How Politics Worked

When John Lindsay was mayor of New York, a New Yorker returning from a visit to Chicago was met at the airport by friends eager to hear what he thought of the last of the big city machines.

“I have seen the past, and it works.”

George Washington Plunkitt was a high up member of Tammany Hall, the political machine that ran New York City, with occasional interruptions, for about a century. In addition to his position in the Tammany organization as ward boss of the Fifteenth Assembly District he was at various times state senator, assemblyman, Police Magistrate, County Supervisor and Alderman. He boasted of his record in filling four public offices in one year and drawing salaries from three of them at the same time.

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall¹ is his description and defense of the machine system, in particular of Tammany, based on speeches he gave at his headquarters at Graziano’s bootblack stand inside the New York County Court House, written down by reporter William L. Riordon. It is a frank and entertaining, if not always entirely serious, defense of a political system of which most moderns disapprove.

Writing about Tammany’s patriotism, for example:

TAMMANY's the most patriotic organization on earth, notwithstandin' the fact that the civil service law is sappin' the foundations of patriotism all over the country. Nobody pays any attention to the Fourth of July any longer except Tammany and the small boy. When the Fourth comes, the reformers, with Revolutionary names parted in the middle, run off to Newport or the Adirondacks to get out of the way of the noise and everything that reminds them of the glorious day. How different it is with Tammany! The very constitution of the Tammany Society requires that we must assemble at the wigwam on the Fourth, regardless of the weather, and listen to the readin' of the Declaration of Independence and patriotic speeches. You ought to attend one of these meetin's. They're a liberal education in patriotism. The great hall upstairs is filled with five thousand people, suffocatin' from heat and smoke. Every man Jack of these five thousand knows that down in the basement there's a hundred cases of champagne and two hundred kegs of beer ready to flow when the signal is given. Yet that crowd stick to their seats without turnin' a hair while, for four solid hours, the Declaration of Independence is read, long-winded orators speak, and the glee club sings itself hoarse.

…

Tammany don't only show its patriotism at Fourth-of-July celebrations. It's always on deck when the country needs its services. After the Spanish-American War broke Out, John J. Scannell, the Tammany leader of the Twenty-fifth District, wrote to Governor Black offerin' to raise a Tammany regiment to go to the front. If you want proof, go to Tammany Hall and see the beautiful set of engrossed resolutions about this regiment. It's true that the Governor didn't accept the offer, but it showed Tammany's patriotism. Some enemies of the organization have said that the offer to raise the regiment was made after the Governor let it be known that no more volunteers were wanted, but that's the talk of envious slanderers.

The Great Game of Politics by Frank Richardson (Frank R. Kent), published almost twenty years later, is a detailed and well informed account of the machine system as it then existed. The author was a journalist not a politician and, while he thought something like the machine system was inevitable and did some good, he also believed that better informed voters, in particular voters who realized the importance of the primary system on which the machine’s power was based, would and should constrain its depredations.

His picture of how the machines worked is in most respects consistent with Plunkitt’s. For example:

Richardson:

The precinct executive is one of these. He likes the game. As to how he plays it, he chiefly devotes himself to doing small favours for small people—not big things, but little things; not for the powerful, but for the weak. If a boy breaks a window with a stone and gets into trouble with the police, the precinct executive goes to the front for him. If his father has a mixup about his water-rent bill, the precinct executive helps him straighten it out at the City Hall. If his mother gets a notice from the Health Department threatening her for leaving the garbage can on the pavement, the precinct executive smooths the thing out. If his big brother wants to get on the police force or in the fire department, the precinct executive shows him how to make his application and gets him his indorsements. If his uncle wants a job as street cleaner or watchman, or his aunt wants a place as charwoman, the precinct executive tries to get it for them.

Often he can do these things easily. Often, all he can do is to help a little, but it is his business to do it and he tries. Many of the little things he accomplishes himself, because he knows the ropes at the City Hall and the poor people he deals with do not. Many of them, however, he puts through with the help of the ward executive, his immediate political superior. If it is a case at the police station or the traffic court, he may not know the magistrate personally, but the ward executive does, and he helps. That's the ward executive's business.

