Urban Political Machine In New York: Tammany Hall

In the middle of the nineteenth century, several factors contributed to the growth and expansion of cities in the United States. The 1850s saw a fantastic peak in the immigration of Europeans to America, and they quickly flocked to cities where they could form communities and hopefully find work1. The rushing industrialization of the entire country also helped to rapidly convert America from a primarily agrarian nation to an urban society.

The transition, however, was not so smooth. Men and women were attracted to the new cities because of the culture and conveniences that were unavailable to rural communities. Immigrants in particular were eager to get to cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston for these reasons, and to look for better jobs than the ones they had found at home. In fact, without the increase in immigration from 1850 to 1920 (where around 38 million came to America), cities would have expanded at lethargic rates – if at all – due to a decreasing fertility rate and a high rate of infant mortality. Death due to disease was also common. Yet the influx of immigrants managed to make up for these losses, and cities grew exponentially for nearly a century1.

While the growth of the urban population led to new technological and industrial developments, it also produced penury, congestion, pollution, fatal disease, and tremendous fires. One of the most important problems that arose from this growth, however, was the absence of a legitimate urban government. Political, or urban, machines filled this void, and through patronage and graft secured votes from as many people as possible for their respective parties4. Immigrants were usually the easiest targets because they frequently did not speak much English, but more im...

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...l. Roosevelt led the reform committee that brought Tammany to its knees – by the 1960s, the once glorious machine had been destroyed8.

The urban political machine was a force that provided stability and growth for the “out-of-control” urban populations. Cities grew at uncontrollable rates and organizations like Tammany Hall instituted public improvements and created millions of jobs for the torrential flow of immigrants into Ellis Island7. It can even be argued that Tammany and other political machines made the transition easier for these immigrants, without whom the cities would not have been able to prosper to the extent that they did. The political machine created a type of politics that was purely practical in nature, and although it allowed for an immoral amount of corruption, the contributions it made to growth, stability, and production cannot be understated.