Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

A booklet published in 1887 gives some account of the organization of the political machines of New York City, showing that they all depend upon the use of a minority controllable vote presumably of men without substantial means and whose political support is therefore purchasable in one way or another. The writer says:

“The machine is governed by a singleness of purpose which produces a compactness against which good citizens can only break themselves to pieces when fighting it from within, while if they organize an outside opposition in which everything is done by honest discussion, compactness is almost impossible of achievement.... The politicians would not be difficult to beat if the people would organize for their own protection and from principle; but it is the matter of organization which is difficult, and no one understands this better than the bosses,” (Ivins, Machine Politics.)

The machine is not peculiar to the cities:

“It is also found at the court house of the rural county, at the cross roads postoffice, the village store, the town hall. The difference is one of degree; the mechanism is everywhere the same.... The corrupt political machine of today controlled by a boss is contrary to the American system of government, and were it not a terrible reality this creation would be deemed an impossibility. It is in its present state of perfection, rule of the people by the individual for the boss, his relatives and friends. It is the most complete political despotism ever known.” (Coler on Municipal Government, 1900, pp. 188-190.)

Nor is the use of the machine confined to the Democratic party; even in New York it is part of the Republican party system also. In an address delivered in New York May 2d, 1880, George William Curtis described the Republican political machine and its operations, how it practically excluded nearly nine-tenths of the Republican voters from the primaries. He stated that the bosses were “huge contractors of votes, traders and hucksters in place and pelf,” who “made personal servility the condition of political success” and were ready to “betray the party by bargaining with the enemy”; “that good men stayed at home feeling” that “politics are tiresome and dirty and politicians vulgar bullies and bravadoes”; that “public officers multiply uselessly that there may be more rewards for political and personal service. Primaries, caucuses, conventions, are controlled by the promise and expectation of a chance of plunder which the machine distributes.” Here is an account of how the votes of working men were used in Philadelphia by the Republican boss McManes, to build up a corrupt political organization:

“This gentleman, Mr. James McManes, having gained influence among the humbler voters, was appointed one of the Gas Trustees, and soon managed to bring the whole of that department under his control. It employed (I was told) about two thousand persons, received large sums, and gave out large contracts. Appointing his friends and dependents to the chief places under the Trust, and requiring them to fill the ranks of its ordinary workmen with persons on whom they could rely, the Boss acquired the control of a considerable number of votes and of a large annual revenue. He and his confederates then purchased a controlling interest in the principal horse-car (street tramway) company of the city, whereby they became masters of a large number of additional voters. All these voters were of course expected to act as ‘workers,’ i.e., they occupied themselves with the party organization of the city, they knew the meanest streets and those who dwelt therein, they attended and swayed the primaries, and when an election came round, they canvassed and brought up the voters. Their power, therefore, went far beyond their mere voting strength, for a hundred energetic ‘workers’ mean at least a thousand votes. With so much strength behind them, the Gas Ring, and Mr. McManes at its head, became not merely indispensable to the Republican party in the city, but in fact its chiefs, able therefore to dispose of the votes of all those who were employed permanently or temporarily in the other departments of the city government—a number which one hears estimated as high as twenty thousand. Nearly all the municipal offices were held by their nominees. They commanded a majority in the Select council and Common council. They managed the nomination of members of the State legislature. Even the Federal officials in the custom-house and post-office were forced into a dependent alliance with them, because their support was so valuable to the leaders in Federal politics that it had to be purchased by giving them their way in city affairs.” (Bryce, American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 405.)

“Machine politics are completely subversive both of democracy and of the principle of responsibility for which democracy is supposed to stand. It constitutes nothing except a system of self-appointed rulers, and the principle of elective representation of which we boast becomes a farce. Public servants and officers can in some way, usually, be made responsible for the administration of government, but political bosses never, or at least not until they have retired with plunder enough to live without politics. The despotism of Russia can lay some claim to legitimacy. The Czar obtains his throne and power by the forms of law and has a healthy fear of something, but not so with our bosses. They nominate our candidates for office and mortgage their support, so that we are ruled by men who are not elected to govern us at all, our nominal officers being the mere puppets of the machine. Public opinion is defied until its patience is exhausted, when it is gratified in some caprice and it lapses back again into indifference and the old game goes on. Property of all kinds is blackmailed directly or indirectly, and business terrorized. Even vice and crime come in for tribute as is well known. This is anarchy, not government, and yet we indulge the pleasing illusion that democracy is a paradise.” (Hyslop, Democracy, pp. 32-33.)

And further:

“It is the insolent disregard of public welfare, the deliberate exclusion of intelligent and honest men from office, the refusal to reason about public policy, the shameless corruption of its leaders, its organized methods of deception, bribery, and blackmail with public jobbery and frauds upon the tax-payers, that make machine politics so despicable in the estimation of the public conscience.” (Idem, p. 268.)

All nominations for public office to be voted on by the people are made by a machine whatever may be the party in whose name they are made. This is true not only of the high offices, such as president, governor, senator, etc., but also of such lower offices as mayor, judges of the state courts, state senators and assemblymen. Sometimes these nominations are made at primaries which are carried by the boss through the local organizations; or at political conventions also controlled by the machine. The details of the secret manipulations under the recent primary laws have not yet been and may never be published and exposed; but those of the old political conventions were laid bare in a book published in 1899 by Senator Breen, an experienced politician of New York. He there describes the power of the bosses and the subserviency of the masses.