James Michael Curley


James Michael Curley was an American Democratic politician from Boston, Massachusetts. He served four terms as mayor of Boston between 1914 and 1950. Curley ran for mayor in every election for which he was legally qualified. He was twice convicted of criminal behavior and notably served time in prison during his last term as mayor. He also served a single term as governor of Massachusetts. He is remembered as one of the most colorful figures in Massachusetts politics.
Curley also served two terms, separated by 30 years, in the United States House of Representatives and, in his early career, served in the Boston Common Council, Boston Board of Aldermen, and Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Curley was immensely popular with his fellow working class Roman Catholic Irish Americans. During the Great Depression in the United States, he raised taxes and spent freely on various improvements. He enlarged Boston City Hospital, expanded the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, funded projects to improve roads and bridges, and improved the neighborhoods with beaches and bathhouses, playgrounds and parks, public schools, and libraries. In addition to their own benefits, these projects provided jobs, needed by the working class during the Depression. At the same time, he was regularly collecting bribes, kickbacks, and other graft.
He was a leading and at times divisive force in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, challenging Boston's ward bosses and the party's white Anglo-Saxon Protestant leadership at the local and state levels. His political tactics, which tended to drive businesses and economically successful people from the city, damaging the local economy, have become an object of study for economists and political scientists. A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Curley as the fourth-worst American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.

Early life

James Michael Curley was born in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood in 1874 to Michael and Sarah Curley.
Curley's father Michael immigrated from Oughterard, County Galway, Ireland and settled in Roxbury, where he met Curley's mother, also from County Galway. Michael Curley worked as a day laborer and foot soldier for Democratic ward boss P. James "Pea-Jacket" Maguire.
Michael Curley died in 1884, when his son James was ten.
James and his brother John worked to supplement the meager family income, while James took classes at the local public school. Curley left school at fifteen and took jobs in factory work and delivery which exposed him to much of the growing industrial city of Boston. He sought to become a fire fighter but was too young to take the job.
His mother is likely responsible for instilling in him the strain of generosity that would make up a significant part of his public personality. Curley's mother continually intervened to turn him away from his father's unsavory associates while working at a job scrubbing floors in offices and churches all over Boston.

Political rise

As Curley came of age, Boston politics were marked by growing Irish political power in opposition to traditional Yankee Protestantism. Curley involved himself in the local Roman Catholic church and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal benefit society that assisted Irish immigrants. He acquired a reputation as a hustler who was willing to help others get ahead.
Curley gained experience in the traditional practices of ward politics such as knocking on doors, drumming up votes, and taking complaints. He ran for a seat on the Boston Common Council in 1897 and 1898, but failed to achieve the Democratic nomination in ward caucuses each year. Curley claimed he was denied victory by corrupt vote counting, rigged against him because he was outside the political machine.
Curley was successful in 1899 by joining the machine faction controlled by Charles I. Quirk. In his first two years on the Council, Curley placed roughly 700 people into patronage positions. His reputation as an urban populist earned him the unofficial title "Mayor of the Poor."

Boston Common Council (1900)

In 1900 Curley became the youngest ward boss in Boston at 26 years of age. He obtained through political maneuvering positions on Boston's Board of Aldermen. Curley became a member of the Boston Common Council in 1901, representing the seventeenth ward.

State Representative (1902–03)

Curley won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1901 and became the chair of the Ward 17 Democratic organization. He established the Tammany Club as a platform for his personal political activities, including speechmaking and assisting needy constituents. Curley later recounted stories of the ward's poor and needy lining up outside the club's office to ask for work or subsistence.

