Washington DC: Washington D.C. as a policy system seems neither fish nor fowl—through frequently it is rather foul. The city does not possess an economic base of its own per se; its hinterland belongs to somebody else. To assert it is an industrial city, a creature of the industrial age risks furrowed eyebrows. Indeed to categorize it as a northern city–albeit with southern charm and efficiency– is not the way most think of it. Nevertheless, it is an American city and I’m sure that hidden in its canyons of power, lies some sort of an autonomous municipal policy system.
In 1871, the half-built downtown and surrounding neighborhoods benefited from Congressional legislation that provided the city with a government modeled on territorial government. The President appointed a governor, and a upper chamber of the legislature (the lower being elected), and a “board of public works” with considerable powers, including the power to tax. The district was awarded a non-voting seat on the Congressional committee that administered/governed its operations. In an amazing act of hypocrisy during the Reconstruction Era, the legislation reduced the franchise of newly enfranchised Afro-Americans. On top of all this Congress authorized several new cabinet department buildings (War, State, and Navy) which would be placed in the hands of the newly authorized Bureau of Public Works.
One of the five members of the Bureau was Alexander Shepherd, a native of Washington and a former residential real estate developer. Simultaneously, he owned a number of paving and stone companies and served as board member of streetcar, railroad and banks—all with contracts and business relationships with his public works department. A friend of President Grant, he subsequently was appointed chair of the Bureau, and then Governor of the City. From the Bureau, Shepherd during the early1870’s constructed an administrative/political machine without benefit of an ethnic base or immigrant voting. As a former alderman, then chairman of the city’s Bureau of Public Works he envisioned the building of a modern city and a monumental capitol of the nation. This required, in his mind, an aggressive physical development program from which he linked with extensive patronage (complete with graft/kickbacks) system. The jobs or patronage went not to him, but to the national Republican Party.
His first project was a drainage system, requiring street leveling, extensive street paving and “views” from key monuments and structures. His plan was “to create a city with unrivaled sanitary facilities, and clean, well-paved, well-lighted thoroughfares”[1].In that when Shepherd started the project, Washington was described as a “swampy mud-hole and a physical mess of unpaved and ungraded streets, open sewers, and disorganized buildings” one can argue significant public benefit could follow from this infrastructure. What might surprise the reader is that it was ungodly expensive. But not to worry, the bond issue did not require voter approval but only Bureau of Public Works approval which could be obtained through recourse to methods and payments normally associated with political machines. “Creative accounting” in DC’s financial statements did the rest.
Upon the bond’s closing, D.C.’s debt soared, surpassed only by the total debt of seven states[2]. But the streets got paved and water/sewers installed. The city’s newspapers, however, pointedly compared Shepherd to Boss Tweed (then having his troubles displayed in court); indeed, an atmosphere of scandal pervaded the Town and the Grant Administration at the time. Shepherd came to be called “Boss Shepherd”. The Panic of 1873 hit, and Washington’s fiscal condition headed way south of the Mason-Dixon line. Congressional intervention alone saved DC from bankruptcy. Shepherd was ousted in 1874, the Board of Public Works abolished and Shepherd headed off to Mexico where he made a second fortune. There is a statute of him on Pennsylvania Avenue. Is Shepherd America’s first economic development “Boss”?[3] Whatever! Shepherd’s example suggest that a Boss, absent an electoral machine, was both possible, and augers future “bosses” hailing from obscure public bureaucracies.
New York City: The obvious centerpiece of ethnic-based machines is New York City’s Tammany Hall—and the obvious example of typical ethnic machine behavior is Boss Tweed. The Scots-Irish Tweed was a long-standing state politician, previously elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and appointed to the New York County Board of Supervisors in 1858. The latter institution was as important to the Tweed patronage machine as was Tammany. Tweed became Tammany’s Grand Sachem and assumed the “Boss” title in 1863. State constitutional charter reform provided more local control and Tweed became NYC’s Commissioner of Public Works. Other Tweed Ring leaders assumed the Commissioner of Parks and Finance Department. Infrastructure, public buildings (courthouse) and parks were how the Ring made its profits. He took over through elections (Mayor A. Oakley Hall) New York City’s government in 1869.