Often the things they have to ask of the police magistrate are little things that he probably would do anyhow -let the boy off with a reprimand, fine the traffic-law violator $5 instead of $25, dismiss a harmless drunk with a warning. What the precinct executive, cooperating with the ward executive, does is to soften the hand of the law when it clutches his precinct people; unravel municipal red tape when they get tangled in it; help them out of trouble when he can.

All this is part of politics with him. It strengthens him in his precinct. It gives him votes when he needs them. (Richardson pp. 42-44)

Plunkitt:

What tells in holdin' your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families and help them in the different ways they need help. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in Ninth, Tenth, or Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night, I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the fire engines. If a family is burned out I don't ask whether they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity Organization Society, which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide they were worthy of help about the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for them if their clothes were burned up, and fix them up till they get things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics, too—mighty good politics. Who can tell how many votes one of these fires bring me? The poor are the most grateful people in the world, and, let me tell you, they have more friends in their neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs. If there's a family in my district in want I know it before the charitable societies do, and me and my men are first on the ground. I have a special corps to look up such cases. The consequence is that the poor look up to George W. Plunkitt as a father, come to him in trouble—and don't forget him on election day. (Chapter 6: To Hold Your District: Study Human Nature and Act Accordin')

The same pattern, the local Tammany leader as the protector of the poor and powerless, shows up in a Damon Runyon story. A police captain has been half seriously threatening to arrest a man:

I ses I know Sweeney the district leader and he will not stand for you locking me up unless I have done something. The captain ses you know Sweeney do you? I ses yes I do. I ses he ses hello to me any time I see him. Well the captain ses all right then you go on about your business and take your wife with you.

…

Well who will vouch for you? I ses I will Captain. I ses you ask Sweeney the district leader about me and he will tell you Joe Turp’s word is as good as whet in the bin. I ses Sweeney will tell you that I always vote the right way. (Damon Runyon, “Nothing Happens in Brooklyn”)

I like to describe feudalism as a political system where the key resource is controlled far enough down the hierarchy to make the man at the top a coalition leader rather than an autocrat. In medieval Europe the key resource was heavy cavalry. In the machine system, it was votes.

Plunkitt:

After goin' through the apprenticeship of the business while I was a boy by workin' around the district headquarters and hustlin' about the polls on election day, I set out when I cast my first vote to win fame and money in New York City politics. Did I offer my services to the district leader as a stump-speaker? Not much. The woods are always full of speakers. Did I get up a hook on municipal government and show it to the leader? I wasn't such a fool. What I did was to get some marketable goods before goin' to the leaders. What do I mean by marketable goods? Let me tell you: I had a cousin, a young man who didn't take any particular interest in politics. I went to him and said: "Tommy, I'm goin' to be a politician, and I want to get a followin'; can I count on you?" He said: "Sure, George". That's how I started in business. I got a marketable commodity——one vote. Then I went to the district leader and told him I could command two votes on election day, Tommy's and my own. He smiled on me and told me to go ahead. If I had offered him a speech or a bookful of learnin', he would have said, "Oh, forget it!" That was beginnin' business in a small way, wasn't it? But that is the only way to become a real lastin' statesman. I soon branched out. Two young men in the flat next to mine were school friends—I went to them, just as I went to Tommy, and they agreed to stand by me. Then I had a followin' of three voters and I began to get a bit chesty. Whenever I dropped into district head-quarters, everybody shook hands with me, and the leader one day honored me by lightin' a match for my cigar. And so it went on like a snowball rollin' down a hill I worked the flat-house that I lived in from the basement to the top floor, and I got about a dozen young men to follow me. Then I tackled the next house and so on down the block and around the corner. Before long I had sixty men back of me, and formed the George Washington Plunkitt Association. What did the district leader say then when I called at headquarters? I didn't have to call at headquarters. He came after me and said: "George, what do you want? If you don't see what you want, ask for it. Wouldn't you like to have a job or two in the departments for your friends?" I said: "I'll think it over; I haven't yet decided what the George Washington Plunkitt Association will do in the next campaign." You ought to have seen how I was courted and petted then by the leaders of the rival organizations I had marketable goods and there was bids for them from all sides, and I was a risin' man in politics.

