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

by Terry Golway

Overview

“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).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871407924
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	02/24/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	581,150
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Terry Golway was a journalist for thirty years, writing for the New York Observer, the New York Times, and other venues. He holds a PhD in American history from Rutgers University and is currently the director of the Kean University Center for History, Politics, and Policy in New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

1 "Tammany Hall Belongs to Us" 1

2 Mass Politics 10

3 The Great Hunger 38

4 Civil War 60

5 A Tammany Riot 88

6 Tammany's Irish Reconstruction 105

7 Challenging the Gilded Age 132

8 To Hell with Reform 145

9 An Admirable Organization? 178

10 Murphy's Law 206

11 Frank and Al 234

12 The Battle of Two Governors 268

13 Legacies 286

Acknowledgments 309

Notes 311

Bibliography 333

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

12/02/2013
New York’s Tammany Hall long symbolized urban corruption and boss politics, satirized memorably by cartoonist Thomas Nast and condemned by WASP “clean” government reformers. An unjust verdict, historian and author Golway (Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America’s Fight for Ireland’s Freedom) argues convincingly in this headlong narrative. Gotham’s classic Democratic machine, which can stand in for many others since then, was less a corrupt organization than an effective political vehicle of ethnic, especially Irish-American, aspirations. Golway’s take isn’t new, but never has the story been told so well or with greater strength. Yes, Tammany members and followers sometimes used strong-arm street methods and vote-buying to get their way, and New York’s Irish repaid the anti-Catholicism they encountered with equally ugly anti-black racism. But Tammany, usually ably led, even by the notorious Boss Tweed, eventually put New York solidly in the Democratic camp, got Al Smith elected governor, helped elect F.D.R. president, ultimately proving so successful at integrating the city’s ethic groups that, by the 1970s, it was defunct. Like many narrative histories, Golway’s has no clear point of view save its basic argument. Though not unaware of debates among historians and political scientists, he simply ignores them in the interest of storytelling. A pity, for though he winningly makes his case, he doesn’t broaden it out into the story of the nation’s 20th-century transformation. Agent: John Wright. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Lively and thoughtful."

Weekly Standard

"Machine Made tells an important but forgotten story—of how American politics once worked for the poor and weak rather than, as today, only for the rich and powerful."

Kerby A. Miller

"Golway’s revisionist history chips away at Tammany Hall’s calcified reputation and reveals that the Democratic machine that produced Boss Tweed-era corruption was also a force for worthy reform."

The New York Times Book Review - Amy Finnerty

"Terry Golway’s Machine Made delivers a refreshingly revisionist verdict on the Irish-dominated Democratic organization whose ring reverberated mightily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and then faded into a faint echo… If Boss Tweed and Richard Croker remain the defining faces of Tammany, Mr. Golway… advances a breezy and convincing case that Al Smith, Senators Robert F. Wagner and Herbert Lehman, and their mentors, Tom Foley and Charles Francis Murphy, deserve distinguished pedestals in that pantheon, too."

The New York Times - Sam Roberts

"[A] valuable and enjoyable analysis describing how the political machine changed the role of government—for the better to millions of disenfranchised recent American arrivals… [The] legacy Mr. Golway is so passionate about is undeniable. Tammany Hall, for all the many flaws of its leaders, helped create a welcoming environment for immigrants, making New York and the United States the beacon of hope for those seeking a better life… Now, that’s a legacy worth remembering."

The New York Observer - Steven Fulop

2013-12-25
How the Irish mobilized America. The story of Tammany Hall, a fraternal organization founded in the late 1700s as a "voice of the common man," mirrors the story of the Irish Catholics in New York City, who had to crack the Anglo-Protestant political order in order to make their way. So argues journalist Golway (Director, Kean Univ. Center for History, Politics, and Policy; Words that Ring Through Time: The Fifty Most Important Speeches in History and How They Changed Our World, 2009, etc.) in this politics-laden, competent ramble through the dawning of the empowerment of minorities in American politics. Taking their cues from the popular electoral organization of Irish statesman Daniel O'Connell and his Catholic Association, Irish Catholic leaders in New York challenged the "hostile civic culture" of the Protestant elite by pushing back against nativist animosity. As the Irish population of the city swelled from the Great Famine—from 371,000 in 1845 to 630,000 by the mid-1850s—Tammany embraced and enfranchised these unfortunate masses so that the collective memory of the famine helped spur the social legislation of the Progressive Era: securing jobs, pushing for universal suffrage, lobbying for anti-monopoly legislation, labor unions and land reform for Ireland, and opening orphanages, asylums and homes for unwed mothers run by Irish Catholic nuns. The election of William R. Grace, the first Irish Catholic immigrant, as mayor of New York City in 1880 was a watershed, erasing some of the corruption taint created by Boss Tweed. The establishment of a vast "clubhouse system" ensured that favors and social services were well-distributed and won the loyalty of those who needed them, leading to rampant abuses, as exemplified by Richard Croker's scandal-ridden Tammany era. The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire of 1911 galvanized Tammany's more promising reform-minded leaders like Robert Wagner and Al Smith to urge for regulatory legislation that inspired Francis Perkins and, later, Franklin Roosevelt. A work that knowledgeably readjusts Tammany's reputation from a nest of corruption to an important crusader for the poor and downtrodden.

Kirkus Reviews