Political machines were a central part of Gilded Age America, and more generally that part of American history between Appomattox and the reign of Franklin Roosevelt that Moldbug termed the Third Republic (taking the Articles of Confederation as First.) They were mostly found in the big cities, though there was a successful machine in rural Virginia that was based out of the county courthouses. There was a machine in Philadelphia, there was one in Chicago (and still is, of course), and there was a very powerful one in Kansas City. (Powerful, that is, until it made the mistake of nominating a seemingly harmless nobody named Truman to be its bagman in the US Senate. Truman immediately turned his coat and had his own machine taken down for corruption, in exchange for being nominated as Franklin Roosevelt’s third vice-president. So it goes.)
But the iconic machine always was New York’s Tammany Hall[1]. On paper, it was merely a social club for LARPing as American Indians (named after a Lenape chieftain, its officers were called “sachems” and the central clubhouse was the “wigwam”) but underneath that folderol was a remarkably effective organization that controlled the New York City Democratic Party, and dominated NYC politics, for the better part of a century.
Written by the journalist William Riordon, “Plunkett of Tammany Hall” presents itself as a collection of interviews with a senior Tammany Hall leader, George Washington Plunkett[2]. Like most of the leaders of Tammany, he was an Irish-American – though Tammany itself was by no means an “ethnic” society[3]. The interviews took place in the first decade of the 20th century – this was after the Spanish-American War but before the Great War. Tammany was then still immensely powerful in New York City, though its power base was increasingly coming under attack. Plunkett was in his sixties, having been active in Tammany since his teens (before he could vote, he ran errands and helped to herd voters to the polls.) And a handsome living he had made of it. There were his various official salaries, of course (at one point he had managed to hold three separate offices at the same time and draw a salary from each of them.) But more, far more, rewarding than the official compensation for his offices were the delicious opportunities for what Plunkett calls “honest graft.”
Listening to Plunkett boast of his “honest graft”, I’m reminded of Ayn Rand’s comment that there was a certain innocence about the corruption of those days. But innocence isn’t quite the word I’d use; rather, “shamelessness”. Plunkett is shameless; he has no shame, and doesn’t see why on earth he should. Plunkett, you see, never engages in dishonest graft. He has nothing but scorn for the Philadelphia Republican politicians that stole the lead from the roof of the almshouse and sold it for their own enrichment. (Better hope it is always sunny in Philadelphia, widows and orphans.) No, no: Plunkett would never have done such a thing: he’d have convinced the city to replace the roof, then secured the contract for a roofing business he owned, and bought the old lead at a knock-down price. In fact, Plunkett’s “honest graft” was simply self-dealing of this sort, plus what we’d now call “insider trading”, as when he buys up a load of worthless swampland that he knows (and the sellers don’t) has been designated as part of the new park and will have to be bought by the city at a price that will leave G W Plunkett a nice profit. “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em” is Plunkett’s motto, and that, as he points out, is no different from trading stocks on inside information, which was entirely legal at the time.[4]
(The Tammany organization itself was supported by contributions from the members, both membership dues and certain other “voluntary contributions”. Plunkett mentions that a Tammany man elected to a fourteen-year term as Judge would be expected to contribute one year’s salary as a token of gratitude. Naturally it wasn’t only judges; anyone helped into a paid office or employment by Tammany’s effort was required to kick back some of his earnings to help the cause, though it’s not clear whether this only applied to formal salaries or whether the proceeds of “honest graft” were expected to be shared in this way.)
That tells us the “why”of Tammany: political salaries, lucrative contracts, insider trading. What about the “how”? How did Tammany monopolize the Democratic Party for so long, when it was just a racket to enrich a bunch of sleazebags?
As to the first question, Tammany never lacked for challengers. There was, of course, the New York City Republican Party; then, as now, basically a joke, but occasionally competitive with the Democrats. Also active in politics was the Citizens Union, at the time a kind of “Reform” party[5] that contested elections in its own right. An alliance between the Republicans and the Citizens Union had succeeded in electing Seth Low, a “reform” mayor, in 1901, and this had significant consequences for Tammany’s power base. In addition, Tammany’s control over the Democratic Party was by no means guaranteed: anti-Tammany “Democracies” were forever being formed, though Plunkett regards nearly all of these as low-effort rackets organized for the sole purpose of strong-arming Tammany into awarding favors to their organizers. He calculates that the total cost of forming one of these breakaway “Democratic Parties” was no more than $50 in contemporary money[6]; for context, he mentions elsewhere that the annual salary of a judge was $17,500. Plunkett was speaking from experience here, for hadn’t he himself gotten his start in Tammany politics by forming the George Washington Plunkett Association? This was simply a collection of a few dozen friends and neighbors of his with no great interest in politics who had agreed to vote for whomever good old George endorsed[7]; but it was a political following, and followings were the basic commodity of Tammany. Thus the Tammany district leader in Plunkett’s neighborhood sought him out and in exchange for his support, gave him advancement in the organization and a few jobs for his followers.
