Document A: Lincoln Steffens (ORIGINAL)



Political Machines

Background Info on Tammany Hall

• Tammany Hall was established in ___________________

o Influential in the election of _______

• It was a Political Machine

o Organization that held tremendous _______________________________

▪ Encouraged the public to ___________ for Tammany “men”

▪ Rewarded voters with ______________

▪ Many mayors of NYC, and even governors of NY were _____________ “men”

▪ Held tremendous influence throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries

Graft

• What is graft?

o _____________________________________________________

• “Honest Graft”

o Using ___________________________ for personal gain

o _____________________________________

• “Dishonest Graft”

o __________________________________________

o William _________________________

Quick Write: Do you think there is anything wrong with dishonest graft? Why or why not?

William “Boss” Tweed

• Most famous member of Tammany Hall

• “Tweed Ring”

o Stole up to $_________ million from NYC

o High _______________________ for friends and workers

• Thomas Nast

o Influential ___________________________

o Staunch critic of Tweed and Tammany Hall

• Samuel Tilden

o Played a key role in Tweed’s downfall

o Helps catapult him to the Democratic nomination in 1876 (____________________________________________)

Tammany Hall in the 20th Century

• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

o ___________________________________

▪ Worst workplace disaster in NYC history until 9/11

▪ 100+ workers (mostly women) died

o Tammany Hall played an instrumental role in new ____________________________

• Progressive political changes like the secret ballot weakened the influence of political machines

• By the __________________________, Tammany was no longer in power

Of what was William Tweed “boss”?

In New York, quite a bite of energy and ambition were directed toward acquiring wealth. But it was being acquired through massive corruption. The epidemic of greed didn’t begin or end with Washington and the great captains of industry. It extended to the local level, most notoriously in New York, the seat of power of William Marcy Tweed, the infamous “Boss” of Tammany Hall. The word Tammany was a corruption of the Tamanend, who was a Delaware Indian chief of the early colonial period said to be “endowed with wisdom, virtue, prudence, charity.” These were qualities conspicuously short supply in the club named for the chief.

Tammany began as one many fraternal societies that adopted Indian names in post-Revolution days. Unlike the Society of Cincinnatus, which was reserved for Washington’s officers, groups like Tammany were for the common soldier, and their political value soon became apparent to clever power brokers like Aaron Burr and Martin Van Buren. By the time of the Civil War, the clubs not only had pull, but had become quite corrupt, serving as a conduit for government contracts to crooked suppliers who sold Union shoddy blankets and maggot-ridden meat.

A mechanic by trade, Tweed rose to his greatest heights of power ostensibly as chief of the department of Public Works in New York City. But that small title gave no sense of the grip he possessed on almost every facet of city life. As the leader of Tammany Hall, the New York City Democratic clubhouse, he built a simple but effective means of control. In exchange for the votes of the waves of immigrants, factory workers, disenchanted homesteaders returning to the city, and even their dead relatives, Twee and his “Ring” arranged small “favors” – a job, an insurance settlement. With these votes, Tweed could maneuver favorable bills through the New York legislature at will. Rich in electoral votes, New York also wielded immense political clout in presidential politics, and Tweed used this power as well. Fraudulent contracts, patronage in the highest offices, kickback, false vouchers – all the usual tools of corruption were raised to an art form by Tweed’s Tammany Club.

Tweed’s most notable opponent was the cartoonist Thomas Nast, who once received an offer of $500,000 from Tweed not to run a particular cartoon. Tweed could well afford the bribe; conservative estimates of his rape of New York’s treasury ran upwards of $30 million on every deal in New York from the building of the Brooklyn Bridge to the sale of the land for Central Park.

It was only when a Tweed associate felt shortchanged that Tweed got into trouble. In 1872, Samuel Tilden (1814-1880), a reform Democrat and future governor of New York who later lost the White House in an election scandal that stripped him of the electoral votes he rightfully deserved, finally won a conviction of Tweed. Sentenced to twelve years in jail, the “Boss” escaped to Cuba and then to Spain, only to be returned by Spanish authorities despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the two countries. While in jail, Tweed made a full and damning confession, expecting immunity. But he died in prison, the only member of the Ring to be convicted.

Tammany’s shenanigans did not end with the breakup of the Tweed Ring. Powerful “sachems” continued their hold on New York’s legislature into the twentieth century. When Theodore Roosevelt entered the New York State legislature in the 1880s, Tammany’s influence was still prevalent in state politics, and the club held the key votes that controlled almost all legislation.

