The Tweed Ring and Tammany Hall Machine Politics (Back by Request)

The late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries in America are often referred to as the “Gilded Age.” The origin of this name is usually attributed to Mark Twain who co-authored a novel entitled The Gilded Age. The term is metaphoric on several levels. It can be taken to reference an obsession with appearances. Unlike “golden,” which has positive associations of beauty and value, the word “gilded” carries connotations of cheap commercialization, shoddiness, and fakery. Twain’s novel is about social climbers and get-rich-quick schemers who are all show and no substance, like a gold-painted trinket. “Gilded Age” also suggests a fascination with gold itself and with the wealth and power that gold symbolizes.

Concern with gold was certainly heightened by U.S. money being minted in scarce gold coins. In addition, gilding, in the sense of gold plating, is often done to make objects beautiful that must also be strong and durable, because gold itself is a soft metal. This might reflect an American sentiment of that era that their efforts toward culture and refinement were just a veneer over a strong but coarse base. All interpretations of the meaning of “Gilded Age” carry an element of irony, however. Perhaps this sense of the ironic is more insightful than any particular interpretation of the term in describing an age of such extremes of wealth and poverty, opportunity and disaster, high standards and low practices, advancement and decay.

The population of post-Civil War America ballooned with a new tide of immigration. In spite of the terrible losses during the war, the census of 1870 reported a population of 39 million Americans, up over 25% from the decade before. The U.S. had become the third most populous nation in the Western world after Russia and France. While farmers struggled and barely maintained their numbers, business and industry boomed with America’s increasing demand for goods and services.

From afar, in countries with repressive social and political structures, stagnant economies, depressed wages, and high unemployment, America seem like a dreamland of opportunity to millions who had no hope of bettering their situation in their native country. Immigration surged, providing industry with a huge new labor force. Immigrants did well if they had a skill, money to start a business, or relatives already in the U.S. who could help them get started. Most immigrants, however, were unskilled, poor, and found themselves without support in America.

When the immigrants arrived on American shores, they gravitated toward established enclaves of people with the same language and customs. These cultural and ethnic clusters often amounted to little cities within cities that provided support, assistance, and protection for new arrivals. Cities became filled with tens of thousands of people who, because they could not afford the cost of public transportation, had to live within walking distance of their employment. As a result, huge labor-intensive factories and industries were ringed with multistory tenements that offered workers shelter from the elements and little more. Certain districts in Chicago had the highest population density in the world, exceeding even the crowding in cities such as Calcutta and Shanghai.

As immigrants were pouring into the cities, the old middle class was moving to the suburbs, taking with them most of the experience and expertise in governing an industrial metropolis. The posts of leadership were often then filled by people with less experience in city government and less of an understanding of traditional American culture.

In the nineteenth century, government at all levels saw itself a provider of essential services such as roads and as an advocate of justice, but not as responsible for the welfare of individuals. The law was supposed to protect people from being wronged, but beyond that they were responsible for their own fate. Neighborhood and fraternal associations bridged the gap between what government provided and what people needed. These organizations helped people in many ways: they gave material assistance to new arrivals, got people jobs, provided necessities for families in distress, supported small businesses, and provided legal assistance. Those who had received help and eventually made good were expected to help others in return.
Many of these associations gained considerable power using the “good old boy” system of giving preferential treatment, especially in business, to members of the group. Some began to wield their power by mobilizing large blocks of voters to influence candidates, elections, and local political parties.

Eventually the association leaders, generally called bosses, began to run for office and get elected themselves. Their first loyalty, however, was not to their government posts or to any political party but to the associations through whose ranks they had risen and to whom they owed their political and personal success.

In all the large industrial cities, such associations became embedded in city government. This new political landscape where the official government was supported and manipulated by a shadow government of bosses and associations became known as machine politics for its ability to call out the votes “like a machine” to sponsor any political agenda. It is important to remember that these associations sprang up to provide vital services to people who had no other recourse. But because shadow government operated outside the public eye, opportunities for graft and abuse of power abounded.

The most infamous example of machine politics was Tammany Hall, headquarters of the Democratic Party in New York City. Headed by William Marcy Tweed, the Tammany Hall political machine of the late 1860s and early 1870s used graft, bribery, and rigged elections to bilk the city of over $200 million. Some of this money went to create public jobs that helped people and supported the local economy. Some went into constructing public buildings at hugely inflated expense thus lining the pockets of building contractors and suppliers of materials. But contractors and suppliers, and anyone else doing business in the city, had to give kickbacks to the bosses in order to stay in business. Many machine bosses, including Boss Tweed, amassed fortunes as a result of kickbacks and bribes.

Some of the city’s money also went for such laudable, though unauthorized, uses as support for widows, orphans, the poor, the aged, the sick, and the unemployed. Tammany supporters cited these diversions of public funds as benefits to society that worked to redistribute some of the wealth that big businesses reaped from having a pool of cheap labor. Many of the people of New York were not convinced by these arguments of the benefits of the boss system, but New York City residents who complained were threatened or had their property taxes raised.

In 1871, the New York Times published sufficient evidence of misuse of public funds to indict and eventually convict Boss Tweed and some of his Tammany cronies. The brilliant political cartoonist Thomas Nast conveyed Tweed’s abuses to even the illiterate and semi-illiterate masses of recent immigrants. Nast was offered a $100,000 bribe to “study art in Paris,” a euphemism for discontinuing his pictorial campaign against Tweed. Nast refused despite even higher offers.

To escape arrest, Tweed fled to Spain. Ironically, he was identified from Nast cartoons circulated in that country, and as a result was captured by Spanish authorities and extradited back to the United States. Samuel Tilden prosecuted Tweed, which paved the way for Tilden’s presidential nomination in 1876. Tweed was convicted in 1872 and died in jail.

In the wake of experience with political machines, reformers, who at first had simply been against the machines as a matter of principle, began lobbying for more government involvement in providing social services. These were the same services the machines purported to provide, but openly and under public scrutiny. Reformers pointed out that the social benefits provided by the political machines came at terrific public expense.

Americans have traditionally been resistant to any sort of socialism, but the arguments of the reformers made sense on both economic and humanitarian levels. City, state, and national governments began to consider the welfare of society in their planning and budgeting and to incorporate social services as an integral part of the function of government.

Source: Gilded Age Scandal and Corruption