Political Machines
Political Machines
Some People Liked Them Because...
Some People Were Against Them Because...
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Political Machines
Lincoln Steffens, from The Shame of the Cities (1904)
The machine controls the whole process of voting, and practices fraud at every
stage. The assessor's list is the voting list, and the assessor is the machine's man....
The assessor pads the list with the names of dead dogs, children, and non-existent
persons. One newspaper printed the picture of a dog... down on such a list. A ring
orator in a speech resenting sneers at his
ward as "low down" reminded his hearers
that that was the ward of Independence
Hall, and naming over signers of the
Declaration of Independence, he closed his
highest flight of eloquence with the
statement that "these men, the fathers of
American liberty, voted down here once.
And," he added, with a catching grin,
"they vote here yet."...
The repeating is done boldly, for the
machine controls the election officers,
often choosing them from among the
fraudulent names; and when no one
appears to serve, assigning the heeler
ready for the expected vacancy. The police
are forbidden by law to stand within thirty
feet of the polls, but they are at the box and they are there to see that the machine's
orders are obeyed and that repeaters whom they help to furnish are permitted to vote
without "intimidation" on the names they, the police, have supplied...
Source: https://archive.org/details/shameofcities00stefuoft (PDF Version) Public Domain - No Longer in Copyright
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Political Machines
What tells in holdin your grip on your district is to go right down among the
poor families and help them. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in
Ninth or Tenth or Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night, I'm
usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the fore engines.
If a family is burned out I don't I don't ask them if they are Republicans or
Democrats, and I don't refer them to the
Charity Organization Society, which would
investigate their case in a month or two
and decide if they are worthy of help about
the time they are dead from starvation. I
just get quarters for them, buy clothes for
them if their clothes were all burned up,
and fix them up until they get things
runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's
politics too - mighty good politics. Who
can tell me how many votes one of those
fires brings me? The poor are the most
grateful people in the world, and, let me tell you, they have more friends in their
neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs...
Another thing, I can always get a deserving man a job. I make it a point to
keep track of jobs, and it seldom happens that I don't have a few up my sleeve ready
for use.
I hear a young feller that's proud of his voice... I ask him to join our Glee
Club. He comes up and sings, and he's a follower of Plunkitt for life. Another young
feller gains a reputation as a baseball player in a vacant lot. I bring him into our
baseball club. That fixes him. You'll find him working for my ticket at the polls next
election. I rope them all in by givin' them opportunities to show off themselves off. I
don't trouble them with political arguments.
--George Washington Plunkitt, Politician, New York, 1889
Retrieved From: http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/usra_pol_machines.htm
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http://cartoons.osu.edu/nast/images/tammany_tiger100.jpg
Political Machines
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Political Machines
Political Machines In Primary Sources
Document
Was About...
Evidence Tells Me...
The Shame of the Cities
Excerpt
Recruiting Followers
Excerpt
!
Tammany Tiger
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Political Machines
Issues That I See With the United States By The End of the Century
An Issue I see...
How I Would Change the Problem
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