Old Girl's New Boy

(See Cover)

A nation's heartbeat is in its cities. This year, on the lake fronts, at the railheads, in the mountains, on the seaboards, the cities of the U.S., prospering in the postwar boom, throbbed with civic projects, civic pride, bond issues, expanding industry and trade. In old, carefree and once corrupt New Orleans, now reformed and very businesslike, the heartbeat was firm.

Its throb could be felt along New Orleans' 11 1/2 miles of riverfront wharves. There, one night last week, 60 ships lay in a driving rain while tooting switch engines slammed boxcars, oilcars and flatcars along the quayside.

Floodlights limned the vessels, the gangling cargo hoists and the Negro longshoremen crawling up & down the gangways. All night long, rain or shine, the work went on, as the merchandise of the Mississippi Valley flowed southward through the artery and the merchandise of the world flowed back again. New Orleans* was no longer just the "City That Care Forgot"--a tourist-bureau sobriquet which the city's businessmen now disdained.

In a long, upholstered office in City Hall sat the man who had his finger on this pulsebeat. Daily, at all hours, across the claret-colored rug streamed aides, colleagues, politicians, businessmen, repairmen, newsmen. The young man, who saw everyone, was the city's mayor: deLesseps ("Chep") Story Morrison, 35, handsome, bouncing, talkative, tough and stubborn.

Chep Morrison, symbol of the bright new day which had come to the city of charming ruins, also symbolized as well as anyone or anything the postwar energy of the nation's cities.

Babylon on the Delta. No great U.S. seaport is typical. Each has its own strange mixture of races and cultures, each possesses its own peaceful and violent story. The story of New Orleans began when LaSalle, in 1682, erected a cross on the Mississippi Delta. A century later, the site had become a New World port.

One-sixth of its trade was illicit--pirated or smuggled. It was the New World center of French culture. Its haughty aristocracy were the French and Spanish families, the Creoles. It was a Babylon where English, Spanish, French, Germans, Italians, and Yankees danced, drank and gambled while the Negro population celebrated voodoo rites in Congo Square. In 1812 the first steamboat, the Orleans, chuffed down the river and opened a new era of trade and commerce. In 1897 the city fathers legalized prostitution, confining the houses to a section northwest of the French Quarter, which thereupon became sarcastically known as Storyville, after Councilman Sidney Story, who sponsored the law.* He was Mayor Morrison's great-uncle.

It was a city steeped in tradition and superstition. Ghosts as well as whores and gamblers haunted its streets and houses. The ghosts still do. New Orleanians swear that two waxen-faced Yankee soldiers parade through the corridors of a building on Constance Street, singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Dr. Deschamps, the dentist, hanged in the 1850s for murdering a girl he was trying to hypnotize, still haunts an apartment in 714 St. Peter Street. The Devil's own head hung on a gable in a house on St. Charles Avenue until gable and house were torn down.

The Devil's Work. The Devil got around in New Orleans. Sometimes he even got into politics. In 1893, a baby boy was born in the righteous, Bible-pounding hill country north of the city. He grew up and sold a patent medicine for ailing women, worked his way through a three-year law course in eight months, and ten years later ran for governor. He was the people's darling. He was going to make the rich share their wealth with the poor, and make every man a king. His name was Huey Pierce Long and the people adored and elected him. He built $200 million worth of highways, provided free textbooks for schoolchildren, lavished funds on Louisiana State University, went on to the U.S. Senate. He did the people some good but a lot more evil. He seized the state and throttled civil liberties. He said: "I am the Constitution around here." He said he carried four guns because "you can't tell when someone's going to shoot the king." In 1935, someone did.

His evil work went on. It was carried on by his underlings: Seymour Weiss, who once ran Huey's favorite barbershop and who handled the swag and kept no records; Abe Shushan, the dry-goods dealer who became president of the Levee Board; James Monroe ("Doc") Smith, president of the university; and big George Caldwell, superintendent of buildings at L.S.U. There were others, like Robert Maestri (rhymes with pastry), the conservation commissioner who later became New Orleans' mayor. And there was Earl, Huey's less talented brother. "I ain't like Huey," Earl admitted. "I gotta go slower."

It was the Federal Government which moved in on them at last, and sent Weiss, Shushan, Smith and Caldwell to jail. The way was open to reform. Sam Jones, an earnest attorney, routed the heirs of Huey Long and won the governorship. That was in 1940. In that same election, Chep Morrison was sent to the legislature.

Poppa's Boy. Chep Morrison's family goes far back into that turbulent history. Though his political opponents glibly refer to him as a "Boston Club man," he is not a member of that proud and rigid club. Reform movements used to start in the Boston Club; generally they amounted to no more than a delicate finger-pointing at the city's bland face of corruption. The movement to which Chep belongs has been more effective.

Chep's first political adventure was at a rally presided over by his father. Chep, then eight years old, was "poppa's" great admirer. He sat in the front row screaming, "Hurrah for poppa," so steadily that the rally had to cease until someone led Chep away to a barrel of lemonade. Chep has kept that quality of persistence.

