"The rise of Alfred E. Smith had no exact parallel in American history. There have been country boys in plenty, such as Lincoln and Garfield, who rose to the heights, but no other city urchin, earning a precarious living in the streets in his early days, ever rose so superior to his lack of youthful advantages and had so distinguished a public career."
The New York Times, on the passing of Al Smith in 1944.

Alfred Emanuel Smith, Jr. was born December 30, 1873, in the heavily immigrant Fourth Ward tenement district in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, then under construction.

"The Brooklyn Bridge and I grew up together. It attracted my infantile attention and I spent a lot of time superintending the job in my boyhood. I have never lost the sense of admiration and envy for the men who swarmed like flies stringing the cables and putting in the roadways as the bridge took shape."

Smith had to leave school at age twelve after the death of his father, supplementing the family income with a variety of odd jobs, most notably as a clerk with the Fulton Fish Market, tallying the fish as they were unloaded off the docks and announcing their arrival.

Outgoing and industrious, Smith was hand-picked by the Tammany Hall political machine for a handful of posts before his election to the New York State Assembly in 1903. "I was as green as they make them," he said of his first year in the Assembly. "I tried to digest the great stack of bills that I found piled on my desk every day, but it was no use. I just stood around and tried to look wise." But he was a quick study, and he read every bill, listened to speeches and learned about parliamentary law, until he became one of the most influential members of the Assembly.

Smith was named vice chairman of the committee charged with investigating the horrific Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire in 1911, which killed 146 workers, mainly immigrants. Smith, along with State Sen. Robert Wagner, toured factories and met with workers during a comprehensive four-year survey of industrial conditions, which resulted in a vast number of labor reforms, from health and safety codes to laws specifically aimed at protecting women and children.

"If there are any ills that democracy is suffering from today, they can only be cured by more democracy."

Smith became Speaker of the Assembly in 1913 and Governor in 1918. He ultimately served four terms, championing many progressive and social welfare reforms, including workers' compensation, more affordable low-cost housing, better state parks (he appointed Robert Moses to his first public office, State Parks Commissioner) and better care for the mentally ill.

And he did it while decreasing the size of the state government, consolidating 187 agencies to just 16 departments. Smith, with his trademark brown derby and cigar, was a legend in his Fourth District and throughout the state, so it wasn't long before he was sought for higher office.

"The greatest privilege that can come to any man is to give himself to a nation which has reared him and raised him from obscurity to be a contender for the highest office."
Upon accepting the Democratic Presidential Nomination at the State Capitol in Albany, NY.

Smith's first serious bid for the Democratic candidacy came in 1924. His name was placed into nomination by his friend, Franklin Roosevelt, who called Smith "the Happy Warrior." But the convention turned ugly, partly over Smith's virulent opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, who were likewise anti-Catholic and supported Smith's rival, William McAdoo. After a series of ballots, neither candidate could secure the necessary majority, and Smith would have to wait until 1928 for another chance at the presidency.

But the nastiness of the 1924 Democratic Convention was only magnified on a national scale in 1928. The first Catholic nominated by a major party faced hatred and prejudice like no other candidate before him. The opposition claimed that under a Catholic president, Protestant marriages would be annulled, bibles would be banned and the Pope would have a special office in the White House. In fact, the Lincoln Tunnel, then under construction, was rumored to be a secret passage to bring him from Rome to Washington.

And Smith was attacked for his anti-Prohibition stance, labeled an Irish drunk and representative of all things considered ungodly in New York City.

The journalist Frederick William Wile believed that Smith was defeated through "the three P's – Prohibition, Prejudice and Prosperity." Smith's opponent, Herbert Hoover, was Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, and benefited from a healthy economy of the incumbent Republican administration. Many believe no Democrat could have won against him. Smith lost the election in a landslide, failing even to carry New York.

After the election, Smith devoted himself to municipal development, most notably leading the construction efforts on the Empire State Building.

Smith fell out with his old friend Roosevelt during FDR's governorship of New York, later running unsuccessfully against him for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination and even endorsing both Alf Landon in 1936 and Wendell Willkie in 1940. Whether his animosity toward FDR was fueled by jealousy or real philosophical differences, it was a dark period in Smith's public life; however, the two reconciled by 1941.

Smith died at age 70, on October 4, 1944, just five months after he lost his wife to cancer.