on the ninth day the Assembly got itself organized, prepared to send the Economy Bill to a special committee. When the compromise bill was finally introduced in the Lower House, the Democratic minority leader blocked consideration. And it was suddenly overshadowed by the Governors annual budget message. Frank as President Roosevelt's last fortnight, the message urges repeal of $81,000,000 of taxes including the 1 % sales tax and the 1% emergency income tax, revealed that last year's $100,000,000 deficit would be wiped out by next June.

National Significance. Had no compromise been reached on the economy bill, the political repercussions might have cost the Governor his reelection. A Democratic defeat in the nation's key-State next November might change the political complexion of all national Democracy, especially since that State is the President's own and its Governor his good friend. To prevent such a catastrophe, State Chair man James Farley let it be known last week that he was building a new Democratic organization in New York City.

*Governor Lehman, son of a wealthy Manhattan banker, is of German-Jewish ancestry. Last week Manhattan's American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune was proud to announce that Mayor LaGuardia, son of a bandmaster, also has Jewish blood. Through his Budapest bureau Editor Louis Rittenberg learned from Mayor LaGuardia's brother-in-law, a Hungarian bank clerk, the following family history: "The LaGuardias originally migrated from Spain to Italy. Most New Yorkers probably know that the Mayor's father emigrated from Italy to America where he became famous as a composer and bandmaster in the United States Army. One summer he spent his vacation in Trieste and there became acquainted with the beautiful daughter of a Jewish family, Irene Coen-Luzzatto, whom Achille LaGuardia eventually married. . . . Irene Coen remained a Jewess all her life. After their marriage they went to America and their three children were born there. . . . Mayor La Guardia's mother died during the World War and as a truly Jewish woman was buried in the Jewish cemetery [at Budapest] in October, 1915." Said the Mayor in an interview with Editor Rittenberg: ''My mother undoubtedly had Jewish blood in her veins, but I never thought I had enough in mine to justify boasting of it."

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