Az Ember, 1939 (14. évfolyam, 17. szám)
1939-04-29 / 17. szám
10-ik oldal. “AZ EMBER” VILÁGKIÁLLÍTÁSI SZÁMA Április 29, 1939. Mayor LaGuardia’s Debt to Hungary By LOUIS BREWER Most Hungarians in America know in a vague sort of way that “Butch” LaGuardia, nee Fiorello, America’s No. 1 Mayor has a fair command of our Magyar tongue. But inasmuch as Hungarian is but one of the half dozen foreign languages used by New York’s polyglot population that our dynamic Mayor has mastered, the cynics consider it not so much as a cultural accomplishment but rather a device to catch the votes of citizens of Magyar descent on Election Day! Old timers still remember the good old days on Houston Street, known as “Goulash Avenue” at the turn of the century, with the Irish ward heelers whose Hungarian vocabulary was limited to two phrases. “Madyar Ember” and “Kossuth Loyosch.” These two magic phrases were successfully used to cajole the simple rustics into making a cross under the star o.r eagle on their ballots. Needless to say that the party with the heaviest “War Chest" won the elec-, tion every time. Indeed, Mayor LaGuardia’s knowledge of Magyardom goes beyond his familiarity with the language. In a most objective biography of our Mayor written by Jay Franklin, an eminent American newspaperman, I came across a passage that ought to astonish as well as flatter us as it shows how much we Hungarians have in common with our chief magistrate. This passage is so significant that I’ll quote it verbatim: spells money-saving to the overburdened tax-payer, — more powéT to our “Polgármester!” I think the Hungarian equivalent fits him better than the word “Mayor” which smacks of the British “Lord Mayorship.” The following fifteen points are only part of the savings he accomplished during his first administration: 1. Improved city credit from a 4% interest rate on short term borrowings to % of 1 %, plus an improvement in.city bonds from 82 to above par. 2. Expansion of city relief to include clothing for 165,OOO families on home relief, as well as 140,000 individuals on 522 federal work relief projects. 3. The budget deficit of $31,000,000 wiped out by means of business and public utility tax receipts. 4. Centralized city purchases with subsequent savings in personnel and costs, amounting to $1,000,000 a year on coal costs alone. 5. Reorganization of city departments along non-political lines which checked graft and cut costs, by as much as 58% in the case of the Sanitatipn Department. 6. Expansion of city parks, opening of 375 playgrounds, reduction of traffic accidents to children. 7. Reorganization of the Hospital Department with its 26 hospitals, and annual budget of over $32,000,000. 8. Reorganization of the Health Department. Federal loans to build nine new health centers and a research laboratory. . . . “Good government of this sort has nothing to do with national politics or with local partisanship. It is possible under an imperial autocracy, under socialism, under monarchy, under democracy. He has preached this sort of “non-partisan, nonpolitical” government to people who thought he was talking the old rigmarole about American “reform politics.” it is the greatest single political idea we have ever imported from Central Europe, and LaGuardia is the man who picked it up in Austria-Hungary and domesticated it here.” It is obvious from the above that a human dynamo that answers to the name “Fiorello” completely upset a time honored American tradition. Instead of “Americanizing” the foreigner, he “Foreignized” the American! However, as this process of “Foreignization” 9. Establishment of a city distributing system of milk to the poor at 8 cents a quart in the face of an increase in milk prices. ,10. Plans to raise four and a half million dollars a month from the current revenue to meet relief costs without borrowing. J 11. Development of New | York as a seaport by a 20% reduction in pier rentals. 12. The abolition of racketeering in the City’s public markets and the sale of ice. 13. Reduction of the fees paid by the city to workmen’s compensation physicians from 43% to 6% of the total payments made for injured employees. 14. Reduction of the nonbudgetary city rentals by $531,000. 15. Preparation of plans for expanding the city water supply to meet the 1944 requirements. The writer of his biogra-FIORELLO H. LAGUARDIA phy goes on to point out the (Hungarian background of j our Mayor in the following words: . . . “For LaGuardia had served in the Austro-Hungarian Empire—the most magnificently admin istered country of pre-war Europe. Long after the unsound Habsburg policies had doomed the Empire, the Austrian Civil Service held it together by the sheer force of sound, non-partisan, non-political administration. More important still, the lovely cities of the old Empire—Budapest, Vienna, Trieste and Fiume—offered an example to the world of how pleasant life could be made for the mass of common work- ; ing people through the intelligent application of art to municipal affairs. The concerts, beer-gardens, openair cafes, recreation facilities were what had most appealed to him in Fiume. America had nothing like them.” Only those of us who lived in New York in the pre-La Guardia days can really appreciate the almost miraculous transformation that has taken place in every aspect of the Metropolis. And to think that this can be traced to a trick of fate which placed young LaGuardia into the position of Acting Consular Agent at Fiume in 1900 at the munificent salary of $300 a year! That was one of the best investment Uncle Sam ever made as it was responsible for LaGuardia imbibing what was best in the cultural life of Hungary during the six years he lived there. No doubt, his Hungarian environment had a lasting effect on his mind and his cosmopolitan viewpoint is directly traceable to his sojourn in Hungary during the formative period of his life. Mr. Jay Franklin is a seasoned journalist with many years of diplomatic service. He comes from old New England stock and is not given to emotional sprees and his liberality and sober evaluation of men and events gives the closing lines of his book a prophetic significance: “. . . There is the Governorship,a United States Senatorship, a Vice-Presidency or the Presidency itself before him, if the new and vital forces which he represents come to fruition in the next few years. He has put as much into the new political game which Americans are playing as any living man, and in studying him and his career Americans can foresee the possible future of their social life, their public institutions and their civilization.” “TO THE VICTOR BELONG THE SPOILS.” This slogan has now too long dominated the American political scene. The “Polgármester” of New York changed that to read: “To the victor belongs the responsibility for good government” thereby a shameful stigma from the American body politics.-üzlete 1541 First Ave., New York City (81—82 St. között) Az Edison Co. hivatalos dealer je F. GLASER villany WINKLER LAJOS, magyar ember a Feiner-féle üzlet tulajdonosa, 501 E. 79 St. York Ave.’ sarkán. Újságok, magazinok, cigaretta, szivar, cukorkák, szódafélék a legnagyobb választékban kapható. Lelkiismeretes kiszolgálás.
