Background and Set Up
Ever wonder how the famous and fantabulous Chicago machine came into existence—well, this is how. Through the nineteenth and early twentieth century no single machine or dominant boss characterized its politics. Explanations for this phenomenon include the massive rate of growth and the furious residential sprawl inhibited the development and sustainability of any stable political organization. The county government was always an alternative for a machine and in many ways it offered more opportunities than municipal government.
As far back as anyone can remember Chicago political parties had been fragmented …. There were Harrison Democrats, or Deneen Republicans, or Lorimer Republicans or Dunne Democrats, or any of a half-dozen sub parties at a given time. It was the age of personality politics, a decentralized arrangement based on loyalty to a factional leader. No single king reigned over this urban feudalism. The factions fought among themselves. Alliances were only temporary. They shifted often.[1]
Ward bosses, of the proverbial saloon owner type (Boss Coughlin) aplenty existed, but they had to contend with powerful wealthy businessmen, many of which exhibited a reformist bent, such as father and son Carter Harrisons, William Lorimer and others. The growth politics of the city, the famous Chicago Plan of Burnham, kept business interest in municipal politics alive and well for decades. While the Irish played their usual influential role in politics, they were quickly dwarfed, at least countered, by a flood of immigrant nationalities—not to mention the substantial infusion of domestic internal migration from all regions and political cultures. It always had a competitive party system (including of all things the Fireproof Party that elected Mayor Medill in 1870). Robert Merriam, the University of Chicago founding father of political science, and a candidate for mayor characterized Chicago politics as “Classes, races, religions, regions [which] are the background against which the play is built”.[2]
Still Chicago exhibited all the familiar forms of “corruption”, patronage, “boodling” (kickbacks to aldermen for municipal franchises), kickbacks and the other usual suspects. It also put together the Great White City, skyscrapers, the “Loop”, railroad industrial parks, the University of Chicago, settlement and neighborhood movements, “Hog Butcher of the World, stormy, husky, brawling, city of the Big Shoulders”[3], with a metropolitan growth rate that made it America’s Second City. But whatever else it was, Chicago never before had put together a city-wide boss or machine. It was a city of saloon-based ward bosses, and factional leaders whose electoral coalitions persisted long enough to become “wings” of the two parties. If anything, business involvement (the Civic Federation/ Commercial Club, Chicago’s one percenters) was so powerful in policy it may as well have been a political party. Chicago was a city whose politics rested on a pluralism of elites—but no city-wide political organization.
That began to change with Prohibition which, needless to say, put a crimp on the saloon-based ward bosses who dominated much of the Democratic Party’s city apparatus. “The new breed politicians were better educated and more professional in their demeanor than their roguish predecessors … instead involved themselves in construction, law, real estate and insurance. Central to the new breed personality was a willingness and a desire to coalesce into a unified political organization”.[4] The Democratic Party was assisted in this endeavor by being the unwitting beneficiary of Chicago’s population demographics during the twenties. During that decade, Chicago’s population grew by over 700,000 to almost 3.4 million—but its suburbs also grew spectacularly as well. That meant that older, more prosperous, Republican voters were leaving town and Catholic and Jewish voters were settling in. During the decade thirty new Catholic parishes were established, and by the end of the decade two-thirds of Chicago’s population were either foreign born or children of foreign born[5]. World War I opened Chicago’s doors to the Great Migration, but as we shall see, that benefited the Republicans. Again, as we have consistently seen, population mobility has been critical to our economic development history—this time affecting the composition and dynamics of the Chicago policy system.
Sometime after 1900, Democrat Roger Sullivan, a ward boss of Irish persuasion began an incredibly drawn out assembly of allied factions, drawing away refugees from the other sub-factions. “Sullivan was able to convince various ethnic and factional chieftains of the benefits of unity” so that by the early 1920’s the Democratic Party, more or less, consisted of three relatively equal size wings. [6]Sullivan died in 1920 and was succeeded by George Brennan. Brennan was ready to go after city hall in the mayor elections of 1923. He needed a candidate to do so, however, but before we introduce him, it is necessary and proper that we tell the story of Chicago’s most outlandish, colorful is too weak a word, political character of the twentieth century—the Republican Big Bill Thompson
Big Bill Thompson
“For the most part, critics have dismissed Thompson as a creature of the 1920’s, more related to style than substance. He is the fat demagogue who appealed to the Germans [during World War I] and Irish with his tirades against the king of England”[7]—he, without any doubt had much of “The Donald” (Trump) in him. But Thompson was much more than that—whether he realized it or not—and he probably did. It was Thompson that welcomed and took advantage of our newly-arrived working class and built it into Chicago’s policy system like few before had. Thompson, artlessly, constructed an electoral coalition that consisted of Irish, Germans, Blacks, and reformist businessmen, plus the Chicago middle class. With women newly empowered, he included them into his coalition as well. Hiring a modern-style campaign manager, he won a contested Republican primary in 1915, and then three out of the next four mayoral elections, stepping down only in 1931.
