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Next to the politicians, the silk stocking group which usually supports Fusion candidates liked him least, for Mayor La-Guardia has not good manners. Short, swart and tousled, with a minimum of neck and a maximum of torso, he takes off his rumpled coat and leans back in his big office chair with his feet dangling a foot from the floor, no picture of municipal dignity. When he flies off the handle, as he frequently does, his voice grows shrill, he is likely to call almost anybody names, and whatever he doesn't like is "lousy."
In the morning when the mayor drives to his office—in the winter to the fine old city hall in lower Manhattan; at present to a fine old house in Queens overlooking the East River, rented as a "summer city hall" —he is almost lost in the back of his limousine behind a portable desk, going over his mail. On arriving at his office he may begin dictating to two secretaries at once, then plunge into a series of 15-minute conferences with officials and delegations wanting favors, then dash off to dedicate a playground or unveil a statue, thence drive across a borough or two to speak at a civic luncheon, dictating orders as he goes to a secretary who can telephone them back to city hall while he is speaking. An hour later he may be back at his office to see a queue of people who have been waiting for hours, interview a deputy commissioner, perform a marriage for an eager friend, rush off to inspect a swimming pool, a hospital, a ferryboat or a street accident.
Day after day, practically without vacations, he carries on the pace. By nightfall his nerves are in knots. Formerly he used to take a few drinks of straight whiskey in order to relax. Nowadays his friends have persuaded him to substitute Scotch highballs as easier on the stomach. The liquor serves no purpose except to relax him. Usually he then has a dinner engagement, maybe several more engagements during the evening, but he likes to get home as early as possible to romp with his two adopted children, to see his wife who used to be his secretary when he was in Congress and who seldom appears publicly.
How Not to Get Elected. When Mayor LaGuardia was elected he found himself in charge of a city which had a debt of $1,800,000,000, about 50% greater than the public debt of the U. S. when he was elected to Congress in 1916. He found a city accustomed to living on an annual budget of $600,000,000. Tammany in election year had cut the budget to $551,000,000, but it was still $30,000,000 out of balance and when Mr. LaGuardia stepped in he found that Tammany had reduced the apparent size of the budget by simply omitting such items as food, fuel and medical supplies for hospitals, taxes on land outside the city which the city owned for watersheds, etc., etc. Actually the budget was $41,000,000 out of balance and LaGuardia set out to balance it by raising half in taxes and saving the remainder. He did so with the aid of a drastic economy act passed by the State Legislature. Since then he has kept the city's budget at about the same size which he inherited from Tammany.