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Wherever he went, he looked up brother Elks, used them to help make other contacts. "Hello, Bill!" is the usual Elk cry of greeting to an Elk one does not know. This became "Hello, Jim!" in the hotel lobbies Farley entered. With his fat paw he slapped tens of thousands of backs. A shrewd judge of men, he lined up important Democrats for his salesmen well in advance, went back to their State conventions to make sure of delivery in the form of pledged delegates to the national convention. He spent his own money, energy and enthusiasm. He made no deals because his candidate never authorized him to. After he got the bandwagon rolling he loudly and airily began predicting Roosevelt's nomination on the first ballot.
Job at Home. Democrat Farley was bom in Republican Stony Point, N. Y, across the Hudson River from Governor Roosevelt's Hyde Park. His mother kept a grocery store. He played baseball, got himself elected town clerk. Joining Tammany, he used it as a model for political organization in Rockland County. He helped steer Al Smith back into the governorship in 1922, was himself elected to the State Assembly. There he helped repeal the State Prohibition enforcement law by one vote, and that vote cost him his seat from his Dry district. Governor Smith made him chairman of the State Boxing Commission which position he still holds (salary: 800). All he gets out of it are fight passes for his friends. He barred the Dempsey-Tunney fight from New York because Dempsey, as champion, refused to accept the challenge of Negro Harry Wills.
Tall (6 ft. 2½ in.), heavy (215 Ib.) he boasts: "There's hardly an ounce of fat on me." No smoker, no drinker, he is a prodigious gum-chewer—several packs per day. Happily married to Elizabeth Finnegan who bore him two daughters, one son, his home is at Haverstraw, N. Y.
Most campaign managers whose candidates get elected to the Presidency are offered a place in the new Cabinet, usually as Postmaster General. Manager Farley's friends doubt if, in the event of a Roosevelt victory, he would take such a portfolio. Like many another politician who knows the profits to be made out of contracting, he has a sand & gravel business at home.