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Urban Political Machines: Taking Stock

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Clarence N. Stone
Clarence N. Stone*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

Big city political machines hold an important place in the nation's political lore. They gave us interesting characters with colorful names—John “Bathhouse” Coughlin, “Red Mike” Hylan, Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, “Slippery Dick” Connolly, “Old King Cole” (Boss Cole), “King” James McManes, “Iz” Durham (the “dying boss” who confessed to Lincoln Steffens), George Washington Plunkitt, James Michael Curley (“Mayor of the Poor”), and many more. Long before television, they gave us memorable sound-bites—“I seen my opportunities and I took 'em,” “reformers [are] only mornin' glories,” “we don't want nobody nobody sent,” “honest graft,” “don't make no waves, don't back no losers” and “study human nature and act accordin’” along with many others.

In their prime the urban machines were often condemned as the weakest link in American democracy, but they came later to be viewed nostalgically as a humanizing and benevolent force that had taken the rough edges off the experiences of immigrants as they settled into a newly industrializing America. After Edwin O'Connor (1956) romanticized the urban machine in his novel, The Last Hurrah, it was inevitable that the movie version feature a lovable Spencer Tracy as Sheffington, the fictional boss.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 446 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1996

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