URBAN BOSSES AND MACHINE POLITICS

When Chicago mayor and political boss Richard J. Daley died in office in 1976, obituaries not only lamented his passing but commented on the demise of urban political machines. Thirteen years later when his son, Richard M. Daley, was elected mayor, critics warned of a "pin-striped machine," in which the Loop's politically connected lawyers would replace old-style precinct captains. But the father had once told the son, "I can put you on the ballroom floor, but you'll have to dance for yourself." To the critics' surprise, in the early days of the younger Daley's first administration, the music was that of reform.

The Daley family saga illustrates the complexity of urban politics. Call a politician a boss rather than a leader, label party structure a machine rather than an organization—either sends the voter a clear message. That is why the prototype of the political boss, William M. Tweed, proclaimed himself to be a "Statesman!" Whether Robin Hood or scoundrel, corrupter or modernizer of cities, omnipotent dictator or mere cog in the many-spoked wheel of municipal government, the boss is an urban institution that must be understood if one is to know the history of America's cities.

A century ago, when he wanted to reinforce his belief that local government in the United States was a conspicuous failure, James Bryce described the boss as "dominant among his fellows.... He dispenses places, rewards the loyal, punishes the mutinous, concocts schemes, negotiates treaties. He generally avoids publicity, preferring the substance to the pomp of power, and is all the more dangerous because he sits, like a spider, hidden in the midst of his web. He is a Boss." Reading Bryce's The American Commonwealth, one envisions an all-powerful chieftain controlling every aspect of urban political life. But more often, the power was dispersed. Neighborhood or ward bosses contended with one another for political control; they had to deal with bureaucrats and found themselves confronted with the conflicting desires of competing ethnic groups. Even in cities with one preeminent boss, such as Tweed in New York, George Cox in Cincinnati, Thomas Pendergast in Kansas City, Daniel P. O'Connell in Albany, or Daley in Chicago, he was not so much Bryce's spider as a big fish in a large pool, who had to contend with sharks.

Incipient bosses, such as Joel Barlow Sutherland of Philadelphia, and machines like Tammany Hall existed in one form or another as early as the 1780s. But the classic age of the machine began after the Civil War and continued until the Great Depression. It is no coincidence that this was also the age of the rise of America's industrial cities. In the preindustrial city, politics was left to the amateur; just as labor specialized in other ways with the rise of industrialism, politics emerged as a distinct and full-time professional pursuit.

The boss and his machine helped cope with the enormous changes brought about by rapid urbanization. New York City's population increased by more than 800,000 between 1820 and 1870. By the latter year, the height of the Tweed Ring's activity, Irish and German immigrants composed almost half of the city's population. The growing numbers placed increasing pressure on the inadequate urban infrastructure—the streets, buildings, transportation—and what welfare services there were. Smaller cities like Cincinnati witnessed a similar breakdown in services during the 1880s and 1890s. That city's fire marshal, reflecting on the small size of his force, feared that if two fires erupted at once, it would mean disaster. The water supply ran short, and the lack of sewers created a health hazard. Because the structure of urban government incorporated the principle of the separation (and therefore fragmentation) of powers, it was difficult to respond to such needs.

One theory contends that the boss and the political machine arose to cope with the problems the official city government could not solve. According to this view, the machines were parallel governments that functioned to meet the needs of the public. In turn, a grateful community offered its allegiance and votes. The boss helped someone find a job, filled the coal bin in winter, brought a turkey to the table at Christmas, and performed many other useful functions. Businessmen, eager to build trolley lines or develop neighborhoods, turned to the bosses for assistance in winning monopolistic franchises or avoiding permit and licensing restrictions. Gamblers and racketeers sought the machine's help in being allowed to conduct their illegitimate businesses. In return, the recipients of favors contributed to the politicians' war chests.

The boss not only provided such services but did much to modernize American cities, for construction meant jobs and jobs meant patronage. As a consequence, the machine politician was willing to spend and borrow with abandon in order to pave and light streets, construct sewers, and generally improve the urban infrastructure. His motivation might have been self-interest, but the result was a better city environment despite the cost, which often was excessive. The famous Tweed Courthouse near New York's City Hall cost nearly twice as much to build as the price of Alaska, which was purchased around the same time. Similarly, in the twentieth century, Kansas City's Boss Pendergast devised a ten-year plan that involved a massive public works program—and lined many pockets as well.

It has been contended that the corruption that accompanied such building simply greased the wheels of urban growth and that the "big payoff" was necessary to get things done. For instance, machine politicians, especially between 1870 and 1920, were among the major promoters and facilitators of spectator sports. Political pull helped build ballparks and racetracks at the cheapest, most accessible sites and protected them and boxing clubs from competition and police interference. As politics promoted spectator sports, sports added luster to a politician's popularity.

"I work for my pocket all the time," testified Richard Croker, one of Tweed's successors, and the legendary ward boss George Washington Plunkitt unabashedly remarked, "I saw my opportunities and took 'em." Such men would have argued that they were doing well by doing good.