Which hints at the answer to the second question: Tammany wasn’t simply a racket to enrich a bunch of sleazebags. Sleaze there was aplenty, but there was some genuine idealism mixed in there. For instance, Plunkett is fervently patriotic and immensely proud of the splendor of Tammany’s Fourth of July celebrations. And while Tammany men certainly expected to do well for themselves, they were expected to do well by doing good. Plunkett himself served a few terms in both the New York State Assembly and the State Senate and sponsored laws to establish a number of New York City parks, some additions to the Natural History Museum and various road improvements. He is personally responsible for the existence of the Washington Bridge.[8] All at great personal profit, no doubt; the deal where be bought swampland cheap and sold it to the city parks commissioners at a healthy markup was no doubt repeated with all the other infrastructure projects he pushed through the legislature. Still, when this egregious land-pirate was done enriching himself, his city was enriched as well. “Honest graft”—
The people of New York benefited, collectively, from infrastructure built by Plunkett and his fellow Tammany men; many of them also benefited on a personal level from Tammany’s corruption, and this, I think, was the secret to the organization’s longevity and resilience. In the Hall’s glory days, a loyal supporter who approached Tammany looking for work would seldom go away disappointed. “Plunkett of Tammany Hall” actually begins with a quotation from Charles Murphy, the organization’s head at the time, where he discusses “the doctrine that, in making appointments to office, party workers should be preferred if they are fitted to perform the duties of the office.” (An interesting nuance, that bit about being fit to perform; appointing total incompetents was perhaps seen as dishonest graft.) Followers who found themselves in legal trouble could count on the support of Tammany, which would be all the more valuable in the likely event that the judge himself was a Tammany man. (One of Plunkett’s many, many positions had been “police magistrate”, and one presumes his rulings very rarely went against the Tammany interest.) Widows and orphans, and those made homeless by fires or simple poverty, could rely on the charity of Tammany Hall, which was bestowed without apparent concern as to whether the deserving objects were supporters or not. The Tammany district leader was also expected to immerse himself in the life of his district, as a respectful mourner at funerals, a prominent and generous guest at weddings and church fairs, and the organizer of regular dances, banquets and outings which, for many of the poorest citizens, might be the only big social events they could attend all year.
Having described the “Strenuous Life of the Tammany District Leader” and the efforts that the organization made to win and keep the loyalty of the voter, Riordon asks, “Is it any wonder that scandals do not permanently disable Tammany and that it speedily recovers from what seems to be crushing defeat?” But it was permanently disabled, and the harbingers of its final defeat were evident in Plunkett’s day. “Reform” mayor Low had enacted a civil service law, guaranteeing tenure for city employees, and this struck at the heart of Tammany’s business model. Against this law, Plunkett rails as only an Irishman can. Nothing else so much incites his rage: not the hayseed Brooklyn aldermen who only care about the Gowanus Canal; not even those damned farmers upstate who control the legislature and treat New York City as their personal piñata. (His fondest dream is of splitting New York City off from the rest of the state and having a Tammany governor and Tammany legislature, free to engage in limitless “honest graft” like some Church Triumphant of corruption) In between blaming the law for the suicides of men who failed the civil service exam, and claiming that it drove men to fight for the Spaniards against an America that could enact such a horror, Plunkett tells the story of how Tammany approached one of their placemen for a donation and he rewarded them with… a dime. Evidently, it became much harder to exact “voluntary” contributions from city employees who no longer feared being fired at the next election unless they played along with Tammany’s demands. Even those who felt genuinely grateful to Tammany for the opportunity were that much less motivated to get out the vote, now that their paychecks no longer depended on the outcome of the contest. It was this, more than anything that would destroy Tammany in the long run. (The rise of bootlegging gangs during Prohibition probably had something to do with it as well, of course; once an Italian could go for justice to Don Corleone, did he still need Mr. Plunkett?)
“Plunkett of Tammany Hall” is available here, free of charge. Like most stories of unapologetic crooks it’s a fun read, but I think it, and the story of Tammany Hall, have some broader interest.
