Sublime

The fact is, Farley was centralizing the party structure to a degree unprecedented in American politics, and it was more effective to work with organizations already in place than to create something new.

FDR would be the firm’s front man on Wall Street, for which Black agreed to pay him $25,000 a year, five times his salary at the Navy Department. It was an arrangement from which both stood to profit. The hemorrhaging of Roosevelt’s finances would be stanched, and Black would benefit from Franklin’s name on the masthead.

He had then written a ten-page memorandum to the warden, explaining in detail how the staff could be cut and the service improved if certain correction officers and prison chefs were removed and replaced. To Freddy’s surprise, he found himself back on the yard.

Jim Hill wasted little time, after gaining full control of the Saint Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, in sending Farley packing. Hill showed little sensitivity to the old man’s ego, to his greed, or to his clear ability to retaliate. When Farley confronted Hill in the spring of 1879 with the impossible demand that he be made a director of the new c