One of the most colorful of Tammany’s “sachems” was George Washington Plunkitt, who once instructed a newspaper reporter on the distinction between “honest” and “dishonest” graft. ‘There’s an honest graft,” said Plunkit, “and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: ‘I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em… I’m tipped off, say, that they are going to lay out a new park at a certain place…. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can and then there is a price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft.”

1. Why might the name Tammany not really describe Tammany Hall?

2. Who was William “Boss” Tweed?

3. How did Tammany hall operate? In other words, how was it a political machine?

4. Would you consider Tammany Hall powerful and influential in the theater of politics? Why?

Document A: Lincoln Steffens

Source: Excerpt from a book by muckraker Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of Cities, published in 1904.

Before Reading the Document:

1. The author probably believes…

2. I think the audience is…

Now, the typical American citizen is the business man….The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle. “My business is sacred,” says the business man in his heart. “Whatever prospers my business, is good; it must be. Whatever hinders it, is wrong; it must be. A bribe is bad, that is, it is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is necessary to my business.”

And it’s all a moral weakness; a weakness right where we think we are strongest. Oh, we are good—on Sunday, and we are “fearfully patriotic” on the Fourth of July. But the bribe we pay to the janitor to prefer our interests to the landlord’s, is the little brother of the bribe passed to the alderman to sell a city street, and the father of the air-brake stock assigned to the president of a railroad to have this life-saving invention adopted on his road.

We are responsible, not our leaders, since we follow them. We let them divert our loyalty from the United States to some “party”; we let them boss the party and turn our municipal democracies into autocracies and our republican nation into a plutocracy. We cheat our government and we let our leaders loot it, and we let them wheedle and bribe our sovereignty from us….[W]e are content to let them pass also bad laws, giving away public property in exchange.

Contextualization

1. What is occurring at this time that led to this document being written?

2. Based on this document, how do you think people were feeling at the time?

3. Why would this document not give the whole picture?

Close Reading

1. What is the author trying to convince the readers of?

2. What words does the author use to convince the readers?

Document B: George Plunkitt (ORIGINAL)

Source: Excerpt from a talk by George Plunkitt, a political boss in New York City. The talk was called “Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft,” recorded in 1905. (Graft is another word for corruption and bribes). In this talk, Plunkitt responds to Lincoln Steffens’s book, The Shame of the Cities.

Before Reading the Document:

1. The author probably believes…

2. I think the audience is…

I’ve been readin’ a book by Lincoln Steffens on The Shame of The Cities. Steffens means well but, like all reformers, he don’t know how to make distinctions. He can’t see no difference between honest graft and dishonest graft and, consequent, he gets things all mixed up…. For instance, I ain’t no looter. The looter hogs it. I never hogged. I made my pile in politics, but, at the same time, I served the organization and got more big improvements for New York City than any other livin’ man….

Steffens made one good point in his book. He said he found that Philadelphia, ruled almost entirely by Americans, was more corrupt than New York, where the Irish do almost all the governin’. I could have told him that before he did any investigatin’ if he had come to me. The Irish was born to rule, and they’re the honestest people in the world. Show me the Irishman who would steal a roof off an almhouse! He don’t exist. Of course, if an Irishman had the political pull and the roof was much worn, he might get the city authorities to put on a new one and get the contract for it himself, and buy the old roof at a bargain – but that’s honest graft….

One reason why the Irishman is more honest in politics than many Sons of the Revolution is that he is grateful to the country and the city that gave him protection and prosperity when he was driven by oppression from the Emerald Isle…. His one thought is to serve the city which gave him a home. He has this thought even before he lands in New York, for his friends here often have a good place in one of the city departments picked out for him while he is still in the old country. Is it any wonder that he has a tender spot in his heart for old New York when he is on its salary list the mornin’ after he lands?

Contextualization

1. Based on this document, how do you think people were feeling at the time?

2. Why would this document not give the whole picture?

Close Reading

3. What is the author trying to convince the readers of?

4. What words does the author use to convince the readers?

[pic]

The Brains of Tammany

By Thomas Nast

Harper’s Weekly (October 21, 1871)

What does this political cartoon, drawn by Thomas Nast represent? Who is it supposed to represent? Do you agree or disagree with the statement being made by the author? Support your answer with evidence from the readings and notes.

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