Machine Politics

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A. The Spoils System

1.Growth of government--as government began to do more, opportunities for awarding and procuring government jobs and contracts became a way to award political friends and punish political enemies.

2. Bipartisan Graft--political parties accuse each other of abusing political patronage constantly--it is the one means of regaining influence when out of power.

a. Recent example--in 2006, the Democratic Party regained control of the House of Representatives in part because of the Mark Foley incident, and the continuing ethical allegations lodged against majority whip Tom DeLay--just as the Republican Party had taken control of the same House in  1994 be accusing the Democratic Party of malfeasence (and the "Contract on With America").

B. Graft--George Washington Plunkitt was a proud practicioner of what he called "honest graft," in opposition to "dishonest graft." Plunkitt was a long-time state senator in New York, as rose through the ranks at Tammany Hall to a position of leadership within the organization. Plunkitt gained much of the considerable wealth he acquired through using his knowledge of ongoing transportation projects

1. Honest Graft--as Plunkitt defined it, honest graft was defined by the pursuit of those policies and plans that would simultaneously benefit the state, the party, and the individual politician.

2. Dishonest Graft--that which placed  personal gain above all else

C. Government services--as cities grew in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it became apparent that it was necessary to provide a whole host of services (garbage pick-up, sewers, potable water, transportation, police, fire protection, and eventually utility services) that had not been provided in cities to this point.

1. Garbage pick-up--before the 1890s, garbage was not picked-up on a regular basis in the most cities--it would simply be thrown in the  alleys  and streets, where pigs (and rats and other vermin) would dispose of it. Or it would rot. As populations in cities grew,  and the amount of garbage to be disposed of grew along with it, this situation became intolerable, and firms were contracted by cities to haul garbage to specific sites to dispose of it.

a. Horses--dead animals were another disposal headache in large cities. Before the advent of motorized transportation like trucks, deliveries in cities were accomplished by horse and wagon (actually, this continued to be the case for years after trucks were introduced,  as well). These animals often died on the job, and were left in the streets by their owners or drivers.

2. Sewers--in early cities, chamber pots containing "night soil" were simply thrown out of the nearest window the following morning. Privys (outhouses) also provided places to collect human waste. As tenement buildings were constructed in cities, they were built without running water--and therefore, many families would share these privys.

a. Open sewers--as it became apparent that this situation was quickly becoming intolerable, open sewers--nothing more than ditches--were constructed to carry away this waste. This accomplished little in alleviating the stench, however.

3. Potable Water--when people started to become aware that a number of diseases--dysentery and cholera were the two most prevalent and deadly--were carried by water-borne pathogens, securing a safe supply of drinking water became a worth-while  expenditure for municipalities.

4. Transportation--to  accommodate all of the people now living in cities at the turn of the 20th century, housing moved further from the center of cities, and necessitated the construction of light rail lines to move large numbers of people from their residence to their  place of work. Private companies largely provided this service--but their rates were regulated by the franchise they were granted,  and an area of contestation between these companies and their riders.

5.  Public Utilities--companies providing this electrical light rail service had to build power stations and  a power grid to provide the electricity to run these trains--providing power to people in cities was an after thought. Once it became a paying  proposition, however, rates for this service also came under regulation by the local government.

6. Police--police hiring became a way to reward party regulars. Police were also capable of using graft themselves, taking bribes and other favors in return for selectively enforcing the law

7. Fire--less lucrative than police work (although before fire companies became municipally-controlled,  more of graft-style opportunities existed).

D. The Irish and Urban Politics--in the popular imagination, urban political machines and urban political corruption arrived on American shores with Irish immigrants, but the reality was that Irish immigrants simply arrived in the United States, and settled in urban areas, at an opportune time.

1. White Male Suffrage--Irish arrived in US just as the right to vote was being extended to all white males; their ability to speak English gave them an advantage over Germans (who were more numerous, but did not settle almost exclusively in cities) and other later-arriving immigrant groups.

2. Patronage and Ethnic Group Identity--by giving patronage positions to "countrymen," Irish helped to cement a new identity for themselves (Irish, over Dubliner or Corkian or some other village in Ireland).

3. Machines not exclusively Irish--nor exclusive to the Democratic Party. Although the Irish rose to the top of the heap in New York and Chicago, they did not  control all urban machines; Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo (outside of the "Golden Rule" Jones era) all had machines run by native white Republicans in the late 19th century