Machines and Bosses
Our history distinguishes machines from (1) bosses, (2) city-wide and centralized versus ward and decentralized organization, and (3) their voting constituency, always working class, but possibly one or more ethnic/immigrant populations. With these distinctions made, it will be possible to follow the evolution of this alternative model through the twentieth century and discern their policy outputs and the distinctive actors and processes of their policy systems. That bosses can exist without a centralized political machine is one conclusion we draw from our section on the Cox Cincinnati machine.
In the Progressive Era one can see bosses and mayors becoming one and the same. More often than not the mayor’s office wins out—in the style of Frank Hague of Jersey City and the collapse of George Cox in Cincinnati. Hague indisputably was boss of a machine but he ran it from the mayor’s office. Cox, the machine boss—never mayor–got ousted by a social reform movement/mayor. Curley did not head up a machine, nor was he a ward boss. He put together coalitions of ward bosses supplemented by his charismatic appeal to Irish voters. In short, the trend in the Progressive Era was away from its Gilded Age origins into city hall itself[1]. And then there is Tammany the exception that proves the rule.
Another would be that bosses and the city’s business elite can “get together” for the common good and achieve their own particular objectives.
Cincinnati: Machine Boss, Structural Reformers and Social Reform Mayor
Cincinnati in the Progressive Era offers a case study which includes three of our alternative policy systems. I refer to the famous Cox machine which supposedly dominated Cincinnati politics from 1885 to 1914. His machine last nearly three decades, overlapping Hazen Pingree and Tom Johnson’s administrations. The difficulty with the Cox machine is, at the time, it attracted considerable media attention in the post 1904 and Cox became the poster child for “the shame of our cities”. Described as “the biggest boss of them all”[2], the extent to which Cox was actually a “Boss”, however, is an open question. What’s more, the policy system(s) prevalent during the supposedly Cox machine years corresponded rather poorly with the dominant conception accorded to machine politics today. As we shall see, Cox for many years presided over a coalition of ward-based working class and business elites, including the brother of the President of the United States (Taft).
First, beginning in the late 1870’s Cincinnati witnessed the gradual development of a Republican Hamilton County and City of Cincinnati political machine led by George Cox. Cox, the son of British immigrants, former saloon owner and ward boss, was first elected to the city council in 1879; from then on he held a succession of positions (but never mayor). He held his machine together as Executive Chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party[3]. Despite his control over the Republican Party after 1885 “for almost a decade no party could put together a decisive ruling majority. The city’s political processes seemed frozen by a paralyzing factionalism … [resting upon] the division of the city which roughly coincided with socioeconomic lines … [A]s a result extreme factionalism developed which could, apparently, be surmounted only by appealing to a host of neighborhood leaders and by constructing alliances which crossed party lines”.[4] During these years Cox’s GOP won five successive elections by “uniting powerful Hilltops [a wealthy business residential area] support with enough strength in the [working class residential periphery] Zone to overcome the Democratic grip on the Circle [the middle class, non immigrant wards in the city’s center]. Until 1894, the margins of victory were perilously thin.”[5]
The two, supposedly polar opposite alternatives worked in tandem, forming what was an informal “fusion party”, in what Cox called “the New Order” During these years (and after), the Cox dominated policy system approved a series of structural reforms, including secret ballot, voter registration, strong mayor-council with ward voting, and a professional police force and fire department[6]. The Cox-Hilltop coalition closed saloons on Sunday, something the Tammany-Irish NYC machine, for some reason, left off its agenda; and Cox’s machine was more sympathetic to the Negro[7]. Cox’s electoral support was provided mostly by lower/working class voters, based on the neighborhoods and wards in which they resided. His machine did not have much influence in the middle class neighborhoods which developed their own network of organizations independent of the machine. “Each neighborhood had an improvement association, and between 1880 and 1905 five new businessmen’s organizations devoted to boosting the city’s lethargic economy had appeared … By 1913, moreover, there were twenty-two exclusive clubs and patriotic societies and innumerable women’s groups.”[8]
Cox, after 1894, informally and episodically incorporated elements of the competing Democratic Party into his machine, sharing patronage. In this magnified New Order, Cox was indeed dominant, but whether he was a boss is quite another matter. The “machine” was evidently composed of independent and autonomous elements held together mostly to cement elections so to achieve patronage and policy outputs as variously desired by its different elements. And as Zane reminds us “It would be a mistake to overestimate the strength of the ‘New Order’ Republican [Democratic] coalition” losing in 1896 an important referendum on the sale of a city-owned railroad and amazingly losing the election in 1897 to a fusion party of social reformers and council elections in 1897, 1898, and 1899 to the Democrats. “In all these reversals critical defections occurred in both the Hilltops [business] and the Zone [working class] … indignant over alleged corruption, outraged by inaction over the traction [street car] and gas [municipal utilities] questions”.[9] Between 1900 and 1904, however, Cox won three of the four elections and enjoyed the “golden years” of his New Order machine. Success proved to be his undoing.
