Machine Politics In Urban Cities

The emergence of machine politics in urban cities has provided countless harms in recent years. However, this does not answer the question at hand. The question is whether these harms were significant enough to declare these developments to be a disaster for these areas. The answer to that question is a resounding vote in favor of the negative. It is not enough to point out the flaws with machine politics as any governmental structure is doomed to be plagued by some imperfections. The key here is that machine politics has generated some good for these cities and the attempts at combating their power has replaced the harms of corruption with the harms of moral crusades and exclusion. Therefore, machines in the cities has been a force for good

They realized that they needed to go into these neighborhoods to work with these people directly to have any chance at maintaining their power. Bosses and their workers began to pay greater attention to the needs of the Irish and the Italians because they wanted their votes on election day and they needed to know what they wanted. George Washington Plunkitt describes this process by pointing out that the successes of Tammany Hall could be owed to immigrants and that there were votes were secured through an increased understanding of what they wanted and the assurance that their votes would result in their rewards. This allowed marginalized groups to participate in the democratic process and improve their quality of life in the process. It is true that this process was corrupt at times. Chudacoff and Baldwin present numerous examples of immigrants being rushed through the legal process for voter registration despite their limited residency. However, this is a small harm given the vast amount of discrimination immigrants faced at this time which necessitated their political involvement. It is unfortunate that they achieved increased power through corrupt means although it is a necessary evil in this

It is true that machine politicians would often use public projects as a means for inflating their own bank account. This does not mean that there were no positive externalities. These corrupt incentives served a purpose as they led to cities putting people to work and building important infrastructure and providing much needed services across the city. For example, a politician would have a lot to gain from building a new bridge if he purchased the land that was going to be used to build it prior to anyone’s knowledge of the impending project. He would then stand to make a substantial profit when the city needed that land for the bridge. It seems corrupt and unethical to consider this a success story for the cities given the self serving nature of these kinds of deals. However, the bridge that would now be built would certainly benefit the public and so would all other projects that were being built thanks to this new profit incentive. The obvious downside to this is that these projects would often add significant costs to the already strained budgets of cities. However, the issue of debt could always be solved in a plethora of ways and that is something that structural reformers like Seth Low in Brooklyn got right although his efforts would later prove to be unsuccessful politically. However, it is important that cities were willing to