Thompson started out as a fairly orthodox, almost Progressive business reformer. He cultivated business groups and took distinctly anti-union positions in his first administration he endorsed the Burnham Chicago Plan and proceeded to set in motion, the various construction projects that would over the course of this various administrations, transform Chicago’s waterfront and Chicago’s downtown. With some reluctance he embraced Prohibition years before it was approved, closing down over 7,000 pubs in 1915. He even aspired to the Senate—but he never got there. Somewhere, somehow, however, it isn’t evident why, a new Big Bill slowly assumed shape in time for his second election in 1919.
Small-scale patronage scandals, followed by indictments by the Democrat state’s attorney (Thompson’s lawyer was Clarence Darrow); Thompson defended Blacks against Italians on city work gangs—and he continued to hire Afro-Americans for city jobs; and, most of all, his unwillingness to do his patriotic duty and support America in its war against Germany. Commenting that “Chicago is [April 1917} the sixth largest German city in the world, the second largest Bohemian, the second largest Norwegian, and the second largest Polish”[8], Thompson, consciously, played the war-time Curmudgeon. He opposed the draft. He snubbed the visiting commander-in-chief of the Allied armies. Instead, he doubled down on his big construction projects; calling for more Navy Pier’s, mono-rail/subway system, a town hall in Grant Park. None got built. Much of all this was tied into his campaign for a Senate seat. It didn’t elect him as Senator, but it kept him in the mayor’s office for his second term.
By this point, the middle class and much of business had abandoned him—but they, as we mentioned earlier, were moving to the suburbs anyway. The Democrats were not yet united. Thompson campaigned for German votes; he got them, but it was the black votes that put him in office. Thompson banned “Birth of a Nation” and cultivated Afro-American neighborhood leaders. He hired black patrolmen and when he stepped down from office in 1931, 14% of his legal department were black. The brutal 1919 Chicago race riot was on his watch—but if anything it was a riot of ethnic Democrats against Black Republicans. Thompson did not become associated with the riot and his reputation did not diminish. The new Harding Republican administration did its part as well in providing support and sustenance. And so, Thompson, a charismatic mayor with a flamboyant media-oriented style got through his second term with a largely working class, ethnic, and black constituency. Thompson for his own reasons sat out the 1923 election, refusing to run for third term.
The Same Old Story: a Social Reform Mayor stops ethnics from having a drink
Thompson’s vacancy presented the Democrats with a big opportunity. His second term was, if nothing else, controversial and erratic—pockmarked by bouts of alleged corruption and scandal. Reformist elements within the Democratic Party were ready for another go at city hall, and our enterprising party leader, George Brennan looked for a candidate that could satisfy the reformer wing and unite the remainder of the Party as well. Brennan came up with a long-time reformer, then judge, who had grown into a statesmen role: William Dever. Brennan worked out a deal with Dever, in which the latter agreed not to use patronage to build his own personal wing, and while Brennan could suggest appointments, Dever retained some autonomy. This was not unlike the deal the Tammany’s boss Charles Murphy had made with several “Tammany” candidates. In any case, 1923 was destined to be a Democratic year in Chicago. Dever won handily.
Dever started off well. He assembled a competent, balanced cabinet; hired experts for school superintendent and police, followed civil service protocols, and initiated efficiency and budget reforms within the city government. In particular, he made reform in a poorly performing school system and police departments signature priorities supporting faithfully his new expert superintendent and commissioner. Dever, in true social reform tradition, took on the street car franchise and pressed hard to assume municipal ownership. Things looked pretty decent in the first few months, but by early fall (1923) bootlegging and crime took front stage. Territorial rivalries, shootouts, hits all were reported in the newspapers—and Dever and his new police commissioner had to respond.
A personal “wet” (anti-Prohibition), Dever believed the law of the land was the law; and the law had to be enforced. Moreover, it was clear that corruption within the police department was linked to bootlegging, lax Prohibition enforcement, and kickbacks by organized crime. Such corruption was a cancer to a reformer like Dever, and the bootlegger territorial war made evident to him that crime had gotten out of hand. He launched an all-out war against bootlegging. The Police Chief created a special police unit, arrested hundreds, smashing breweries, closing 4,000 saloons, and inspecting drugstores and soda parlors, terminating 1600 licenses. The media proclaimed that Chicago was the driest city in America. Dever’s Beer War was the talk of the town—and while Chicago residents had never supported Prohibition, at first the crackdown went over reasonably well. But not for long.
