The Political Machine

After the Civil War the domination of the "political machine" over the affairs of government in the urban cities of the north became an undisputed fact of local politics. Their power flowed from creating a form of government that sought to perpetuate the position of its leaders by engaging in a bartering process with voters. The political machine existed during a time of mass migration to our urban centers from both immigrants and those in search of work. It played upon the ethnic composition of the new electorate, and their focus on obtaining basic necessities such as work, housing and food. Likewise, political machines acted as a facilitator toward businesses who chose to support them. If a business provided financial contributions and control
over jobs which would be used as patronage, in return the business would receive contracts, licenses, and municipal approvals which were difficult to obtain from the fragmented governmental authorities which existed during the period. Political machines tended to ignore ideology and instead, focused on the circumstances of their electorate, creating a patronage system that dispensed material benefits, available by virtue of their success at the polls, in exchange for votes.

This acquisition of power by local political machines came at the expense of the more educated and more well to do social elite who had previously controlled the social structures of society.
As noted by the sociologist, Robert K. Merton in The Latent Functions of the Machine, A Sociologists View, political machines flourished because they satisfied the desires of a citizenry that were "not legitimately satisfied in the same fashion by the legitimate social structure." Their response to the political machine, which represented their own attempt at reclaiming control over government, was to advocate for a new form of government based on the "public interest." The movement to reform government and remove the system of brokering that dominated the political machine was not only composed of the old social elite. As the historian, Samuel Hay, observed, the reform movement reflected a class based struggle. He noted that few workers, white-collar employees or small business owners were involved in the movement to unseat the political machine. Instead, he found it to be driven by a motivated and growing upper class of professionals, owners of large businesses and the management of evolving mega-corporations. Their desire, stated Hay, was to change government and take power away from the lower and middle class segments of society. They sought to design a system for decision making which was more centralized and capable of control, as opposed to political machines which promoted
government with a decentralized system which was to amorphous to be reigned in.

The reformers espoused a philosophy that government should seek to serve the "public interest," with the best personnel, including an experienced manager, administering the technical affairs of local government, in an atmosphere devoid of politics, and utilizing methods of scientific management.
While what the "public interest" represented may have been a somewhat amorphous concept, it represented the goals and ideological achievements which government was to seek to obtain on behalf of its citizenry. In all other respects, the reformers sought to operate local government like a business, hiring the most competent personnel, with experienced management, making decisions that were based on a system of logical choices, and hence, more predictable. In short, reformers sought to de-emphasize the power of politically elected officials, such as a mayor, in favor of those more experienced in administering the day to day affairs of
government.

While the reform movement did not become an overnight success, with the evolving changes in the make-up of the citizenry, their education, their economic status and their diminishing ethnic identification, the influence of the political machine began to wane. As the nation moved into the twentieth century, there was less immigration into the United States and fewer in the electorate who viewed ethnic identification as an overriding criterion in their voting decisions. Furthermore, the population was becoming more socially mobile, more educated, and more financially secure. They were no longer dependent on the political machine for their jobs and housing, and even those less fortunate who required such assistance, could now turn to the government which had instituted a myriad of welfare programs which were absent in the nineteenth century. The message of the reformers to this newly evolving electorate was an appealing one, and the methodology by which the movement achieved its objective of displacing the political machine could now be imposed.

To reformers, popularly elected officials and their patronage based appointees lacked the skill, training and professionalism to properly manage the affairs of local government. In addition, they opined, administrators who were trained in the fields of accounting, budgeting, engineering, and personnel management were needed to properly operate a city. Accordingly, the reform movement promoted, and with the support of nonpartisan organizations and the electorate, succeeded in having adopted, a merit based civil service system where the most qualified applicants were awarded jobs. Likewise, reformers sought to put decision-making in areas such as such as urban planning in the hands of professionals and non-political actors. With the institution of such a system governing the hiring, appointment and promotion of civil servants, political machines could no longer rely on the patronage system as a source of guaranteed work for their supporters. In turn, this resulted in the loss of one of the primary means of motivating voters to support the machine candidates.

The reforms promoted by the movement focused not only on the ability of political machines to continue their patronage based system but also upon the very manner in which they were elected. Political machines relied upon ward or district elections where particular neighborhoods or sections of a city would each vote for their own city council member. This, in turn, resulted in a strong, decentralized organization, which could be relied upon by the machine for their electoral support. In contrast, the reformers successful promoted and saw widespread implementation of at-large elections, where council members were voted upon by the city as a whole. The result to the political machine was a loss of power at the most grass roots level, as fewer of their candidates were being elected. Furthermore, at-large elections refocused voter concerns from the more parochial preoccupations of neighborhoods, to the more widespread needs and policy concerns of the city at large.

The results of the efforts of the reform movement to combat the political machine and remove corruption from politics was omnipresent. They successfully achieved nonpartisan elections in many areas of the country wherein the party affiliation of a particular candidate bore little significance to the election process. Reformers achieved the legal imposition of voter registration requirements to deal with the corrupt practice of "repeaters" used by political machines. Significantly, they attained the right for voters to participate in the direct election of candidates, as opposed to the closed party conventions used by political machines to select their candidates. The movement was able to eradicate the tools used by the political machine to perpetuate the system which provided their power. And if a candidate elected in this newly adopted system neglected the "public interest," reformers provided for their removal by advocating the use of the "recall." Alternately, if elected officials neglected what was perceived as the "public interest" in their legislative dealings, voters could utilize the "initiative" process to offer their own legislation or vote for a "referendum" which has been put before them for their support. Regardless of the popularity of any elected official, term limits were imposed to prevent a single person from accumulating too much power or becoming more important than the system itself.
The reform movement has altered the entire landscape of urban politics from changing who can vote, how they vote, who they vote for, the power of elected officials, the structure of city governments and the ability of the electorate to effect those in government once in office. As any pervasive political philosophy, the movement has had some undesired consequence. Primarily, those consequences involve the movement having an upper class bias and making it more difficult for minorities to hold office where at-large elections have been instituted. While reforms to the movement are necessary in this regard, the movement successfully supplanted the political machine and it's highly partisan, patronage oriented environment. Instead, reformers replaced it with a less corrupt, more professionally administered and policy driven system of "good government". The persistence of these reforms results from both their positive implications upon our form of local government, and the depth to which they permeate our political lives.