Political Machines Quotes
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Essentially Spooner was correct in his predictions. Only, most people in Wisconsin, and later the nation, saw the existing system of candidates picked by party bosses, to be far worse.
The political machine of New York City, unlike most others in the Northeast were supporters of the Southern position on slavery. They had strong economic relations with the Southern planters and wanted to keep the federal government far away from state and local affairs.
Tammany Hall was the political machine that controlled New York City in the first half of the 20th century.
La Guardia was a very short man and he had gone up to the much larger “poll watcher” and ripped his official button off his coat. The Tammany Hall political machine would appoint thugs as poll watchers to intimidate the voters. If the poll watcher was an "official" voters thought that they might have access to the ballot information and know whether or not they voted for the machine candidates. Their presense was often sufficient intimidation to assure party line voting by most people.
Tammany Hall was the name given to the New York City Democratic political machine. While it was, by modern standards, quite corrupt, the main source of its power was what it delivered to the general mass of New York City citizens. And Tammany Hall was unsurpassed in its delivery of public works to the city. Bridges, subways, parks, and other amenities were conceived of, financed and built by government. Although each of these projects had funds skimmed by the politicians, the projects were constructed to an extent and scale that was previously unknown in politics. In that sense, Tammany Hall was one of the major early instances of the liberal notion of government development of urban areas.
This was one of the many cases of blatant corruption Seabury found in New York that were politically connected with Tammany Hall. Farley was not only the Sheriff of New York, but was also the head of the Tammany Hall political machine. Governor Roosevelt removed him from his position as Sheriff, but did not have the legal authority to purge him from Tammany Hall where Farley stayed as leader, but organized a round of testimonial dinners where he was the “guest of honor” that was paid for and attended by most New York businessmen and politicians. It was however, the beginning of the end of Tammany Hall as the voters finally ousted the Tammany Hall mayor and overall reform followed.
