The Garden for Gilded Age Municipal Political Machines was the Political Ward, aka, the Gilded Age Neighborhood

The Garden for Gilded Age Municipal Political Machines was the Political Ward, aka, the Gilded Age Neighborhood

Machines, as defined in this history, probably existed somewhere and in some form since 1789. At least two critical drivers shaped the form and behavior of most Gilded Age political machines; a simply huge influx of impoverished, most non-English-speaking immigrants superimposed on an existing fragmented, chiefly business-dominated, yet almost fledging urban policy system. By 1890 rates of foreign born were in excess of 30%[1] in most Eastern/Midwestern Big Cities. Machine politicos were among the very first pure political class found in America and these folk matched the two drivers into a productive machine. They saw their opportunities and took them. Tweed was not an immigrant; he was Scotch-Irish and of middle class roots. He entered politics early in the 1840’s. Tammany as a social/political club had been around since 1789, but committed to an immigrant-oriented, social service ally of the Democrat Party only during and after the 1837-43 Panic. The Jeffersonian, now Jacksonian fragmented policy system had been in place since the start.

 

The real opportunity came from the continuous (to 1920) stream of crushingly poor, mostly, non-English-speaking immigrants who, for defensive reasons alone, clustered together in the oldest neighborhoods and housing their city had to offer. With no social service system of any consequence in existence, the famous social services of the machine obviously filled a gap. In this world, a vote for a turkey or a job was no big deal—after all most had no intrinsic loyalty to a democracy and little experience with it. The key insight is that provided by immigrants clustering into more or less homogeneous neighborhoods, onto which was grafted the political demarcation of “ward”. The ward is the key to understanding Gilded Age (and pre-1920) machines. Ward-dependent machines represented what today are called neighborhoods, and the policy outputs of these machines characteristically resolved neighborhood issues and addressed “people-based” demands (bathhouses and jobs).

 

… the foundation of party organization was not the central committee, but the many city wards. Though central supervision by party leaders developed in some municipalities, in every major urban area the ward or legislative district remained the base of the party framework from 1870 to 1900. The nomination process began at the ward level, with the primary election nor caucus. At this neighborhood, party loyalists nominated the candidate for district alderman and elected delegates to the city convention. The convention in turn chose nominees for such offices as mayor or comptroller.[2]

 

Machines, in addition to social services, ombudsmen, and jobs/patronage, also opposed nativism (anti-immigrant) politicians, parties (Know Nothing), and mobs. Whenever possible, machine policy outputs went to neighborhoods and their residents. From the machine’s eye, sewers, roads, street car routes, and electrification were appreciated through the prisms of ward-boundaries and neighborhoods. Gilded Age machines were not policy neutral as the conventional machine model assumes—rather they were indifferent to middle class-style policy. To the extent, these machines attempted city-wide economic development-like “growth” policies, it was to suck from them graft, kickbacks, abusive bond issuances, and patronage opportunities. This is where the Tweed types made their fortune. And why the business community went after them. Late Gilded Age machines, fearing a fate like Tweed, made their deal with the business community, siphoning off kickbacks from municipal  jobholders (and franchise/contract kickbacks—some things never change).

 

From our policy system perspective Gilded Age machines did pursue a distinctive approach to policy (including economic development-like policies) and, in the context of their day, could be described as neighborhood-oriented and people-serving. Whether or not they are America’s first community developers, I’ll leave to the reader’s judgment, but overlap did exist. Structurally, there was only one place control of wards could lead—not to the city-wide mayor’s office—but to the city legislatures (most cities in the 1870’s had bicameral city councils). As Jon C. Teaford asserts Gilded Age political machines dominated the city councils of Big City America.

 

Although the city council of the late nineteenth century may have played a more limited role in formulating policy of city-wide significance …. It survived as the voice of the neighborhoods … by which the fragments of the metropolis could win concessions and favors from the ever-more-powerful executive offices of city government. It was the channel through which constituents won exemptions or licenses and neighborhoods obtained pavements, sewers, or water mains … Aldermen of the 1880’s and 1890’s were masters of the microcosm and not overseers of the macrocosm. They were big men at the corner saloon but small fry when compared with the bankers and brokers downtown.[3]

[1] Raymond A. Mohl, The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age 1860-1920, (Arlington Heights Illinois, Harlan Davidson Inc., 1985),  Table 4, p. 20 (cited from Bureau of Census)

[2] Jon C. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph, op. cit., p. 176.

[3] Jon C. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph, op. cit., p. 15. A great deal of my perspective on the Gilded Age machine and city councils as neighborhood representatives is drawn from Teaford’s chapter “Neighborhood Power”. This chapter is among  most powerful descriptor of Gilded Age politics encountered in my research.