Social reformers coalesced and with national media they hammered on Cox and his allies, peeling off support with each issue they raised. They launched by the end of the decade a series of grand juries, one of which alleged personal corruption by Cox. Up to this time, Cox had been an ally of Senator Taft, but in 1910, the latter urged Cox to retire—which he did. The coalition of the Hilltop business elites with the machine was effectively over and in the 1911 election the machine was toppled by Progressive social reform mayor, Henry Thomas Hunt, “the boy mayor” and member of the “holy trinity” (mayors Brand Whitlock of Toledo, Newton Baker of Cleveland) of social reform mayors. Hunt’s agenda included tenement reform, health and social services for school children, streetcar reforms, removal of Cox and his corrupt minions, and he closed the slot machines and chased loan sharks and gamblers out of the city. Because of Hunt, Cox retired from politics and the power of his machine dissipated. Hunt lost the next election and he quickly left town for New York City—a one term social reform mayor.
New York City, Buffalo and Boston Irish-Dominated Machines
First and second generation immigrant voters can differ in their occupations, orientation to politics, their residential location and the intensity of their adherence to their ethnic culture. Working class machines based on an ethnic constituency are likely to experience tensions from generational change. While they may share common ethnic-based political traditions and even a shared political culture, other factors education, occupation and residential mobility becomes more complex in the post-1900 immigrant community/neighborhood. This is especially serious when subsequent immigration flooded the cities with new nationalities (Italians, Poles, Czechs, Jews, Asians, Norwegians, Swedes. Few post-1900 Big Cities are inhabited solely or overwhelmingly by any one ethnic group (as was Boston). Can a machine built or at least controlled by one nationality share itself with other nationalities? The crisis of machines, and urban politics in general, in these years is to adapt to, and accommodate, multi-ethnic cultures and political demands. Different ethnic groups do not necessarily see things the same way, or are willing to be led by another ethnic group’s politicians. To be a successful machine/boss/charismatic mayor in these years, meant assembling and maintaining a multi-ethnic coalition—which is no easy task.
One of the more fascinating Progressive Era contrasts is that of machine/boss/mayoral politics/systems in New York City, Boston, and Buffalo. Each shared a constant: Irish were the largest single ethnic group included in the machine—and the machine’s leadership was Irish. The case study hopefully demonstrates that even the famous Irish machine/boss politics did not fit the conventional one-size-fits-all Progressive Era stereotype.
Tammany after Tweed (1872) was quickly captured by the Irish. Two Irish Tammany bosses (Kelly and Croker) followed Tweed. Tammany Hall decision-making was dominated by Irish ward bosses and Irish politicians. The strength of this Irish machine ultimately rested upon the numerical strength of Irish voters (initially the single largest ethnic group in the City). After the 1880’s, however, Irish voting superiority was challenged by new ethnic groups that immigrated into the city. Kelly and Croker preserved, to the extent possible, Tammany’s Irish hegemony. But in 1902, surrounded by the usual scandals, a resurgent structural reform business community, and a reduced Irish voting bloc, Croker’s Tammany collapsed electorally. Seth Low and his Progressive reformers moved into city hall. At this critical juncture, Tammany faced, if nothing else, an identity crisis. Could it accommodate other immigrant nationalities into its organization—and its leadership?
