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Think about the Abraham Lincoln story. Born in a log cabin, raised in humble circumstances, self-educated, the rail-splitter who became president. Transport that story from the 19th century to the 20th, and from frontier to metropolis, and you have the life of Al Smith.
Al Smith's version of the log cabin was a tennement house on New York City's East Side. His version of rail-splitting was a several-year-stint in New York's Fulton Fish Market. Long hours, and hard work with his hands, earned him a humble living. Even as a young man, his entire field of experience seems unbeliveably narrow by today's standards. When Al Smith left New York City for Albany to take his seat in the legislature, he had never before been out of the city. He was thirty years old.
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With only the barest elementary school education, Al Smith worked laboriously for several years trying to understand the bills that came before the legislature. No one thought to tell the young legislator that few members of the body actually read the bills through from start to finish. Smith's long nights of homework gradually turned him into a well-educated, self-educated man. Where Lincoln read books by the light of his fireplace, Smith educated himself by slowly, painfully digesting the words of proposed laws. He later admitted that for the first couple years in the legislature he voted however Tammany told him to vote. Yet within several years, his biographer notes, Smith was telling other Tammany legislators how to vote.
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Yet again an example of Smith's humble beginnings: In his third term in the legislature, Smith won a seat on the Committee on Banking, and another on the Committee on Forestry. Smith sheepishly admitted to a colleague that he had never been in a forest, and had never been in a bank except on an errand unrelated to banking!
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In the space of less than two decades, Smith climbed the ladder of political success. Elected governor of New York on three occasions, he won the reputation of a compassionate man who at the same time was a business-like administrator. Though he was no expert on forestry or on banking, Smith had a knack for appointing able advisors, and for acting wisely on the information they supplied him. It is safe to say that Al Smith passed his interest in social services and humane government on to his successor, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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Given America's electoral college system, the major parties had long made practice of considering the governor of New York for elevation to the nation's highest office. Such a candidate undoubtedly would deliver New York's 45 electoral votes. Smith was a strong hopeful going into the 1924 Democratic Convention, but was shocked at the strength marshaled against his nomination. In a convention with a large number of Klan or Klan-backed delegates, Smith's Catholicism proved an immense handicap. Also, the 1924 convention was not prepared to nominate an opponent of nationwide prohibition (which Smith was).
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After two weeks of deadlock at this 1924 convention, Smith withdrew his candidacy and supported John W. Davis for president. Four years later, Smith's backers were more prepared, the Klan influence in the party had waned, and Smith was belived to be the candidate most able to defeat Republican Herbert Hoover.
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Again his Catholicism hindered him. Old bigoted, fabricated stories from the days of the Know Nothing Party were revived. If Smith were president the Pope would have an office in the White House. If Smith were president, Protestant children would have to attend Catholic schools. No amount of reasoned arguments could turn the tide, and Smith met a resounding defeat in the 1928 presidential race. He carried only the states of the Deep South (losing a number of other Southern states, which was unusual for a Democrat), and also he carried Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He did not even deliver his own state to the Democratic party.
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Perhaps Smith took some comfort from the fact that four years later his protoge, Franklin Roosevelt, succeeded where Smith had failed, on a platform remarkably similar to Smith's. Needless to say, the onset of the Great Depression had boosted the fortunes of the Democratic party tremendously, since a Republican presided over the Great Crash. But Roosevelt also had the benefit of being Protestant.
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In many ways, Al Smith's story has an unhappy ending. Smith had every expectation of following up his 1928 race with a 1932 victory. Instead, Franklin Roosevelt made a strong run for the Democratic nomination, and won it, leading Smith to feel he had been stabbed in the back.
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Incredibly, Smith actually endorsed the Republican presidential candidates in both 1936 and 1940. His endorsement was almost certainly motivated more by an animosity toward Roosevelt than any real appreciation of Landon and Willkie. The only bright spot in Smith's post-1928 electioneering is that for collectors, there are a number of nice Smith-endorses-Republican pins like the one shown below!
