VI 

 MACHINE POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY* 



IN New York City, as in most of our other great 

 municipalities, the direction of political affairs 

 has been for many years mainly in the hands of a 

 class of men who make politics their regular business 

 and means of livelihood. These men are able to keep 

 their grip only by means of the singularly perfect 

 way in which they have succeeded in organizing 

 their respective parties and factions; and it is in con- 

 sequence of the clock-work regularity and efficiency 

 with which these several organizations play their 

 parts, alike for good and for evil, that they have been 

 nicknamed by outsiders "machines," while the men 

 who take part in and control, or, as they would them- 

 selves say, "run" them, now form a well-recognized 

 and fairly well-defined class in the community, and 

 are familiarly known as machine politicians. It may 

 be of interest to sketch in outline some of the char- 

 acteristics of those men and of their machines, the 

 methods by which and the objects for which they 

 work, and the reasons for their success in the politi- 

 cal field. 



The terms machine and machine politician are 

 now undoubtedly used ordinarily in a reproachful 



* The Century, November, 1886. 

 (118) 