At this critical juncture, Tammany got, of all things, got another Irish boss—Charles Francis Murphy if you please. But Murphy was an Irishman of a different stripe than Croker. He remade Tammany from the inside out. Murphy, like Cox, never became mayor; to the extent he was successful, it was because he elected respectable mayors with ties to him and his Tammany. But to his everlasting credit, Murphy “integrated” Tammany and shared its leadership with the non-Irish. Murphy, a former Commissioner of the Docks (NYC’s EDO, remember), recruited an entirely different type of Tammany operative and politician. Murphy dealt with the new ethnic groups by including them into Tammany and selecting from among them non-Irish ethnic political candidates—the balanced ticket. Included in this list is our famous George Washington Plunkitt (of honest graft fame), James Farley (FDR’s future campaign manager, New York State Democratic Chair, and U.S. Secretary of Post Office), James Walker (future mayor) and—Al Smith, future Governor and Presidential candidate.
Tammany’s political candidates were no longer simple hacks; they had personalities, policy positions and some independence. Murphy shifted Tammany policy toward social reform agendas (worker safety, child labor laws, honest graft rather than bribes); in other words Murphy embraced elements of the Progressive social reform agenda of the period. Murphy lasted until 1924, but Tammany, although crippled by the social reformer Mayor La Guardia (1933-1945), came back in the 1950’s, and put up a muted fight until Koch in the middle 1980’s.
On the other hand, Buffalo’s Democratic Irish machine, the beneficiary of Irish numerical dominance in Buffalo politics, shared power with a Republican machine during much of the Gilded Age. The Irish machine always found it difficult to share its power with other ethnic groups who moved into Buffalo. As a consequence, only one Irish mayor was elected during the entire Gilded Age. Occasionally reform candidates such as Grover Cleveland, a bourbon Democrat, snuck into power. The Republican Party, chiefly mayor-businessmen, and the Chamber of Commerce usually were dominant players in the city’s “policy system”. During the Progressive Era under Irish boss William H. Fitzpatrick (chair of the Erie County Democratic Party), the Buffalo regime continued its feuding with the other ethnic groups. Italians and Poles (as well as Germans) were more or less driven out of the Irish dominated party. Some went straight into the Republican Party; others fought a civil war within the Democratic Party. Business structural reformers were able to take advantage of this so that in the thirty years after 1900, Republicans controlled the mayor’s office four times to the Democrats two (neither of whom were machine Irish).
Very simply, the Irish machine, despite the Irish being largest single ethnic group, were outnumbered by the other ethnic groups and were consistently unable to forge coalitions sufficient to dominate Buffalo politics during the Progressive Era. The machine did well enough in the New Deal years (although the city defaulted on its debt), but only after the machine was opened up to other ethnic groups in the mid-1950’s did it enjoy sustained success. The machine more or less returned to Irish control in the 1960’s (Peter Crotty and Joseph Crangle), but lost control of the mayoralty when James Griffin (a maverick Irish Democrat) won four terms in office (1978-1995). A renegade non-machine Pole (Dennis T. Gorski) captured Erie County government in 1987—brought about the demise of Buffalo’s machine[10].
Boston is another story altogether. Two factors stand out which impacted the evolution of Boston’s machine. First, the Irish retained ethnic mastery over Boston politics, despite new arrivals, especially Italians and Blacks. But their inability to forge a city-wide political machine led by an Irish city-wide boss such as that enjoyed in Buffalo and New York City after 1900 meant that the hated Boston Brahmin Protestant business sector was able to impact city policy-making persistently. Through the state legislature, the business elites, using Dillon’s Law, were able to strip away crucial municipal powers (after all why was Governor Coolidge playing the decision-making role in the Boston Police strike of 1920), such as public finances and civil service.
