Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2810) is a series of interviews between William L. Riordon and George Washington Plunkitt of the Tammany Hall political machine. Plunkitt brazenly discusses corruption and a sanctimonious contempt for rivals.
The famous first chapter on the differences between 'honest' and 'dishonest graft'.
The second chapter however presents a novel model of voting behavior. Voters themselves are personalistic and promise their vote, perhaps in exchange for nothing, perhaps to get in early on a pyramid scheme. All other political actors, from the block leaders up, are rational actors who compete over the set of buyable votes. Chapter 6 builds on this; the now established Plunkitt buys votes through patronage and philanthropy rather than collecting promises. Chapter 14 describes further how these 'democracies' are created.
Third chapter makes an uncommon point that professional government is not necessarily complementary to institutional government. "[P]arties can't hold together if their workers don't get the offices when they win".
Chapter 10 details conflict within the Democratic Party, between Tammany Hall and upstate campaigns, and also between Tammany and Brooklynites.
Chapter 11 details the political landscape of New York City.
- Plunkitt runs the 15th district; "a cosmopolitan is needed to run it successful"
- Dan Finn runs the Battery district. "Maybe you'd think that a court justice is not the man to hold a district like that, but you're mistaken. Most of the voters of the district are the janitors of the big office buildings on lower Broadway and their helpers. These janitors are the most dignified and haughtiest of men."
- Tom Foley runs the 2nd district sells whiskey
- Pat Ryder runs the 3rd district
- Johnnie Ahearn runs the 4th district, "about half Irishmen and half Jews. He is as popular with one race as with the other. He eats corned beef and kosher meat with equal nonchalance, and it's all the same to him whether he takes off his hat in the church or pulls it down over his ears in the synagogue."
- "As you go farther uptown you find a rather different kind of district leader. There's Victor Dowling who was until lately the leader of the Twenty-fourth. He's a lulu. He knows the Latin grammar backward. What's strange, he's a sensible young fellow, too. About once in a century we come across a fellow like that in Tammany politics. James J. Martin, leader of the Twenty-seventh, is also something of a hightoner and publishes a law paper, while Thomas E. Rush, of the Twenty-ninth, is a lawyer, and Isaac Hopper, of the Thirty-first, is a big contractor."
TODO: map these!
Reading Notes
The important detail that needs to be read between the lines is that the author is criticizing/nudging reformers, etc., towards compassionate politics. "What tells in holdin' your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families and help them in the different ways they need help." "If there's a family in my district in want I know it before the charitable societies do... The consequence is that the poor look up to George W. Plunkitt as a father, come to him in trouble--and don't forget him on election day." "I can always get a job for a deservin' man." (all quoted from chapter 6)
Similarly, Plunkitt advocates for temperance in chapter 19.
It works as propaganda because it fits with what the general public believes about politics, and discusses the real problems of poverty in a frank manner, without addressing the antidemocratic, covert, and violent schemes that actually reinforced political machines.