Poppa died in 1929, leaving practically nothing. His widow went to work as the manager of the Baton Rouge Country Club, and Chep went to L.S.U. He was there when Huey Long was at the peak of his power. He graduated with a law degree, joined his brother's law firm and in 1936 was voted the "most popular escort" by the city's debutantes. He was dashing and debonair. In spare moments in 1936, he worked for the election of a reform candidate for governor against Huey's man, Richard Leche (rhymes with mesh). Leche won the governorship but later went to jail (and has now quietly retired to a farm).

The Reformers. Four years later, Chep --and the reform movement--had better luck. Chep had heard Sam Jones make a speech at an R.O.T.C. camp in 1939. Sam was for clean government and kick-the-rascals-out. "After we heard him speak we knew who we wanted for governor," said Chep, who worked hard for Sam Jones. On election day, armed with a large flashlight, he undertook to watch the balloting in one of the toughest New Orleans precincts. Rumors were that the old Long crowd would try to switch ballot boxes.

As soon as it was dark, the lights in the polling place went out, as Chep anticipated. Chep threw a spotlight on the ballot box. The counters looked surprised. The lights came on. Again & again the lights went out. Each time Chep threw a spot on the ballot box. A Long toughie walked up to Chep and said: "You are a dirty son of a bitch." He tried to goad Chep into swinging at him so that Chep could be pinched and carried away. Chep said nothing; he just kept spotlighting the ballot box. The toughs gave up. There was a fairly accurate count in that precinct.

War Veteran. In 1941, Chep was called to active duty. He was stationed at the New Orleans Port of Embarkation. He married Corinne Waterman, one of the catches of the social season, and one year later went overseas. He was a colonel when he crossed the Rhine and served a tour of duty at the port of Bremen.

A lot of things had been going on back home while Chep was making a reputation as a soldier. The reform movement was still alive but breathing heavily. Its leaders had been looking for a candidate to run against Mayor Maestri. Out of sheer desperation, they had picked a political hack named Joe Fernandez, known to newsmen as "Bathtub Joe" because, whenever a reporter wanted an interview with him, his wife always said that he was in the bathtub. At the last minute, Bathtub Joe withdrew "in favor of Mayor Maestri"--to the reform crowd's extreme embarrassment. Then Chep Morrison blew in from overseas.

Leaders of the reform movement pounced on him, handed him his platform and his ticket and sent him off on a cyclonic campaign. He worked 20 hours a day. To the amazement of almost everyone, including himself and fat Bob Maestri, he squeaked in by 4,000 votes. Ella, the Morrisons' cook, was at the inauguration. "Lordie God," she bawled.

The man whom New Orleans got for mayor was in a familiar American pattern. He was up-&-coming. played tennis, badminton, golf, liked ice cream with chocolate sauce, and mowed his own lawn. He walked at a regulation Army pace, drawing in the old stomach. His hair was thinning, he was no longer the debutantes' delight, but he had the approval of the civic-minded businessmen who put him in power.

He also had the approval of Sam Jones, who believed that the future of the South lay in the hands of such men as Chep. Sam Jones had become the soft-spoken evangelist of a different South. Sam saw that one metamorphosis had already taken place, that it was not mechanized agriculture that was driving Negro and white labor from the fields; they had already left, driven out by the economic conditions of Southern agriculture. Now, unless the South was to die, it had to be made to bloom with industry and commerce, instead of magnolias. The new evangelism needed new leaders, not the ancient, snorting clowns who too often ran Southern politics. Chep was Sam's boy.

The Exterminator. Chep wasted no time. His backers had written legalized gambling into Chep's platform; the city might as well collect taxes on one of its biggest businesses. The citizens, furthermore, had voted overwhelmingly for legalization. But the state legislature turned the bill down. So Chep ordered his police superintendent, Adair Watters, an ex-colonel of the Marines, to crack down.

Watters cracked. Among other enterprises he raided were a racing-news service and illegal pinball machines in which Chep's father-in-law, Jack Waterman, had some interest. Mr. Waterman retaliated by charging Chep with misappropriating city funds. When Chep answered with a threat of a libel suit, Jack Waterman beat a retreat. Daughter Corinne took no public part in the squabble.

Police Chief Watters, with Chep's backing, swept through the city like an exterminator. He abolished the clip-joint cops, who stood by, not to protect the customers, but to see that the suckers coughed up whenever they were handed an outrageous check. The underworld threatened. Once Watters was shot at. Morrison got bundles of letters warning him that he was marked. Watters thought that the mayor should have a bodyguard, but Chep rejected such an idea.

Bumps & Grinds. The outcry of the underworld was the best gauge of the cleanup. Some trollops still walk the streets; some bookies may operate, but they do so with extreme caution. The big-time houses of prostitution, once among the nation's fanciest (peep shows: $15 & up), and the gambling establishments have been driven out of town to neighboring Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes, where they still operate, but at considerable inconvenience to all concerned. Gambler Frank Costello's notorious Beverly Country Club is two miles upriver from the white frame house which the mayor rents for $100 a month. Four blocks from Chep's home, limousines pick up customers and carry them out to the joints. But business is not rushing.

