Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor of New York City during the
worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II. He
was called by adoring New Yorkers "The Little Flower" because
he was only five-foot-four and always wore a carnation in his
lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New
York fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department,
take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New
York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and
read the Sunday funnies to the
kids.
One bitterly cold
night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court
that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed
the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself.
Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before
him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia
that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was
sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the
shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop
the charges. "It's a bad neighborhood, your Honor," the man
told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other
people around here a lesson."
LaGuardia sighed. He
turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you. The law
makes no exceptions ~ ten dollars or ten days in jail." But
even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching
into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his
famous sombrero saying, "Here is the ten dollar fine which I
now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this
courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has
to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff,
collect the fines and give them to the
defendant."
So the following day
the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned
over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread
to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount
being contributed to the red-faced grocery store owner, while
some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations,
and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty
cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing
ovation
