During the Great Depression in the United States, he enlarged Boston City Hospital, expanded the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, funded projects to improve roads and bridges, and improved the neighborhoods with beaches and bathhouses, playgrounds and parks, public schools, and libraries, all the while collecting graft and raising taxes.

[1] A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Curley as the fourth-worst American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.

[3][4] Michael Curley worked as a day laborer and foot soldier for Democratic ward boss P. James "Pea-Jacket" Maguire.

[7] Curley left school at fifteen and took jobs in factory work and delivery which exposed him to much of the growing industrial city of Boston.

[9] Curley's mother continually intervened to turn him away from his father's unsavory associates while working at a job scrubbing floors in offices and churches all over Boston.

Curley involved himself in the local Roman Catholic church and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal benefit society that assisted Irish immigrants.

Curley gained experience in the traditional practices of ward politics such as knocking on doors, drumming up votes, and taking complaints.

He ran for a seat on the Boston Common Council in 1897 and 1898, but failed to achieve the Democratic nomination in ward caucuses each year.

Though the incident gave him a dark reputation in Boston's non-Irish circles, it aided his image among the Irish American working class and poor because they saw him as a man willing to stick his neck out to help those in need.

In exchange for Curley staying out of the mayoral race, Fitzgerald promised not to run for re-election after a single four-year term.

[26] In the previous election for the seat, O'Connell won by a four-vote margin over his Republican opponent,[27] ex-City Clerk J. Mitchel Galvin.

Curley secured Fitzgerald's exit from the race by threatening to expose a dalliance the older man had with a cigarette girl in a Boston gambling den.

Curley was aided by Daniel H. Coakley, a lawyer whose specialties included extortion and bribing prosecutors to bury criminal charges against his clients.

He deliberately tweaked the sensibilities of the Protestant "good government" advocates, suggesting that the Boston Public Garden be sold off and that the historic Shirley-Eustis House be razed for failing to meet modern codes.

[43] In 1918, the state legislature dealt Curley a further blow by enacting legislation forbidding Boston mayors from holding consecutive terms.

Curley expended significant political capital seeking to defang the Boston Finance Commission, which was closing in on the financial malfeasance of his mayoral administrations.

[49] The negative press surrounding these actions ensured a loss of public popularity, as did his failure to significantly address widespread unemployment.

His administration embarked on one major public works project, the Quabbin Reservoir, whose construction contracts were issued in signature Curley style.

[50] In 1935, in a tweak at the state's WASP elite, Curley appeared at Harvard's commencement (a traditional ceremonial function of the Governor) wearing silk stockings, knee britches, a powdered wig, and a three-cornered hat with flowing plume.

[51] Curley's term as governor of Massachusetts has been characterized by one biographer as "a disaster mitigated only by moments of farce" for its free spending and corruption.

He lost the race to State Representative Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., a moderate Republican, despite a national landslide in favor of Democrats.

[53] After leaving the office of Governor, Curley squandered a substantial sum of his money in unsuccessful investments in Nevada gold mines; then he lost a civil suit brought by the Suffolk County prosecutor that forced him to forfeit to the city of Boston the $40,000 he received from General Equipment Company for "fixing" a damage claim settlement.

[55] In 1938, he made another run for the governorship, defeating incumbent Democrat Governor Charles F. Hurley in a close primary, but losing the general election to Republican Leverett Saltonstall, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

[56] In 1942, Curley managed to revive his faltering career by returning to Congress, challenging Democratic incumbent Thomas H. Eliot.

[57] By his fourth mayoral term, numerous investigations had been conducted against Curley's machine during his time in Congress, and he now faced felony indictments for bribery brought by federal prosecutors.

A second indictment by a federal grand jury, for mail fraud, did not harm his campaign either, and Curley won the election with 45% of the vote.

Under pressure from the Massachusetts congressional delegation and in consideration of Curley's poor health, President Truman commuted his sentence after only five months.

His namesake James Jr., a Harvard Law student groomed as Curley's political successor, died in 1931 at age 23 following an operation to remove a gallstone.