Broken Machine

In his 29 years at Boston's corruption-laced City Hall, City Clerk John B. Hynes had learned something about running a big city and plenty about how not to run one. He had most of the necessary equipment for political success in Boston (he was Irish, Catholic and Democratic), and he harbored little love for the shopworn, sticky-fingered machine of Mayor James Michael Curley.

Hynes could not match the melodious oratory and easy braggadocio of 74-year-old Jim Curley. But then, he had never been put in jail for fraud either.

On Election Day last week, as a record turnout of Bostonians headed for the polls, Hynes got a valuable last-minute public endorsement from Secretary of Labor Maurice J. Tobin, an ex-mayor who had twice beaten Curley himself. When the returns were in, Jim Curley had racked up the biggest total in his eight campaigns for mayor (126,000), but Johnny Hynes had collected 12,000 more.

Fifty-two-year-old John Hynes is more a career civil servant than a politician, but he grew up in Boston's rough & tumble Irish politics. He quit school at 13, in the days when the help-wanted ads said "No Irish Need Apply," got a high-school education and law degree at night schools. He had climbed to the city clerk's job, traveling part of the way as an ally of Curley. When Curley went to jail, City Clerk Hynes became temporary mayor, bitterly offended Curley's City Hall crowd by his efficiency and honesty. To protect him from Curley's reprisals for taking the post, the Massachusetts state legislature voted him the city clerk's job for life (at $8,000 a year).

Johnny Hynes's election gave Boston a long-needed chance for some political reform, and the mayor-elect hoped to oblige. First, he would sweep some 200 Curley appointees out of City Hall, including two of old Jim's sons. "Our city," said Hynes, "needs a new moral tone, a new atmosphere and a new outlook."

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