Working hard in 1924 to reach agreement on municipal ownership of several important street car/subway lines, Dever concluded a deal and held a referendum in November, 1924. He was crushed—he lost both organization controlled wards and Republican wards. The blame was placed on Dever’s Beer War. The voter and resident had it with Prohibition and supposedly expressed it by rejecting Dever’s most hard-fought reform initiative. Dever wouldn’t back down; the Beer War continued. On top of this, Dever’s school superintendent ran into trouble with the teachers union, and generated sympathy support from other unions. Dever refused to budge, supported his superintendent, driving the teachers union in a public and aggressive opposition position. As he entered into his last year in office (1926) Dever, himself, publically had second thoughts about Prohibition, making it clear that he thought it a bad law—but even bad laws had to be enforced. But by now, smelling blood (or booze) in the water, Big Bill Thompson was back on the campaign trail. He was running in 1927 for his third term.
The 1927 election was Big Bill’s most notorious. His core election platform was “America First”, attacking history books used in the beleaguered Chicago school system. Claiming an international conspiracy, he accused the superintendent of being a spy and agent for the UK’s King George—corrupting the youth so he could re-conquer his lost colonies. He called Dever a “left-handed Irishman” (I’m not sure what that was about?)—and pledged to reopen the saloons, and issues licenses for 10,000 more. The Beer War was described as closing businesses and kicking people out of their jobs. “I’m as Wet as the Atlantic Ocean” he roared. Race and ethnic bigotry on both sides characterized the campaign. Allegations that Thompson was getting money from Al Capone—and that the gangsters were actively involved in his campaign were repeatedly made. And well they ought; they were apparently correct. Thompson won with 52% of the vote in a three candidate race.
George Brennan, looking over the mess after the election, realized that Dever’s reform administration just didn’t work. The alliance of the ethnic and foreign born with reform middle and business classes had not held up from almost the very beginning. If he was to win and hold onto city hall, the Democrats would have to try something else. As for Big Bill his third term was the polar opposite of anything that Dever had backed. Thompson embraced the teachers union and included Chicago’s rising union movement into his coalition. “The recognition that Thompson granted labor in his last term and the experience of millions of Chicagoans during the Depression transformed Chicago into a real union town; later mayors treated labor with the same respect Thompson learned to use”.[9]
Thompson reversed the school reforms and repudiated the “anti-patriotic” superintendent. The Beer War was not only ended, but Thompson’s links with organized crime, never proven by the FBI, apparently continued and were believed to be true by many. Capone campaign contributions were around $250,000 and were clearly significant. Thompson went on a national speaking tour, and was absentee a good deal of the time. He tried to establish an American First foundation. The state attorney general’s house was bombed. The reaction against Thompson by Chicago voters in the 1928 (non-mayoral) primary was significant—Thompson’s slate of candidates lost badly. Sometime in late 1928, Thompson suffered a nervous breakdown—from which, it is believed, he never recovered. In February, 1929 the St Valentine’s Day Massacre hit the papers. The Stock Market crashed in October 1929. Thompson ran for a fourth term against Democrat Anton Cermak and lost badly.
Defeated in 1931, Big Bill Thompson was the last Republican elected mayor of Chicago (as of 2015).
Anton Cermak and the Chicago Machine
Cermak, a Czech, was Chicago’s first, and only, foreign born mayor. The was a (converted) Catholic ethnic—and was thoroughly the personification of that stereotypical politician. He was not angel; he was an outgoing and public “Wet”; he was known as ‘an intimidator’, a large man with a ‘heavy-set’ physique who was capable of unleashing a violent and terrifying temper; He was remembered by old-timers as a “not very nice man”[10]. Whatever his failings, Cermak “rose above his own ethnicity and prevailing nationality conflicts to construct the city’s first truly multiethnic political machine[11].
His rise to the top was equal parts political genius, sheer opportunism, and simple survival—outlasting and outliving his enemies and friends. Cermak originally threw in with the Harrison wing, against the Irish Sullivan. He ran the 12th Ward which provided Harrison with wide margins. He distributed patronage as any ward boss did and ran a tough, and physically combative organization. It was in response to a confrontation between Cermak and a fellow Democrat at the 1915 Party Convention that the famous cartoonist, Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley) commented that Chicago politics “ain’t no bean bag—nor was it a place for the faint of heart”. By the 1920’s Cermak had risen up the party apparatus and was a protégé of our earlier mentioned, Democrat factional leader George Brennan. When Brennan replaced Sullivan after the latter’s death in 1920, Cermak was strategically placed in the new multiethnic party organization that was in process of coming together. “Cermak agreed that there was now only one Democratic party ballgame in Chicago—and that he wanted to become its only pitcher”.[12]
Brennan died in 1928 and Cermak made his play by running to be the Democratic Party chairman. Uniting the eastern and southern European ethnics against the dominant Irish (his slogan was “Get the Irish”). He won. The anti-Irish campaign, to some degree, misdirects us—the reality is that he spit the Irish, capturing substantial elements of its political leadership within his coalition. In particular, Pat Nash and Boetius Sullivan (son of the earlier mentioned Roger Sullivan) were among his closest allies. His campaign for party leadership was a reform campaign “the period of the back room is gone … From now on everybody in the organization will have a voice in its management”[13].
