Editing Political machine (section)

== In the history of the United States of America ==
The term "political machine" dates back to the 19th century in the United States, where such organizations have existed in some municipalities and states since the 18th century.<ref>"The managers of the political 'machine' controlled the convention system by the use of patronage, and controlled popular discontent by the convention system", stated Edward Wilson, "The Political Crisis in the United States", ''The Nineteenth century and after: a monthly review'' 1.2 (1877): 198–220.</ref>

[[File:Boss tweed.jpg|right|thumb|1869 tobacco label featuring [[William M. Tweed]], 19th-century political boss of New York City]]
In the late 19th century, large cities in the United States—[[Boston]], [[Chicago]], [[Cleveland]], [[Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City]], [[New York City]], [[Philadelphia]], [[St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis]], [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]]—were accused of using political machines.<ref name=americans>{{Cite book|title=The Americans: Reconstruction to the 21st Century: California Teacher's Edition |location=Evanston |publisher=McDougall Littell Inc |year=2006 |pages=267–268 |isbn= 978-0618184163}}</ref> During this time "cities experienced rapid growth under inefficient government".<ref name=americans/> Each city's machine lived under a hierarchical system with a "[[political boss|boss]]" who held the allegiance of local business leaders, [[elected officials]] and their appointees, and who knew the proverbial buttons to push to get things done. Benefits and problems both resulted from the rule of political machines.<ref name=Blumer>{{Cite journal|journal=The American Journal of Sociology |volume=20 |issue=5 |year = 1914–1915|quote=The political machine is in fact an attempt to maintain, inside the formal administrative organization of the city, the control of a primary group. |page=603 |first=Herbert |last=Blumer | jstor = 2763406 | title = The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment | doi = 10.1086/212433 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name=Gosnell>{{Cite journal|doi=10.1177/000271623316900104 |title=The Political Party versus the Political Machine |journal=Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |first=Harold F. |last=Gosnell |volume=169 |date=September 1933 |pages=21–28 |s2cid=154119413 |quote=When the spoils element is predominant in a political organization, it is called a political machine.}}</ref>

This system of political control—known as "[[bossism]]"—emerged particularly in the [[Gilded Age]]. A single powerful figure (the boss) was at the center and was bound together to a complex organization of lesser figures (the political machine) by reciprocity in promoting financial and social self-interest. One of the most infamous of these political machines was [[Tammany Hall]], the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] machine that played a major role in controlling [[New York City]] and New York politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. From 1872, Tammany had an Irish "boss". However, Tammany Hall also served as an engine for [[Graft (politics)|graft]] and political corruption, perhaps most notoriously under [[William M. Tweed|William M. "Boss" Tweed]] in the mid-19th century.<ref>{{cite book|last=Allen|first=Oliver E.|title=The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall|date=1993|publisher=Addison-Wesley Publishing Company|page=xi|isbn=0-201-62463-X|url=https://archive.org/details/tigerrisefalloft00alle}}</ref>

[[Lord Bryce]] describes these political bosses saying:

{{blockquote|An army led by a council seldom conquers: It must have a commander-in-chief, who settles disputes, decides in emergencies, inspires fear or attachment. The head of the Ring is such a commander. He dispenses places, rewards the loyal, punishes the mutinous, concocts schemes, negotiates treaties. He generally avoids publicity, preferring the substance to the pomp of power, and is all the more dangerous because he sits, like a spider, hidden in the midst of his web. He is a Boss.<ref>{{citation | work = Digital History | title = Urban Political Machines | url = http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us28.cfm | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080821152014/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us28.cfm | archive-date = 2008-08-21 }}</ref>}}

When asked if he was a boss, [[James Pendergast]] said simply,

{{blockquote|I've been called a boss. All there is to it is having friends, doing things for people, and then later on they'll do things for you&nbsp;... You can't coerce people into doing things for you—you can't make them vote for you. I never coerced anybody in my life. Wherever you see a man bulldozing anybody he don't last long.<ref name=americans/>}}

[[Theodore Roosevelt]], before he became president in 1901, was deeply involved in New York City politics. He explains how the machine worked:

{{blockquote|The organization of a party in our city is really much like that of an army. There is one great central boss, assisted by some trusted and able lieutenants; these communicate with the different district bosses, whom they alternately bully and assist. The district boss in turn has a number of half-subordinates, half-allies, under him; these latter choose the captains of the election districts, etc., and come into contact with the common heelers.<ref>{{cite book|author=Theodore Roosevelt|title=The Works of Theodore Roosevelt: American ideals|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pqo3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA132|year=1897|publisher=Collier|pages=132–33}}</ref>}}