The voting power of the Irish, however, meant that charismatic political candidates such as “Honey Fitz” (John F. Fitzgerald) and James Michael Curley dominated the mayor’s office through the 1990’s. Boston’s neighborhoods were politically controlled by ward bosses through most of this period. In effect, there was an Irish ward-level machine, decentralized and very fragmented—without a city-wide boss–but with a charismatic mayor instead. Boston’s Irish politics was brutal, and would remain so for most of the twentieth century. Conflicting or temporary alliances and deep personal rivalries among Irish and other ethnic ward bosses/political officials played a major role in Boston’s governance—as will be vividly demonstrated in our future case study of Boston’s urban renewal programs in the sixties and seventies.
Tammany’s accommodation to multi-ethnic groups permitted that machine system to continue with varying degrees of effectiveness into the 1980’s—when all three of these systems more of less passed on to the political happy hunting grounds. The other two machines did not adapt as well, or at all, and their ability to shape their jurisdiction’s policy system suffered accordingly. Each in some form persisted for nearly a century. Three brief examples of machine politics are an initial support to our position that machines/bosses are not time-bound, but extend in varying strength and forms throughout most of the twentieth century. Machines with their working class constituency should be considered a legitimate urban policy system. To accomplish this task the conventional image-model of machine politics, however, needs to be refined to allow for the incredible machine/boss variation within and across each political era.
[1] The reverse of Hague’s control through the mayor’s office was Boss Crump from Memphis. Boss Crump presided over Memphis; that is not an Eastern Big City so is not formally included in this chapter. Crump’s story, however, further supports the tenuous zero-sum relationship between city-wide boss and the mayor’s office. Crump was mayor (three terms 1910-1915), but gave it up in favor supporting mayors he thought he could control. The first two mayors he supported, Crump could not control—so he tried again and finally got one he could—not before he tried to abolish the office of mayor in favor of a city manager whom he felt he could control. Crump was a businessman (insurance and a Coca Cola franchise in upstate New York) as much as political boss; his voting bloc included blacks (about 40% of Memphis’s population) and Republicans (Crump was a Democrat). In 1931, he was elected to Congress for two terms. He preferred being a boss without formal political office, although he did serve on the Democratic National Committee for many years. He did become mayor once again in 1940, for about 15 minutes, then resigned, left for the Sugar Bowl, and over the next twenty-four hours three other mayors took office—before Crump’s preferred choice was “elected”. He held significant power in Memphis, and was a player in Tennessee politics until his death in the 1954.
[2] Frank Parker Stockbridge newspaper writer, managing editor of several magazines and publications
[3] His chief lieutenants included Charles Taft editor of Cincinnati Times, brother of President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, and August Herrmann, President of the Cincinnati Reds sometimes known as the “father of the world series”. Cox also maintained close control over Board of the New Water Works.
[4] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914” in Kenneth T. Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz (Eds), Cities in American History (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 386.
[5] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914”, op. cit., p. 388.
[6] Richardson Dilworth (Ed), Cities in American Political History, op. cit. p. 334.
[7] The tolerance of liberal Germans for crackdown on moral and vice can also be found in the policies pursued by Milwaukee’s municipal socialist administrations.
[8] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914” in Kenneth T. Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz (Eds), Cities in American History (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 383.
[9] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914”, op. cit., p. 389.
[10] See Mark Goldman, High Hopes: the rise and decline of Buffalo, New York (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1983) and Stephen J. L. Taylor, Desegregation in Boston and Buffalo: the influence of local leaders (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998). By way of disclosure, the author at one time in his career held the chairmanship of the William H. Fitzpatrick Chair of Political Science at Canisius College in Buffalo. He was also an element of the “renegade Pole’s” successful drive to County Executive and served as both Assistant to the County Executive-Economic Development Coordinator and First Deputy Commissioner of Environment and Planning in that administration. During the remainder of the Gorski administration and two years of the subsequent administration, the author served as Executive Director/President of the ECIDA Agency Group.
Ron W. Coan 