Upon party seizing control, Cermak reorganized the existing Democratic political apparatus into his own image. Multiethnicity was the new guiding political principle of Chicago Democrats. The blueprint for assembling … [the] political machine rested on the notion of depersonalizing politics between ethnic groups and individuals while stressing the joys and advantages of organizational unity. Cermak and his new breed pals saw economic and political glory in having a string of Jewish, Bohemian, and Polish wards bursting with Democratic voters on the city’s west side, marching shoulder to shoulder with other Democratic voters spread throughout the rest of the city.[14]
In 1930 he led the city and county Democratic Party to smashing victories—and in 1931, he was himself ready to take on Big Bill Thompson.
Cermak beat the beleaguered and stressed Thompson by 200,000 votes—a landslide by anyone’s estimation. Despite Thompson’s cultivation of the Irish vote, the Irish stuck with the new machine. Anyway, Cermak took office amidst a Depression in full fury. He promised to cut taxes and budgets, promote efficiency (consolidation of agencies, reform of city purchasing department)—just as FDR would do two years later. “Good government was good politics—and good politics was good government”. In office, whatever he said, Cermak distributed benefits and services as he had as a ward leader. It was said, however, that his most effective technique was not to reward, but to punish. He faced a serious tax and revenue problem in governance—and his effort to raise real estate taxes met with organized opposition for that industry—and litigation.
Cermak was always a wet, and Cermak did not escape allegations of mob/crime connections. He was called “the dictator”, and he extended his authority over the city council—where opposing him meant not only physical threats, but reports from professionals and expert consultants by a opponent who did his homework and new the issues. Cermak’s adoption of reform issues and efficiencies neutralized many business and reformist skeptics. But always, in Chicago, the policy system, ran through the Democratic Party organization—before it proceeded onto the more public policy process. He constantly said, and many came to believe it, that government should be run like a business. To do that, for example, he reformed civil service to make it the best in the nation—and then behind the scenes lurked the party organization. He used and hired experts and professionals. Machines no longer meant hacks. In essence Cermak forged an merger of structural reform, scientific management, and the machine political organization—with himself as its Boss sitting in the all-powerful mayor’s office.
On February 23, 1933, traveling in Miami with newly-elected, but not yet inaugurated, President Franklin Roosevelt, Cermak was shot and killed in an assassination attempt on the President[15].
[1] John R. Schmidt, “William E. Dever: a Chicago Political Fable” in Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli (Eds), The Mayors: the Chicago Political Tradition (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), p. 84.
[2] Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America (3rd Ed), op. cit., p. 212.
[3] Robert Frost, “Chicago”
[4] Paul M. Green, “Anton J. Cermak: the Man and his Machine”, in Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli (Eds), The Mayors: the Chicago Political Tradition (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), pp. 101-102.
[5] Paul M. Green, “Anton J. Cermak: the Man and his Machine”, op. cit., p. 102.
[6] John R. Schmidt, “William E. Dever: a Chicago Political Fable”, p. 84.
[7] Douglas Bukowski, “Big Bill Thompson: the ‘Model’ Politician”, in Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli (Eds), The Mayors: the Chicago Political Tradition (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), p. 61.
[8] Douglas Bukowski, “Big Bill Thompson: the ‘Model’ Politician”, op. cit., p. 66.
[9] Douglas Bukowski, “Big Bill Thompson: the ‘Model’ Politician”, op. cit., p. 80.
[10] Paul M. Green, “Anton J. Cermak: the Man and his Machine”, in Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli (Eds), The Mayors: the Chicago Political Tradition (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), p. 99.
[11] Paul M. Green, “Anton J. Cermak: the Man and his Machine”, op. cit., p. 90
[12] Paul M. Green, “Anton J. Cermak: the Man and his Machine”, op. cit., p. 102.
[13] Paul M. Green, “Anton J. Cermak: the Man and his Machine”, op. cit., p. 103.
[14] Paul M. Green, “Anton J. Cermak: the Man and his Machine”, op. cit., p. 104.
[15] Characteristic of Cermak’s robust reputation, it has been a long-standing allegation, allegedly started by Walter Winchell, that Frank Ziti and the Chicago mob assassinated Cermak; supposedly the attempt was not against FDR. There is no proof. Given the assassin’s behavior, and the fact his hand was hit immediately previous to firing, it is probably more believable that FDR was the target. Interestingly, the same allegation has been made concerning JFK.
Ron W. Coan 