===Voting strategy===
Many machines formed in cities to serve immigrants to the U.S. in the late 19th century who viewed machines as a vehicle for political [[Suffrage|enfranchisement]]. Machine workers helped win elections by turning out large numbers of voters on election day. It was in the machine's interests to only maintain a minimally winning amount of support. Once they were in the majority and could count on a win, there was less need to recruit new members, as this only meant a thinner spread of the patronage rewards to be spread among the party members. As such, later-arriving immigrants, such as Jews, Italians, and other immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe between the 1880s and 1910s, saw fewer rewards from the machine system than the well-established Irish.<ref>{{cite book|first=Steven P. |last=Erie|title=Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840–1985|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NxrGXFRlbWgC&pg=PA7|year=1990|publisher=University of California Press|pages=7–8|isbn=9780520910621}}</ref> At the same time, the machines' staunchest opponents were members of the middle class, who were shocked at the malfeasance and did not need the financial help.<ref>Ari A. Hoogenboom, "An Analysis of Civil Service Reformers". ''Historian'' 23#1 (1960): 54–78.</ref>

The corruption of [[urban politics in the United States]] was denounced by private citizens. They achieved national and state civil-service reform and worked to replace local patronage systems with [[civil service]]. By [[Theodore Roosevelt]]'s time, the [[Progressive Era]] mobilized millions of private citizens to vote against the machines.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Ruhil | first1 = Anirudh V. S. | year = 2003 | title = Urban Armageddon or politics as usual? The case of municipal civil service reform | journal = American Journal of Political Science | volume = 47 | issue = 1| pages = 159–170 | doi=10.1111/1540-5907.00011}}</ref>

===1930s to 1970s===

In the 1930s, [[James A. Farley]] was the chief dispenser of the Democratic Party's patronage system through the [[United States Post Office Department|Post Office]] and the [[Works Progress Administration]] (WPA) which eventually nationalized many of the job benefits machines provided. The [[New Deal]] allowed machines to recruit for the WPA and [[Civilian Conservation Corps]], making Farley's machine the most powerful. All patronage was screened through Farley, including presidential appointments. The [[New Deal]] machine fell apart after he left the administration over [[Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution#Background|the third term issue in 1940]]. Those agencies were, for the most part, abolished in 1943, and the machines suddenly lost much of their patronage. The formerly poor immigrants who had benefited under Farley's national machine had become assimilated and prosperous, and no longer needed the informal or extralegal aides provided by machines.<ref name=sv;av /> In the 1940s most of the big city machines collapsed, with the exception of Chicago.<ref name=sv;av>{{citation | title = Political Machines | url = http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/PoliticsAndGovernment/PoliticalMachines.htm | publisher = University of Colorado, Boulder | access-date = 2012-02-18 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20091208011342/http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/PoliticsAndGovernment/PoliticalMachines.htm | archive-date = 2009-12-08 | url-status = dead }}</ref>

A local political machine in [[Tennessee]] in the 1930s and 1940s was forcibly removed in what was known as the [[Battle of Athens (1946)|1946 Battle of Athens]].
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Smaller communities such as [[Parma, Ohio]], in the post–Cold War era under Prosecutor Bill Mason's "Good Old Boys" and especially communities in the Deep South, where small-town machine politics are relatively common, also feature what might be classified as political machines, although these organizations do not have the power and influence of the larger boss networks listed in this article. For example, the "[[Cracker Party]]" was a Democratic Party political machine that dominated city politics in [[Augusta, Georgia]], for over half of the 20th century.<ref>{{cite news | url = http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/110799/opi_124-1871.shtml | title = Newspapers helped end long rule of corrupt Cracker Party | date = August 29, 2010 | newspaper = The Augusta Chronicle}}</ref><!--Search results are not reliable sources because of their volatility: <ref>{{cite news | url = http://search.augusta.com/fast-elements.php?type=standard&profile=augustachronicle&querystring=%22cracker+party%22&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go | title = Search results for 'Cracker Party' | access-date = 13 November 2012 | newspaper = The Augusta Chronicle | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20141023200014/http://search.augusta.com/fast-elements.php?type=standard&profile=augustachronicle&querystring=%22cracker+party%22&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go | archive-date = 23 October 2014 | url-status = dead }}</ref>--><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.augusta.com/leaders/slideshow_local/slide14.html |title=Picture Story: William Morris |work=The Augusta Chronicle |access-date=March 11, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050212142225/http://www.augusta.com/leaders/slideshow_local/slide14.html |archive-date=February 12, 2005 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-955 | title = Cites & Counties: Augusta | publisher = The New Georgia Encyclopedia | first = Edward J. |last = Cashin | date = 2007-02-19}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.augusta.com/leaders/slideshow_local/slide10.html |title=Picture Story: Roy V. Harris |work=The Augusta Chronicle |access-date=March 11, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050324073605/http://www.augusta.com/leaders/slideshow_local/slide10.html |archive-date=March 24, 2005 }}</ref> Political machines also thrive on Native American reservations, where tribal sovereignty is used as a shield against federal and state laws against the practice.<ref name=bbf926>{{cite news |last=Fink |first=James |date=September 26, 2016 |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2016/09/26/gates-overtakes-snyder-r-in-seneca-nation-vote.html?ana=twt |title=Gates overtakes Snyder in Seneca nation vote |work=Business First |access-date=September 26, 2016}}</ref>

In the 1960s and 1970s, [[Edward Costikyan]], [[Ed Koch]], [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], and other reformers worked to do away with Tammany Hall of [[New York County]]. To a lesser degree, the Democratic Party machines in Kings, Bronx, and Queens counties continued until the end of the 1980s.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}