Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (Unabridged)
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
A major, surprising new history of New York's most famous political machine - Tammany Hall - revealing, beyond the vice and corruption, a birthplace of progressive urban politics.
For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history.
In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes; Tammany's corruption was real, but so was its heretofore forgotten role in protecting marginalized and maligned immigrants in desperate need of a political voice. Irish immigrants arriving in New York during the 19th century faced an unrelenting onslaught of hyperbolic, nativist propaganda. They were voiceless in a city that proved, time and again, that real power remained in the hands of the mercantile elite, not with a crush of ragged newcomers flooding its streets. Haunted by fresh memories of the horrific Irish potato famine in the old country, Irish immigrants had already learned an indelible lesson about the dire consequences of political helplessness. Tammany Hall emerged as a distinct force to support the city's Catholic newcomers, courting their votes while acting as a powerful intermediary between them and the Anglo-Saxon Protestant ruling class.
In a city that had yet to develop the social services we now expect, Tammany often functioned as a rudimentary public welfare system and a champion of crucial social reforms benefiting its constituency, including workers' compensation, prohibitions against child labor, and public pensions for widows with children. Tammany figures also fought against attempts to limit immigration and to strip the poor of the only power they had - the vote.
Customer Reviews
White is black. War is Peace. Love is Hate.
People are always quick to condemn people in the past, whose mistakes are now laid bare and missteps now isolated from the background noise: How could the Germans have let the Nazis come to power? How could the Founding Fathers allow slavery? How could Mao have killed so many of his own people? And then they proceed to do or endorse something just as stupid or just as bad.
Take this book for example. It’s a great history. The history is worth five stars. The author lays out the crimes against the Irish and the Catholics and the other immigrants in grand, convincing detail. I endorse the conclusions completely.
But then the author, to my shock, also endorses the abuse and corruption and extortion.
No. No. NO. Crime does not justify a prolonged chain of “counter-crime.” The Irish were mistreated by the English, that does not justify the Irish mistreating and stealing from, and undermining Americans. Did the Americans also “hate” the incoming Catholics? Yes. But they didn’t starve them, virtually enslave them, or steal their lands. The American “crimes” were minimal and, even then, were more than made up for by the liberty and opportunity that came with being in America.
The Irish famine ended in the 1840s, but the crimes of Social Security, the Wagner Act, the New Deal, and other Tammany vestiges are still robbing Americans in 2015, and with Obamacare and a Clinton presidency likely, those vestiges won’t end until total economic collapse, from the mountains of corruption debt.
Rather than point that out and revile the memories of the Tigers from Murphy to FDR, after the Irish were rich and established and didn’t need the graft; the author praises them.
I am sickened by it all. And I’m an immigrant of Irish Catholic descent. I wasn’t taught to steal or extort or cheat. I was taught to work and shun the handout. However, I now see that I am alone in that upbringing.
If you want a great history, this is the book for you.
If you want to see how Dims justify 150 years of theft from innocent Americans, read between the lines of this book.
If you want a great inspiration or a book that demonstrates the greatness of people, run, run away fast.
So five stars for history. Lose a star for being just like the Germans, slave holders, and Communist Chinese.
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