Boston Board of Aldermen (1905–1909)

Curley served on the Boston Board of Aldermen from 1905 until 1909, when the Boston Board of Alderman and the Boston City Council were merged to become the unicameral Boston City Council.
Curley's first public notoriety came from being elected to Boston's board of aldermen in 1904 while imprisoned on a fraud conviction. The charge resulted after Curley and the unrelated Thomas Curley had helped two applicants in their district cheat on federal civil service exams for postmen, by criminally impersonating the applicants and taking the exams for them. Though the incident gave him a dark reputation in Boston's non-Irish circles, it aided his image among the Irish American working class and poor because they saw him as a man willing to stick his neck out to help those in need. During that election, his campaign slogan was, "he did it for a friend." He also quickly gained a reputation for taking kickbacks in exchange for his support.
In January 1909, after the board had been unable to garner the required consensus to elect a new board chairman, Curley briefly served as the acting chairman in the interim. On January 26, 1909, the board elected Frederick J. Brand its permanent chairman.

U.S. Congress (1911–1914)

In 1910, while a member of Boston's board of aldermen, Curley challenged U.S. Representative Joseph F. O'Connell, a fellow Democrat.
His first preference was to run for mayor of Boston, but former Mayor John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald ran for the office. In exchange for Curley staying out of the mayoral race, Fitzgerald promised not to run for re-election after a single four-year term. In the previous election for the seat, O'Connell won by a four-vote margin over his Republican opponent, ex-City Clerk J. Mitchel Galvin.
In a three-way primary among O'Connell, Curley, and O'Connell's predecessor William S. McNary, Curley defeated O'Connell and McNary. After winning the nomination of the Democratic Party, Curley went on to win the general election by a substantial plurality over Galvin, who was again the Republican nominee.

First mayoralty (1914–1918)

Despite his deal with Curley, Mayor Fitzgerald did run for re-election in the election held in January 1914. Curley secured Fitzgerald's exit from the race by threatening to expose a dalliance the older man had with a cigarette girl in a Boston gambling den. Curley was aided by Daniel H. Coakley, a lawyer whose specialties included extortion and bribing prosecutors to bury criminal charges against his clients. Fitzgerald withdrew, and Curley won the election over City Council president Thomas Kenny.
Curley's victory marked his consolidation of control over Boston politics, which he would retain until 1950. He served four separate terms as mayor and always held influence even when he wasn't in that office.
In his first term, Curley embarked on a series of public improvements, a practice he continued in his later terms as mayor. His projects included the development of recreational facilities in the poorer parts of the city, expansion of public transit, and an enlargement of Boston City Hospital. He accomplished this with little regard for city finances, raising property taxes and securing loans from city banks, sometimes by threatening city inspectional actions against bank facilities. He deliberately tweaked the sensibilities of the Protestant "good government" advocates, suggesting that the Boston Public Garden be sold off and that the historic Shirley-Eustis House be razed for failing to meet modern codes.
During his first term, Curley moved his family into a luxurious mansion in Jamaica Plain, one plainly beyond the means of a typical civil servant's salary. Begun in 1915, the twenty-plus room house was apparently built for little or no charge by contractors seeking favors from Curley. Curley's finances were regularly investigated by the Boston Finance Commission, a body dominated by hostile Protestant Republicans, but he eluded legal charges—in part through Coakley's intervention. Curley also effectively muzzled press investigations by threatening libel charges against offending media. In one notable incident, he also physically assaulted the publisher of the Boston Telegraph for publishing unflattering articles.
Curley's attempt at reelection was foiled by Martin Lomasney, the boss of Boston's West End. Lomasney, a longtime opposition figure to Curley in the city, orchestrated the entry of an Irish-American candidate into the 1917 mayoral race, who successfully siphoned enough votes away from Curley to hand victory to Republican Andrew J. Peters. In 1918, the state legislature dealt Curley a further blow by enacting legislation forbidding Boston mayors from holding consecutive terms.

Second mayoralty (1922–1926)

Curley won a second term as mayor in 1921.
In 1924, while serving as mayor, Curley ran for Governor of Massachusetts. He was defeated by Republican Lieutenant Governor Alvan T. Fuller.
Pursuant to a new one-term restriction, Curley was not able to run for re-election in 1925.