For instance, I’m struck by how closely the Tammany district leaders replicated the “benevolent squire” model that was expected of the English country gentleman. They replicated it from considerations of electoral advantage rather than noblesse oblige, of course; still, they replicated it, among people with no reason to love England and the English. The Tammany district leader and the English squire are both instances of a superclass of “generous big man” that I suspect may be a human universal. (Tammany; Squire and Lady Bountiful; potlatches; Anglo-Saxon lords as “ring-givers”; Roman officials beggaring themselves to provide the plebes with bread and circuses, centuries after the plebes had ceased to have any role in public appointments… Zeus or Odin enthroned, and feasting with his chosen and preferred…)
I’m also struck by the similarity between Tammany’s operations and those of the Chinese Communist Party. In both cases, there are the officially constituted chief executives (the Mayor of New York, and in China the mayor of the city or the governor of the province) who in practice take their orders from an unofficial boss (Tammany Hall, and the local Party secretary). It’s not a perfect match: the CCP is officially recognized by China’s communist constitution and periodically engages in anti-corruption drives that have no parallel at all in the history of Tammany. Still, the comparison is interesting and perhaps even enlightening.
Tammany may also serve as a model for anyone who might be interested in building a political machine. Any such persons would be faced with the challenge that the classic Tammany spoils system won’t work (the civil-service law is still in force, and has been joined by a number of other spoilsport laws and regulations on insider trading and self-dealing in office). Still, the business of trading favors for support that was at the heart of Tammany remains unchanged, and something might be done with that.
For the more philosophically minded, there’s the contrast between Tammany and what replaced it: the modern dispensation of bureaucratic civil service jobs and bureaucratic civil service charity. As Moldbug pointed out, Tammany-style corruption led to parks, bridges and museums; the high-mindedness of its progressive successors seems to have mostly led to housing projects and cinderblock public buildings. Tammany’s jobbing seems innocent indeed when compared to policies of affirmative action hiring that seem not to care at all whether the hires are “fitted to perform the duties of the office”. Tammany epitomizes the values of the merchant caste, gracelessly driven by material wealth and focused on material success and with only a retarded schoolboy’s notion of honor and responsibility. Vulgar, perhaps even vile, but there is this at least to be said for material things: they’re hard to fake. The Washington Bridge either stands or falls; Prospect Park either exists or it doesn’t, but either way there isn’t any ambiguity about the matter. But with a Brahmin regime that strives only for airy abstractions like “justice,” how can anyone know for certain whether any policy is a success or a failure? More alarmingly, do those taking the decisions even care either way?
One final point about Tammany is relevant specifically to NRx. In many ways, Tammany’s murky operations and dubious legality were the antithesis of formalism; but it can hardly be denied that if ever there was a government run to maximize profit, it was New York City under Tammany Hall. Tammany’s boorish simony was due only to the instability of its power, perhaps; but perhaps profit-maximizing government inherently produces very few Lee Kuan Yews and very, very many George Washington Plunketts. (The closest thing we have right now to a stable profit-maximizing government is probably the Gulf Arab states and the Sultanate of Brunei, which is not altogether encouraging.)
Still, we could do worse. And, for eighty years, we have.
[1] So iconic was it that when John Barth wrote his allegorical “Giles Goat Boy” long after Tammany’s fall from power, he used “New Tammany” to represent the entire USA.
[2] As far as I can tell, these interviews, or something like them, actually took place. Certainly there was a Plunkett of that name active in Tammany Hall and New York politics at that time who held the offices that “Plunkett” boasts of in the book. Possibly this work was intended as a satire, like the “Alan Clark’s Diary” that a British newspaper used to publish until the actual political diarist of that name sued them. But I doubt it: in the last chapter, where Riordon writes in his own voice rather than transcribing Plunkett, he comes across as fairly sympathetic to his subject and to Tammany’s operations.
[3] In the last chapter we are presented with a typical day in the life of a Tammany district leader. He largely busies himself with constituent services of various kinds, and the constituents seem to be mostly Italians or Jews – no Irish are mentioned by name.
[4] And still is, for sitting members of Congress, but that’s another story.
[5] Later reorganized into a pressure group that promotes “good government” and still active in that capacity.
[6] About 2 ½ troy oz. of gold at that time; a little under $3,500 at today’s prices. Using the same metric the judge’s salary would translate into a little over a million dollars per annum. (Which is even more impressive when one remembers that at that time, there was no federal income tax.)
[7] As Nietzsche once quipped “To become a hundred times greater, just get a couple of nothings behind you.”
[8] A bridge linking Manhattan Island to the Bronx. Not be confused with the far more famous George Washington Bridge, but still a very useful piece of infrastructure.
Cuardach 