Al Smith

Al Smith (1873-1944), American statesman and presidential candidate prominent in U.S. politics during the 1920s.

Alfred Emanuel Smith was born on December 30, 1873, in New York City. He had little formal education and engaged in various occupations before being appointed a clerk in the office of the commissioner of jurors in New York City in 1895. Eight years later he was elected as a Democratic Party member to the New York State Assembly, to which he was reelected for a series of successive terms until 1915; in 1911 he was the majority leader, in the following year the minority leader, and in 1913 he became the speaker of the assembly. Smith was elected sheriff of New York County in 1915 and president of the New York City Board of Aldermen in 1917 and then served four terms as governor of New York State (1919-21 and 1923-29). As governor, Smith was an advocate of social-reform policies. Among the measures that made his administrations notable were large appropriations for the care of the insane; equalization of the salaries of men and women in public-school teaching; establishment of a 48-hour work week in industry for women and minors; ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for woman suffrage; and reform of the administrative apparatus of the state, including the institution of an executive budget.

Smith was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency in 1920 and 1924. He sought the nomination again in 1928 and was chosen on the first ballot. In the election he was badly defeated by the Republican nominee Herbert Hoover, winning the electoral vote of only eight states. Political analysis attributed his unexpectedly poor showing to three principal causes: his association with the Tammany Society; his opposition to Prohibition; and, above all, his Roman Catholic faith.

In 1929 Smith was succeeded as governor of New York by Franklin D. Roosevelt and entered private business. With a group of associates in the banking business, he planned and carried through the construction in New York City of the Empire State Building, until 1970 the tallest skyscraper in the world. He continued to be influential in the Democratic Party until 1936, when he opposed the nomination of President Roosevelt for reelection. Smith's autobiography, Up to Now, was published in 1929. He died in New York City on October 4, 1944.