Bosses of the City Unite! Labor Politics and Political Machine Consolidation, 1870–1910

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century – an age when the phrase “all politics is local” contained even greater truth than it does today – the distinctive institution of urban public life was the political machine. In assessing the machine's importance, some scholars have emphasized the machine's role in integrating newly arrived immigrants into the American political system, its provision of basic material goods to the impoverished, its promotion of upward mobility of immigrants, and its coordination of a socially and politically fragmented city. Other scholars have focused on the long-range effect of the political machine on American politics and policy, arguing that the cross-class coalitions built by machine politicians muted the development of a politicized working class in the United States. Some extend this causal chain, arguing that the lack of a stronger class-based politics produced in turn the relative weakness of the American welfare state compared to other Western democracies.

Constructing Industrial Order in the Center of the American Economy: How Electoral Competition and Social Collaboration Evolved in Twentieth-Century New York

“…A study by Christopher Ansell and Arthur Burris pushes at the margin of the standard history when it brings together the analysis of union organization and electoral forms. 34 If their analysis is extended further than they take it-they are preoccupied with explaining how the AFL's union form contributed to the emergence of the machine form of local politics by 1910-to labor-management relations in the next decade, we can clarify the significance of flexible electoral rules for the manifestation of interests in industrial collaboration in New York.…”

Solidarity infrastructure : gender and race solidarity and cross-class coalitions in the Kansas City general strike of 1918

“…The regular presence of sympathy strikes, the antagonistic relationship to the Employers' Association and police, and continuance of independent political activity in the early twentieth century all indicate that a strong citywide labor movement predominated over the segmented trade unionism found in many other cities of the era (Ansell and Burris 1997).…”

“…The solidarity infrastructure failed to create a successful labor party. Still, for an independent labor party to garner eleven percent of the vote for mayor as late as 1918 is unusual in American history (see Ansell & Burris 1997). Further, organizers of the Citizens' Ticket were no doubt hampered by the planning and execution of the general strike.…”

“…Any successful political regime had to continuously reconstitute coalitions that might involve various combinations of saloon owners, ethnic groups, suburban clubs, policy experts, labor unions, white nativists, and competing business interests. Yet most cities had a situation where the political system produced sharp boundaries between interests in or out of power, or produced bipolar terrains that prevented coalitions between labor, clubwomen, and African Americans (Ansell and Burris 1997;Bridges and Kronick 1999;Finegold 1995).…”

“…Progressive reformers often wanted to centralize municipal control in order to fight ward level organizations, but this sometimes unwittingly helped create a citywide machine in the process(Ansell and Burris 1997;Bridges and Kronick 1999).…”