Americans by Choice

by John Palmer Gavit

THE POLITICIAN CLOSE TO HUMANITY

The secret of the whole business lies in the fact that political machines, and the political bosses of all sizes and grades who make up their staffs, are powerful and long-lived in just the measure to which they grow out of and identify their activities with the rank and file of the community—clear down to the bottom. The vote of a new-made citizen born in Galicia or Syria or Portugal is just as good for his purpose as that of a Son of the American Revolution—vastly more so if (as sometimes happens) the new voter will follow his “advice” and the old one will not! Furthermore, their vitality, especially in the poorer sections, is commensurate with the constancy of their activities; that is, their practical utility to the people all the time, for all purposes. As William Bennet Munro says:[12]

The work which the party organizations lay out to do, and in large measure actually perform, is extensive and exacting. It does not, as in Europe, all fall within the few weeks which precede an election; it is spread over the whole year.

And he goes on to describe, aptly, why this work is “spread over the whole year,” and how it comes about that the boss, little or big, acquires so great an influence in his bailiwick. What he says applies most aptly to the so-called “poorer districts,” where the foreign-born voters live in the greatest numbers:

It seems usually to be forgotten that the evolution of the boss follows the law of natural selection, which in this case secures the survival of the man who is most resourceful in using to full advantage the conditions that he finds about him. To gain even a ward leadership and to hold this post requires industry, perseverance, and, no end of shrewd tactfulness. He must not be content with doing the work that comes to him; he must look for things to do. As his work consists mainly in doing favors for voters, he must inspire requests as well as grant them. Therefore he encourages voters to come to him for help when they are out of work, or in any other sort of trouble. When a voter is arrested, the ward or district leader will lend his services to secure bail or to provide counsel, or will arrange to have the offender’s fine paid for him. Then there are the day-to-day favors which the local boss stands ready to do for all who come to him, provided they are voters or can influence voters.

Picturing the boss thus as the district philanthropist, the description goes on to enlarge upon the more sinister uses to which the power thus gained is devoted, in punishing disloyalty. And this is even more effective upon those relatively unfamiliar with the niceties, the ins-and-outs, of public administration:

If a word from the boss will get one man employment, a word will also, very often, procure another employee’s dismissal. At a hint from him, the small shopkeeper, the peddler, the pawnbroker, the hackman, can be worried daily by the police or by the health and sanitary officials of the city on baseless or imaginary pretexts—tactics in which, as the history of almost every larger city shows, the machinery is unrelenting and vindictive.

The affirmative side of the district leader’s activity is the one that makes most impression upon the neighborhood. Almost every sort of reformer, who would bring to the foreign-speaking district a sense of the need for voting for a different sort of alderman, for example, lives in another part of town, represents another stratum of society, comes into no sort of natural touch with his foreign-born fellow citizen. But the latter knows the district leader—last winter he got a job, a little coal, a bed in a hospital for his wife; his boy was let off by the police after a piece of reckless mischief; or there was some other human favor; and all the return he is asked to make—cheap enough, to be sure—is that on election day he shall vote as the district leader who helped him in his need asks him to vote. What difference does it make to him? Show him a difference, convince him that something real, something that he can understand, is involved, and he will respond. But nobody shows him. “Uptown,” whence comes the reformer whom he does not know, and whose motives he has no substantial reason to respect, does not understand his life or its problems; does not even live in the ward. The district leader does. He is his neighbor, and he sees him almost every day.

Then, too, the political organization meets him on the social side, provides a club, which in the intervals between elections gives entertainments, has pool tables, provides cigars; used to provide liquor. A spirit of fellowship grows up; the new foreign-born voter gains acquaintance at the natural point of contact between his daily life and the politics into which he is being introduced. The result is obvious.