Historical Arguments and Machine Politics

Learning Objectives

  • Evaluate the thesis statements and supporting evidence used to make claims in historical arguments
  • Compare historical arguments about the pros and cons of political machines

The Necessity of Machine Politics

Life in a nineteenth-century urban center in America was tough, to put it mildly. Working-class people toiled for long hours in poor conditions and had virtually no one at the higher levels of society tasked with looking after their interests. Workplace health and safety laws did not exist, nor did zoning regulations for the shoddy tenement buildings where they crowded entire families into a single room. Sanitation and public health were largely an afterthought with no readily available health care, no regulations on food, and no such thing as vaccinations.

The rapid rate of urban growth meant that city officials struggled to keep up with infrastructure improvements such as gutters and sidewalks, improvements which were more desperately needed in areas without running water. Unfortunately, residents of working-class neighborhoods were often sidelined by officials in favor of business owners or wealthy industrialists who could donate to their campaign funds. The necessity of garnering City Hall’s attention was not lost on the urban working-class, however, and they eventually landed on a system that sometimes worked out in their favor and sometimes did not: machine politics.

The leaders of these political “Machines,” which were actually political party organizations, were usually wealthy leaders in the community who were appointed to various city boards or commissions. This gave them access to power. Their leaders were known as bosses, and a boss would offer favors or incentives to his constituents in exchange for their votes during the next election cycle. Sometimes, he might direct those votes toward a person higher-up on the political ladder who had called in a favor.

Many contemporary writers and modern historians have argued that machine bosses were an essential part of urban life and that they provided a type of service that the working class would not have been able to access any other way. They argue that the political machine was the only way that many immigrants could assimilate into American society and become leaders, or that this corruption actually helped poor Americans, whereas all other corruption simply boosted those who were already on top. On the other hand, some argue that machine bosses did not actually care about their working-class constituents or the quality of life that they lacked, but that their only aim was more money and more power and they simply used this desperate group to help them achieve these goals.

Political cartoon drawing depicting a Tiger (Tammany Hall) devouring a participant in a gladiator-like scene, with spectators.

Figure 1. The Tammany Tiger Loose—”What are you going to do about it?”, published in Harper’s Weekly in November 1871, just before election day. “Boss” Tweed is depicted in the audience as the Emperor.

Often, the political machine was able to implement public projects faster than if they had to navigate bureaucratic red tape, but the cost was that the boss would line his own pockets with some of the funding. It was a trade-off that most working-class Americans were willing to accept if it made their day-to-day lives easier, since the machinations of the political elite were not something that they concerned themselves with. In fact, many of New York City’s most famous features, such as Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge, were products of machine politics. So what role did bosses play in the life of the urban working class? Were they heroes or villains? First, we’ll learn about historical argumentation and we’ll read a historian’s argument about political machines.

Understanding Arguments

In its most basic form, an argument is a statement that is supported by one or more facts. For example, I could make the argument that “Michigan is a better place to live than California.” I could support this argument with facts like:

  • “Michigan has the lowest risk of natural disasters of any U.S. state, while California has one of the highest.”
  • “Michigan’s cost of living is far lower than California’s.”
  • “Both Michigan and California have beaches.”

A more detailed argument might include information about weather, school quality, population density, the job market, political climate, or diversity as it pertains to each state. The conclusion, that Michigan is a better place to live than California, would have to be supported by those facts. For every argument, however, there is a counter-argument. The counter-argument in this scenario would be “California is a better place to live than Michigan,” and could be supported by facts like:

  • “California has better weather year-round,”
  • “California has better schools.”
  • “California has more public beaches than Michigan does.”

The tricky thing about this scenario above is that each person will find a different argument more convincing based simply on their personal preferences or experiences. Someone who has actually lived in both states might have a different perspective than someone who has only lived in California, or a person who loves beaches might come to a different conclusion than someone who doesn’t care for them.

Dissecting Historical Arguments

It is similar with historical arguments—because we are often seeing the arguments and the facts through the lenses of historical actors, through our own understanding of the time period (which could be incomplete), or through our own personal or cultural lens, we may come to different conclusions than someone else. When reading and assessing historical arguments, it is also important to remember that, like in the scenario above, there is sometimes no correct answer. The nuances of historical interpretation are often such that no single conclusion is possible and we will likely never have a definite answer.

Argument #1: The Value of Machine Politics

Now, it is your turn to analyze and identify arguments. First, we are going to look at this argument made by historian Stephanie Hinnershitz of Cleveland State University (note that she authored the response, but it does not necessarily reflect her views). She responded to the following question:

  • Were urban bosses corrupt politicians who manipulated the political system for their own control and gain, or were they providing essential services for immigrants and enabling the growth of cities despite corrupt means?