The scandal erupted in 1871[4] and by 1873 Tweed was in jail and the Ring broken. Tweed was arrested in 1872. Despite its contemporary image, and the extent of its graft and corruption, the Tweed Ring’s reign was surprisingly short and its fall rapid. The tale of Tweed exposes the more complex nature of machines and their policy-process—Tweed, for instance, made money for his Ring and provided little to the ethnic voter. In Tweed’s place, New York’s old (1789) Tammany Hall got its first Irish boss (Kelley) in 1872–after Boss Tweed had been convicted and sent to jail, permitting the Irish to capture the organization.
The famous Tammany ethnic machine came together after Irish John Kelley (and later Richard Croker) became Grand Sachem in the wake of Tweed’s breakup. These two bosses stacked the machine and city government with Irish and Irish proxies; that version of the Tammany machine would persist in some form through the 1950’s and early 1960’s. In the nineteenth century, Tammany was for all practical purposes an “Irish” machine. It was resistant to other non-Irish immigrants and its core leadership and focus was Irish. This worked well enough in late nineteenth century New York City where Irish were a large percentage of the voting population[5], but not so well in places like Boston and Buffalo where the Irish voter was not able to dominate city-wide elections. Tammany persisted, however, after 1900, because its boss, Charles Francis Murphy opened Tammany up to other nationalities, making Tammany for the first time a multi-ethnic machine.
Boston: Hugh O’Brien, Boston’s first Irish mayor, appeared on the scene in 1885. O’Brien, businessman and politician, and editor of Shipping and Commercial List, served four terms and was succeeded over the next fourteen years by Yankee Brahmins/politicians and businessmen including Josiah Quincy whose great grandfather can be found in Chapter 2. Boston, in other words, despite a very large Irish population, and a series of ethnic Irish ward-based machines, plus the existence of a city-wide Irish-dominated Democratic party committee was unable to establish a city-wide machine governance of Boston during the nineteenth century (or the twentieth century as well).
Interestingly, a year after O’Brien’s first election (1884), the Republican state legislature transferred control over Boston’s police force to the state itself and approved an independent municipal civil service system for Boston —beginning a micro-management by the state legislature that would continue, some would say, to the present day. The role and power of state government in Boston’s municipal policy-making, especially economic development policy-making, will also be discussed in future chapters. Also, of interest, Yankee Josiah Quincy was elected as a Democrat—with Irish votes—and his administration after the Panic of 1893 was characterized as an example of “municipal socialism” while using patronage in public works and building public baths and parks—a Progressive approach, one might surmise.[6]
Things would change dramatically after the turn of the century and the arrival of “Honey Fitz” John Fitzgerald—but that is a later chapter in our story. Late nineteenth century Boston politics was effectively fragmented: with strong, conventional Irish ward machines (such as Martin Lomasney’s 8th Ward), a city-wide Democratic Irish-led committee in a convoluted partnership with the Yankees who controlled city government and administration—themselves in alliance with the Boston Chamber of Commerce. It appeared that first generation Irish reached accommodation with the Yankees; their sons and daughters not so much.[7] Again, a single ethnic group, the Irish, constituted the almost exclusive core of the ward-based ethnic machines.
[1] Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America (New York, Macmillan Publishing Co, 1983) quote from architect Constance M. Green, p. 214.
[2] Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America, op. cit., p. 214.
[3] Raymond Mohl, The New City, op. cit. pp. 100-101.
[4] There were several trials, audits, but Thomas Nast, a cartoonist from Harper’s Weekly kept the investigation ongoing and Samuel Tilden, a Bourbon Democrat and key leader of the state Democratic Party provided the political insulation and considerable legal and financial expertise to the anti-Tweed forces. He was rewarded by being elected Governor in 1874, and was the Democratic candidate for President in 1876.
[5] In 1890, the U.S. Census records that foreign born Irish totaled nearly 1.9 million in New York City.
[6] Richard Dilworth, (Ed) Cities in American Political History, Washington D.C., Sage, 2011), p. 314.
[7] See especially, Thomas O’Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History (Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1995). O’Connor develops exceedingly well how the Irish formed their American political culture and how that culture strongly impacted their politics and their governance once they were able to capture control of Boston’s city government in the twentieth century. We will pick this up in later chapters and consider how these cultural forces were able to meaningfully shape Boston’s politics for nearly a hundred years, but affect economic development policy-making.
Ron W. Coan 