…

That is the way and the only way to' make a lastin' success in politics. If you are goin' to cast your first vote next November and want to go into politics, do as I did. Get a followin', if it's only one man, and then go to the district leader and say: "I want to join the organization. I've got one man who'll follow me through thick and thin." The leader won't laugh at your one-man followin'. He'll shake your hand warmly, offer to propose you for membership in his club, take you down to the corner for a drink and ask you to call again. But go to him and say: "I took first prize at college in Aristotle; I can recite all Shakespeare forwards and backwards; there ain't nothin' in science that ain't as familiar to me as blockades on the elevated roads and I'm the real thing in the way of silver-tongued orators." What will he answer? He'll probably say: "I guess you are not to blame for your misfortunes, but we have no use for you here."

The lowest level of the hierarchy was the precinct executive. His power came from the votes he could deliver; everything above him was based on it.

Richardson:

When the precinct executive has narrowed his list down to those who actually vote in his party primaries, his task is a simple one. What he has to do then is to manage one way or another to get himself in a position where he can always swing, in a primary fight, a majority of these. Sixty-five votes will do it safely in the bulk of the precincts in the county in any primary fight, and it is a pretty poor executive who is not worth that many, in a pinch.

…

There are in the United States more than 2,000,000 political jobholders of one kind or another. They range all the way from the President of the United States to the city street sweeper. Nearly all of these are strictly organization men. Practically all of them vote strictly party tickets with unvarying regularity. Moreover, through family or other ties, every one of them is able to influence from two to ten votes besides his own. Some of them, of course, control a great many more. Five is the average. This means a powerful army. It is a lot of votes.

Plunkitt and Richardson each has a cause. Plunkitt’s is the Civil Service system. He is against it:

This civil service law is the biggest fraud of the age. It is the curse of the nation. There can't be no real patriotism while it lasts. How are you goin' to interest our young men in their country if you have no offices to give them when they work for their party? Just look at things in this city today. There are ten thousand good offices, but we can't get at more than a few hundred of them. How are we goin' to provide for the thousands of men who worked for the Tammany ticket? It can't be done. These men were full of patriotism a short time ago. They expected to be servin' their city, but when we tell them that we can't place them, do you think their patriotism is goin' to last? Not much. They say: "What's the use of workin' for your country anyhow? There's nothin' in the game." And what can they do? I don't know, but I'll tell you what I do know. I know more than one young man in past years who worked for the ticket and was just overflowin' with patriotism, but when he was knocked out by the civil service humbug he got to hate his country and became an Anarchist. This ain't no exaggeration. I have good reason for sayin' that most of the Anarchists in this city today are men who ran up against civil service examinations. examinations. Isn't it enough to make a man sour on his country when he wants to serve it and won't be allowed unless he answers a lot of fool questions about the number of cubic inches of water in the Atlantic and the quality of sand in the Sahara desert? There was once a bright young man in my district who tackled one of these examinations. The next I heard of him he had settled down in Herr Most's saloon smokin' and drinkin' beer and talkin' socialism all day. Before that time he had never drank anything but whisky. I knew what was comm' when a young Irishman drops whisky and takes to beer and long pipes in a German saloon. That young man is today one of the wildest Anarchists in town. And just to think! He might be a patriot but for that cussed civil service.

