Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
Author: Terry Golway
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 511
Release: 2014-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0871407922

“Golway’s revisionist take is a useful reminder of the unmatched ingenuity of American politics.”—Wall Street Journal History casts Tammany Hall as shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft and patronage personified by notoriously crooked characters. In his groundbreaking work Machine Made, journalist and historian Terry Golway dismantles these stereotypes, focusing on the many benefits of machine politics for marginalized immigrants. As thousands sought refuge from Ireland’s potato famine, the very question of who would be included under the protection of American democracy was at stake. Tammany’s transactional politics were at the heart of crucial social reforms—such as child labor laws, workers’ compensation, and minimum wages— and Golway demonstrates that American political history cannot be understood without Tammany’s profound contribution. Culminating in FDR’s New Deal, Machine Made reveals how Tammany Hall “changed the role of government—for the better to millions of disenfranchised recent American arrivals” (New York Observer).

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
Author: William L. Riordon
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 85
Release: 1995-11-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101099925

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics William L. Riordan “Nobody thinks of drawin’ the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft.” This classic work offers the unblushing, unvarnished wit and wisdom of one of the most fascinating figures ever to play the American political game and win. George Washington Plunkitt rose from impoverished beginnings to become ward boss of the Fifteenth Assembly District in New York, a key player in the powerhouse political team of Tammany Hall, and, not incidentally, a millionaire. In a series of utterly frank talks given at his headquarters (Graziano’s bootblack stand outside the New York County Court House), he revealed to a sharp-eared and sympathetic reporter named William L. Riordan the secrets of political success as practiced and perfected by him and fellow Tammany Hall titans. The result is not only a volume that reveals more about our political system than does a shelfful of civics textbooks, but also an irresistible portrait of a man who would feel happily at home playing ball with today’s lobbyists and king makers, trading votes for political and financial favors. Doing for twentieth-century America what Machiavelli did for Renaissance Italy, and as entertaining as it is instructive, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall is essential reading for those who prefer twenty-twenty vision to rose-colored glasses in viewing how our government works and why. With an Introduction by Peter Quinn and a New Afterword

Tammany Hall

Tammany Hall
Author: Morris Robert Werner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 652
Release: 1928
Genre: New York (N.Y.)
ISBN:

Tammany Hall is the oldest and the most powerful institution of a political and sociological nature in America.

King of the Bowery

King of the Bowery
Author: Richard F. Welch
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2011-10-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 143843183X

King of the Bowery is the first full-length biography of Timothy D. "Big Tim" Sullivan, the archetypal Tammany Hall leader who dominated New York City politics—and much of its social life—from 1890 to 1913. A poor Irish kid from the Five Points who rose through ambition, shrewdness, and charisma to become the most powerful single politician in New York, Sullivan was quick to perceive and embrace the shifting demographics of downtown New York, recruiting Jewish and Italian newcomers to his largely Irish machine to create one of the nation's first multiethnic political organizations. Though a master of the personal, paternalistic, and corrupt politics of the late nineteenth century, Sullivan paradoxically embraced a variety of progressive causes, especially labor and women's rights, anticipating many of the policies later pursued by his early acquaintances and sometimes antagonists Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Drawing extensively on contemporary sources, King of the Bowery offers a rich, readable, and authoritative potrayal of Gotham on the cusp of the modern age, as refracted through the life of a man who exemplified much of it. "... a necessary book for anyone unsatisfied by the usual histories of Irish-American urban political machines. ... The Irish-American boss has rarely been awarded the careful appraisal of the kind that Welch ... gives Sullivan. ... But caveat lector: you don't have to be Irish American or a New Yorker or a Democrat to enjoy this book. All you have to be is interested in a well-told story that is also a first-rate work of history." — Peter Quinn, Commonweal

The History of Tammany Hall

The History of Tammany Hall
Author: Gustavus Myers
Publisher: Theclassics.Us
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2013-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781230331843

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXXII THE SWAY OF BKIBEBY AND "HONEST GEAFT" 1903-1905 GRAFT of all kinds was rampant, as later official investigation showed, in Tammany-controlled departments, but in the public mind the question of this form of graft was vastly overshadowed by the revelations of the New York legislative committee investigating the great life insurance companies. The disclosures showed that Republican legislators as well as Democratic were bought; that enormous corruption funds had been contributed to both political parties, and that one political machine was no better than the other. Bribery expenditures, the committee reported, were classified on the various insurance companies' books as "legal expenses." The committee described the amounts as extraordinarily large. In the year 1904 alone, the Mutual Life Insurance Company thus disbursed $364, 54.95; the Equitable Life Assurance Society, $172,698.42, and the New York Life Insurance Company, $204,019.25.1 Andrew C. Fields, long engaged by the Mutual Life Insurance Company to manipulate legislation at Albany, lived there in a sumptuously furnished house jocosely styled the "House of Mirth." The expenditures were charged to " legal expenses." The Mutual thus expended more than $2,000,000 in "legal expenses" from 1898 to i Report of the Nev> York Legislative Jnsurance Committee, 1906, Vol. X, p. 16. 1904.2 And from 1895 to 1904, the total payments made by the New York Life Insurance Company to Andrew Hamilton, its chief lobbyist at Albany, amounted to $1,312,197.16, all of which sum was soberly entered as " legal expenses." s A present of nearly $50,000 was contributed in 1894 by the New York Life Insurance Company to the campaign fund of the Republican National Committee, and similar...

HIST OF TAMMANY HALL (CLASSIC

HIST OF TAMMANY HALL (CLASSIC
Author: Gustavus Myers
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2016-09-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781333501686

Excerpt from History of Tammany Hall If my narrative furnishes a sad story for the leaders and chieftains of the Tammany Society and the Tam many Hall political organization, the fault is not mine, but that of a multitude of incontestible public records. It was in no partisan spirit that I began the work, and in none that I now conclude it. I have always been an independent in politics; and I have even voted, when there seemed to me ample reason for doing so, a Tammany ticket. I have tried to set down nothing in malice, nor with such exceptions as are obviously neces sary with regard to living men, to extenuate anything whatever. Those who may be tempted to consider my work partial and partisan, on account of the showing that it makes of Tammany corruption and inefficiency, will do well to read carefully the pages relating to the Whigs and to some other opponents of Tammany Hall. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A Battle for the Soul of New York

A Battle for the Soul of New York
Author: Warren Sloat
Publisher:
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN:

The history of the expolits of a forgotten American hero, the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurstand his crusade against the crooked New York City Police Department and the political organizaton behind it.

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
Author: Terry Golway
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2014-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0871403757

A journalist, historian, and expert on the Irish American experience tackles the common stereotypes and presents a revisionist version of the notoriously crooked Tammany Hall, describing the crucial social reforms and labor improvements they contributed.