Otherwise the Vieux Carre is much the same, if a little less intensely charming. The strippers still bump and grind in the clubs, although with modifications. They now do their acts on the dance floor instead of up on the bars. The night spots are still noisy with dance music, although for the most part it is only an echo of old Basin Street jazz. The famed eating places--Antoine's, Arnaud's, Galatoire's--are still there, although connoisseurs complain that they are now mass-producing their dishes. Says Chep optimistically: "This is a play town, not a sucker's town."

The Gateway. While he was washing the old girl's neck, Chep Morrison was also finding her new jobs. While he was closing some doors, he helped to open a new gateway. That was the historic gateway to world trade which the city, in the mid-'20s, had apathetically let fall into disrepair. Louisianians like Investment Banker Rudolf Hecht, Soft Drink Tycoon William G. Zetzmann and Port Director E. O. Jewell had dedicated themselves to the task of making New Orleans one of the nation's greatest ports.

They had remodeled the first few floors of a building on Gravier Street and called it International House. It became the symbol of the brisk new day. International House was designed to draw New Orleanians together in a common aim, to stop cutthroat competition, oppose tariff barriers, sing the praises of the Mississippi Valley and cultivate the commerce of all the world.

Chep Morrison became an enthusiastic ambassador of good will. He set up a department of international relations at City Hall, enlisted unofficial ambassadors to represent New Orleans in Latin American capitals. Before he was inaugurated, he rushed off south on a good-will tour. In the past year and ten months, he has made six trips to South America, Central America and the West Indies, averaging at least a speech a day, shaking hands, warming up everyone with his ingratiating smile, sometimes impulsively handing out advice which South Americans did not ask for. Some South Americans were a little nonplussed, but trade has started to flow Louisiana's way.

The Sweeper. Despite the opposition of two of his four commissioners, each of whom has almost as much power as the mayor, Chep tidied up the city's government. He swept out the hacks of the "Old Regulars," the regular city Democratic machine. He knocked 400 useless people off city payrolls.

He more than doubled the number of playgrounds and swimming pools. Among the items on his agenda: a huge boys' club for the city's worst slum, the "Irish Channel"; the rebuilding of old Shakespeare Park in the heart of the Negro district.

He pushed through a $23,500,000 bond issue, and last month he signed contracts for a new union railroad station, a score of under-and overpasses, the filling of the now useless canal which bisects the city. If he has his way, slums will be cleared, a new civic center will rise and the whole city will be spanned by super-express highways already designed by New York's equally energetic Park Commissioner Robert Moses. His opponents call Chep "Little Caesar," "Big Head" and "The Kid Mayor," but they have learned to respect his punch and zing.

Uneasy Seat. All this is such a contrast to the old, torpid, wicked days that optimists might decide that those days have gone forever. Maybe they have.

But this week the city and the state are in the throes of another political campaign. At the Democratic primaries in January, the single-party state of Louisiana will nominate its next governor. The chief candidate is Sam Jones, who served his one term until 1944; Louisiana law does not allow a governor to succeed himself. Meanwhile Jones's friend, Songwriter Jimmy Davis, author of You Are My Sunshine, has been keeping the seat warm for him. Sam Jones should win.

But there are some ominously familiar voices raised against him. One rival candidate is Congressman Jimmy Morrison (no kin to Chep), who stands for things with a demagogic Huey Longish ring: more four-lane highways, $50-a-month pensions for the old folks. Another candidate is Earl Long himself, who was shouting in a gravel voice that nobody never proved nothin' crooked about Earl K. Long, the White Knight of the poor folks. He will probably finish close enough to Jones in the primaries to require a runoff.

Long and Jimmy Morrison got down on all fours, playing the game of politics. Morrison confided last week: "The other day I got my rumor factory goin' on the story that Earl has cancer of the throat. I know it ain't so, but that's politics."

The Long gang had been knocked out of the Statehouse in 1940--but not out of the state. Chep Morrison's own office is secure until 1950, but a reform administration never has an easy seat.

With the gradual passing of such clowns and demagogues as Theodore Bilbo, John Rankin, Eugene Talmadge, there was reason to believe that political responsibility was growing in the South. But the very sound of Earl Long's gravel voice was enough to cause the city's heart to skip a beat. So Sam Jones's fight was also Chep Morrison's fight.

And the new economic evangelism had to be preached and practiced. Freight rates had to be readjusted. Factories had to grow in the catfish rows of the old South. Chep Morrison's New Orleans had made a good start. The city's great crescent-shaped waterfront was a manifestation of a new day. The artery throbbed with more than trade. It throbbed with new hope.

* Pronounced Nyawlians, never (despite Tin Pan Alley) New Orleans. *Which was abolished 20 years later.

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