The argument is repeated multiple times, with different implausible descriptions of the questions on the civil service exam and the tragic result of being unable to answer them:

After the battle of San Juan Hill, the Americans found a dead man with a light complexion, red hair and blue eyes. They could see he wasn't a Spaniard, although he had on a Spanish uniform. Several officers him over, and then a private of the Seventy-first Regiment saw him and yelled, "Good Lord, that's Flaherty." That man grew up in my district, and he was once the most patriotic American boy on the West Side. He couldn't see a flag without yellin' himself hoarse. Now, how did he come to be lying dead with a Spanish uniform on? I found out all about it, and I'll vouch for the story. Well, in the municipal campaign of 1897, that young man, chockful of patriotism, worked day and night for the Tammany ticket. Tammany won, and the young man determined to devote his life to the service of the city. He picked out a place that would suit him, and sent in his application to the head of department. He got a reply that he must take a civil service examination to get the place. He didn't know what these examinations were, so he went, all lighthearted, to the Civil Service Board. He read the questions about the mummies, the bird on the iron, and all the other fool questions—and he left that office an enemy of the country that he had loved so well. The mummies and the bird blasted his patriotism. He went to Cuba, enlisted in the Spanish army at the breakin' out of the war, and died fightin' his country. That is but one victim of the infamous civil service. If that young man had not run up against the civil examination, but had been allowed to serve his country as he wished, he would be in a good office today, drawin' a good salary. Ah, how many young men have had their patriotism blasted in the same way!

Abolishing the civil service exams as a requirement for office is Plunkitt’s cause. Richardson’s is voting in primary elections. Political machines are linked to the political parties, Republican or Democratic; their power depends on the ability to control what candidates are nominated by their party for elected offices and chosen as members of its state committee. Since most voters ignore primaries, a precinct executive in a precinct with six hundred  voters can control the outcome of the primary with sixty five.

When these things are considered, it ought to be plain why the primaries are so vital to the machine, and why it is a matter of political life and death to the precinct executive to carry his precinct in the primaries. The machine can lose its candidate time after time in the general election without greatly diminishing its strength or loosing the grip of its leaders. Of course, it is disheartening to the rank and file and it greatly lessens the number and quality of the political pies for distribution to the faithful. It could not be kept up too long without causing a revolt in the organization, but, I repeat, the machine cannot be smashed by defeating its candidate at the election. But if it loses in the primaries, it is out of business. Any organization that cannot carry the primary election is a defunct organization. It either politically disappears or it makes peace and amalgamates with the  faction that defeated it. In rare cases it waits for the wind of public sentiment that blew it over to die down, picks up the pieces, and crawls back into the saddle. But no political machine or precinct executive could possible, survive two primary defeats.

…

Whose fault is it? The answer is as clear as a bell — the non-voter. It goes right back to the statement previously made that to many thinking men the most vital political problem in America to-day is the enormous number of qualified voters who do not vote — particularly in the primaries — that make it possible for the organizations to control city councils, state legislatures in a word, to run the Government.

Plunkitt is describing a single machine in one city, Tammany Hall in New York, but by Richardson’s account essentially the same system exists in both cities and rural counties, with state level machines as well, covering the entire country.

Both books are worth reading, Richardson for a detailed picture of how politics worked, Plunkitt for both that and sheer entertainment — hopefully I have given enough samples to make you want to read the whole thing. Both are writing about the U.S. in the early 20^th century. They raise at least three different questions for the modern reader.

The first is how much of it is still true. Plunkitt expects, at least claims to expect, the machines — and the country — to be destroyed by the spread of the Civil Service system. By Richardson’s description it hadn’t happened. He approved of Civil Service but:

It is an interesting fact that even state and city officials fully protected by the merit system against attack from the politicians contribute as regularly and liberally as those outside of the classified service. Apparently this is due partly to their genuine interest in the party and partly to a feeling that, even when wrapped in the civil-service cloak, it is better to have the machine friendly.

A second question is to what degree Donald Trump can be viewed as a machine boss controlling the national Republican party. It isn’t a close fit, since his power, unlike that of the bosses Richardson describes, comes in large part from his own popularity with Republican voters. But he has, over the last few years, used his influence on the primaries to maintain his control over the party.

The third and most important question is whether the machine system described by Plunkitt and Richardson was, on the whole, a good thing, compared not to the ideal democracy of a civics class but to modern democracy as it actually exists.

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1. Published in 1905, available as a free kindle from Amazon.