“So, you see, these fool critics don’t know what they’re talking about when they criticize Tammany Hall, the most perfect political machine on earth,” explained George Washington Plunkitt, the son of Irish immigrants who grew up in squalor in New York City’s Five Points neighborhood and later became a prominent figure in Tammany Hall, the most well-known urban political circle in American history. William “Boss” Tweed was the powerful leader of Tammany, the machine that eventually became synonymous with the Democratic Party of New York City. Bosses like Tweed worked their way up to the top of well-run political circles by securing political positions through patronage and the spoils system. By delivering on promises of socioeconomic and political improvement in exchange for votes, bosses built urban empires with supporters in various city (and, at times, state-level) positions working continuously to ensure a voter base. In return, voters afforded the bosses power to secure their own political and, in many cases, financial gains. Bosses typically had no qualms with engaging in questionable and often downright corrupt money-for-politics schemes, securing political positions to guarantee financial benefits to their supporters in the form of contracts for public building projects or favorable city tax and regulation codes. Plunkitt responded to the charge of corruption from many of the growing army of muckraking journalists; however, it is the characterization of the bosses as criminals who preyed on the many immigrants in cities in return for votes—“buying” political support from those who were most economically, politically, and socially vulnerable and in the process tainting America’s democratic process—that encourages historians to describe them as vultures of the Gilded Age. Urban bosses bribed and exploited immigrants for political gain and tossed them to the side when they were no longer needed. But this simplistic view of men like Boss Tweed ignores the social services that urban bosses provided to the downtrodden in the complex and often labyrinthine environment of America’s Gilded Age cities.

Urban bosses assisted immigrants in ways beyond simply providing food, jobs, and shelter in exchange for votes. Assistance for immigrants was more rooted in providing ways for immigrants to function in the cities rather than just providing them with material goods. Gilded Age cities were dangerous, unscrupulous, and exclusionary spaces for newly arriving immigrants. Neighborhoods such as Five Points were often cut off from basic services and resources provided to the wealthier inhabitants of the more upper- and middle-class sections of New York, leaving immigrants stranded and isolated. Long before the bosses gained power, politics in cities was ironclad and run and operated by elites, a pattern that became more engrained as industrial capitalists and millionaires gained influence in the political system by the late nineteenth century. Furthermore, with little legal assistance and lacking a clear path to naturalization, many immigrants remained voiceless and powerless to change the environment they lived in and the dangers they faced daily.

Enter the urban bosses who allowed immigrants to gain a foothold in American society through increased political participation (albeit a monetary and perverted form of political participation). Tweed’s influential political “ring” included various judges in New York’s municipal courts, and before the election of 1868, Tweed used these connections to turn the courts into “naturalization mills” to produce approximately 1,000 new American citizens per day—providing him with a new voter base. Many historians simply focus on Tweed’s practice of “buying” votes or having immigrants commit voter fraud to explain his rise to power, but more commonly, he assisted immigrants with the naturalization process and ensured the victory of his machine in a way that also provided immigrants with long-term benefits. Once naturalized, immigrants were now on a path to obtain jobs in city government as the Irish did in droves during the late nineteenth century. In return, these immigrants-turned-citizens were required to drum up continuous support for the political machine. Nonetheless, bosses provided immigrants with an opportunity for socioeconomic advancement, a pattern that created, as Plunkitt noted, political machines in various cities across the United States that lasted long into the twentieth century.

Finding the Thesis

One of the first steps to dissecting historical arguments is to locate the thesis statement. This is a single statement, sometimes only a single sentence, that clearly states the core argument being made. It does not necessarily present the supporting facts (since that is the next step in making an argument), but succinctly lets the reader know what is being argued.

Try It

When analyzing historical arguments, locating the thesis statement can be a bit trickier because it might be “hidden” next to supporting facts or it might be far more complex than simply “this is what happened.” The thesis statement usually appears within the introduction of the essay or article and then reappears in the conclusion.

Read through the excerpt from Argument #1 again and see if you can find the thesis statement. Remember, it could be one sentence or two, and it might be bookended by supporting facts or even counter-arguments. Make sure that you are looking for the introductory thesis statement and not skipping ahead to the conclusion! This practice will help when you write your own historical arguments.

Find the Thesis

Write 1-2 of your ideas about what the thesis statement could be here:

Summarizing & Supporting Arguments

While it is always important to know how to locate a thesis statement in a historical argument, it is equally important to know how to describe the argument in your own words and to identify the supporting evidence used by the author. When you summarize the argument, you can combine the thesis statement with some of the supporting evidence to explain what the author is arguing and why that is their position. In order to help you practice your argument summarizing skills, use a narrative form and write your summary in your own words (rather than direct quotes from the text).

Going back to our example argument (Michigan vs. California), we can think of it as a mathematical formula: Thesis Statement + Supporting Facts = Summary of Argument

  • Thesis: Michigan is a better place to live than California +
  • Fact: Michigan has a lower cost of living +
  • Fact: Michigan has fewer natural disasters +
  • Summary: Due to the lower cost of living and comparatively infrequent natural disasters, Michigan is a far more attractive state for American families to live than California.

Note: This is a very simplistic argument and summary. Once you start doing this with more complex historical arguments, you can include more supporting facts in your summary and the thesis statement will probably be longer.

Try It

Complete the activity below using the thesis statement and supporting facts from Argument #1 about machine bosses.

Supporting and Summarizing Arguments

Pull out one or two sentences from the excerpt above that represent supporting facts: Summarize the argument in 2-3 sentences using your own words:

 

Great work so far! In the next section, you will read an opposing article and work on identifying and summarizing counterarguments.