Defenders of the bosses usually play down their corruption. Instead, they stress that the political machine offered a vehicle of social mobility, especially for immigrants, and most particularly for the Irish. Tweed's Irish successors in Tammany Hall (Tweed himself was native-born of Scottish Protestant stock), as well as Frank Hague of Jersey City, Edward J. Kelly, Patrick A. Nash, and Daley of Chicago, C. A. Buckley of San Francisco, David L. Lawrence of Pittsburgh, and O'Connell of Albany were some of the leading figures in the Irish Machine Politics Hall of Fame. Blocked from more traditional activity by entrenched wasps, the Irish went where the signs "Irish Need Not Apply" had not been raised. Hence, they, and after them other ethnic groups, flocked to politics, sports, and crime in an effort to make a living and climb the economic ladder.

Critics of the bosses and their place in American history counter that such an interpretation sentimentalizes machine politicians. Careful studies of urban fiscal politics have found scant evidence of the big spending required to establish a large-scale patronage organization. The pork in the pork barrel seems to have been paltry. Moreover, they contend that the voters didn't need patronage because of the broad occupational and property mobility that pervaded the American urban scene; nor did city dwellers want to pay the increased property taxes that accompanied escalating costs associated with bossism. Since the machines' coffers were more modest than they appeared, they did not serve many ethnic groups apart from the Irish, who jealously guarded the limited political resources. Electoral demand had to be balanced with resource supply.

Whichever interpretation one accepts, it cannot be denied that a perceived escalation in costs and corruption gave rise to many reform movements. One observer has suggested that American city dwellers are willing to tolerate a "reasonable" level of graft and corruption, but when it gets too high, they balk. It is at that time that urban reformers have the best chance to seize power from the machines. Cost, then, can act as a trigger for reform. On the other hand, successful reform movements did not always ensure more efficient and less expensive government. At the turn of the century during the Progressive Era, for instance, inflation often propelled increased costs, resulting in higher taxes under reform governments and government structures such as the city manager and commission. Moreover, once in control, the "goo-goos" (good-government advocates) often found that corporate efficiency could not easily be transplanted to the public sector.

Reformers, however, had other goals besides less expensive government and structural change. Frequently, they were concerned with the morals of the community and advocated changes that would limit or eliminate drinking, wipe out prostitution, or curtail commercial and leisure activity on Sundays. Occasionally, they promoted environmental improvements tied to the new profession of city planning. Some supported social reform such as factory safety laws, minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws, and protective legislation for women and children. It was not unusual, however, for the bosses to advocate many of the same changes. Although the machines seemed less concerned with their constituents' morality, it was to their advantage to improve the quality of urban life, for such action won them community support. The line between bosses and reformers was not always as sharp as the critics of machine politics contend.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons machines lasted long into the twentieth century despite the forces working against them. Many expected federal welfare measures stemming from the New Deal to weaken if not eliminate the need for the local political machine. It has been shown, however, that in many cities such as Pittsburgh and Kansas City federal largess actually strengthened them.

Nevertheless, a better-educated electorate, the acculturation of immigrants and their families into the American mainstream, civil service reform, and television campaigning all militated against the continuation of the classic political machine in post-World War II America. With the machine rooted in the nation's industrialization, the shift to a postindustrial economy further diluted its power. There were fewer unskilled jobs in a high-tech society and businesses moved farther and farther from city centers, robbing urban governments of their tax base and machine politicians of their resources.

The boss and his machine, however, is still perceived to exist and remains a staple of attack during political campaigns. When one considers the needs of today's urban ghetto population, there would seem to be room for a politician who offers quick and easy solutions to its problems. But the facts that resources have dwindled and many city dwellers are black are among the significant changes that have taken place since the classic age of bossism. For a time it did not seem unreasonable to assume that a new age of black bosses might emerge; the election of a large number of black mayors pointed in this direction. As, paradoxically, minorities composed urban majorities or came close to doing so, Wilson Goode in Philadelphia, Harold Washington in Chicago, and David Dinkins in New York City represented only the tip of the iceberg. In smaller cities, as well, demographic trends permitted the rise of black politicians to positions of prominence. But taking power in financially strapped cities weakened by crime, drugs, and a rotting infrastructure is not the same as assuming control in urban centers on the cusp of a dynamic economy.

When Richard M. Daley sat down at his father's old desk on the fifth floor of Chicago's City Hall after defeating a black candidate, he danced to his own tune. But as the twentieth century drew to a close, Americans looked at their cities and recognized that the days of Tweed had long passed, but urban politics retained a familiar quality.

John M. Allswang, Bosses, Machines, and Urban Voters (1986); Bruce M. Stave and Sondra Astor Stave, eds., Urban Bosses, Machines, and Progressive Reformers (1984).

Bruce M. Stave

See also City Government; City Planning; Corruption; Daley, Richard; Progressivism; Tammany Hall; Tweed Ring; Urbanization.