Compromise & Clerkship

Compromise & Clerkship

New York City's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia began his official morning one day last week by whizzing down to his office in a police radio car in 17 minutes, just to see how well his police could respond to an emergency call.* He began his next morning by jogging up to Albany on a train to see how well he himself could settle another more serious emergency. The balancing of the city budget moved him to say, before leaving: "The humble Mayor of New York, a city of 7,000,000, is crawling up hat in hand, to beg the right to go to our own Legislature to ask for a bill in keeping with the Gov ernor's own views of constitutional democracy." Hot were the two letters that Governor Herbert H. Lehman had written him week before attacking what he felt was dictatorship in the Mayor's proposed economy bill (TIME. Jan. 15). Equally hot was Mayor LaGuardia's defense: He must balance the budget by Feb. 1 to get Federal money for subway construction, and, said he. the budget could not be balanced by an "essay" on dictatorship. At Albany the two statesmen were all coolness and suavity. Graciously the Governor invited the Mayor to spend the night in his mansion; graciously the Mayor declined. They exchanged their views at luncheon. By 3 o'clock they had arrived at a compromise and were

*Home: top floor of a six-story apartment house at Fifth Avenue & 108th Street--where Fashion leaves off and Negro Harlem almost begins.

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