Documents for Political Machine DBQ

Question: To what extent were political machines beneficial to the public during the Gilded Age?

DOCUMENT A

What tells in holdin' your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families and help them in different ways they need help... If there's a fire in Ninth, 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 fire engines... I just get quarters for them if their clothes were burned up, and fix them up till they get things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics too-mighty good politics. Who can tell how many votes one of these fires bring 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 job for a deservin' man. I make it a point to keep on track of jobs, and it seldom happens that I don't have a few up my sleeve ready for use.

Source: William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 1905 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1963), 35-36. Excerpt from an interview with Plunkitt, a prominent figure in the

Tammany political machine

Document B

DOCUMENT C

The basis of the power of the Tammany organization is the hold it has on large numbers of the poorer classes. To these classes as a whole it is nevertheless, always and entirely an evil. It robs and cheats them at every turn. It makes heavier the already sore burdens that they must bear. It increases the cost of the living which at best is so hard to get. It tends to make health more difficult and deaths more frequent. It levies toll on their contributions to public treasury, and denies them their fair share of the public employment. In the enforcement of the laws in which they are most deeply interested justice, order, and decency have no place. In quarters where poorer classes are compelled to dwell in pollutes, by the sale of license for the grossest immorality, the surroundings in which their children must be reared.

Source: "Tammany Past and Present," The Forum, Oct. 1898, p. 210.

Document D

DOCUMENT E

When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown's, there had come to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and who asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers and become a citizen. Jurgis

did not know what that meant, but the man explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost him anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just the same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote – and there was something in that. He went with the man, who picked up several other newly landed immigrants, Poles, Lithuanians, and Slovaks, and took them all outside. It was a fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party had a merry time, with plenty of beer handed up from inside. So they drove downtown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in which they interviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with only the names to be filled in. So each man in turn took an oath of which he did not understand a word, and then was presented with a handsome ornamented document with a big red seal and the shield of the United States upon it, and was told that he had become a citizen of the Republic. A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man, who told him where to go to "register." And then finally, when election day came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to vote might remain away until nine that morning, and the same night watchman took Jurgis and the rest of his flock into the back room of a saloon, and showed each of them where and how to mark a ballot, and then gave each two dollars, and took them to the polling place, where there was a policeman on duty especially to see that they got through all right.

Source: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)

DOCUMENT F

In an economy that condemned the immigrants to unskilled labor a large percentage of the available jobs were directly or indirectly dependent upon political favor. Aqueducts and streets the city built for itself; trolley, gas, telegraph, and electric lines were laid by companies franchised by the city; and every structure, as it went up, was inspected by the city…The job was at the center of the boss’s attractiveness. He was a member of many associations, made friends on every block… His achievements cast their reflected glory on the whole community and he in turn share its sense of solidarity… He had sprung from among them and substantially remained one with them…But mostly he had intervened at points at which his people encountered the difficulties of the law. Between the rigid, impersonal rulings of the statute and the human failings of those ignorant of its complexities he stood as a mediator. The poor lad who had an extra glass and by some half-remembered encounter ended the night in jail, the shop-keeper whose stand edged beyond the legal limit onto the sidewalk, turned to him whose contact set matters straight… They had come to him because they knew he was fair with his favors.

Source: Oscar Handlin , The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People, 1951.

DOCUMENT G

We soon discovered that approximately one out of every five voters in the nineteenth ward at that time held a job dependent upon the good will of the alderman…Our powerful alderman had various methods of entrenching himself. Many people were indebted to him for his kindly services in the police station and the justice courts. [There] was an expectation on the part of our new political friends that Hull-House would perform like offices for them, and there resulted endless confusion and misunderstanding because in many cases we could not even attempt to do what the alderman constantly did with a right good will. When he protected a law breaker from the legal consequences of his act, his kindness appeared, not only to himself but to all beholders, like the deed of a powerful and kindly statesman. When Hull-House on the

other hand insisted that a law must be enforced, it could but appear like the persecution of the offender…In a desire to foster a higher political morality and not to lower our standards, we constantly clashed with the existing political code…

So far as a Settlement can discern and bring to local consciousness neighborhood needs which are common needs, and can give vigorous help to the municipal measures through which such needs shall be met, it fulfills its most valuable function. To illustrate from our first effort to improve the street paving in the vicinity, we found that when we had secured the consent of the majority of the property owners on a given street for a new paving, the alderman checked the entire plan through his kindly service to one man who had appealed to him to keep the assessments down. The street long remained a shocking mass of wet, dilapidated cedar blocks. The Nineteenth Ward Improvement Association which met at Hull-House during two winters, was the first body of citizens able to make a real impression upon the local paving situation. They secured an expert to watch the paving as it went down to be sure that their half of the paving money was well expended.

Source: Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull- House (a middle class settlement house worker in working-class Chicago neighborhoods reflecting upon her experience ).