Why was tammany hall so successful

And people, because most of them were Catholic, thought of them as people who could never really understand the Anglo-Protestant idea of liberty The Democrats were a little more practical. They realized that if these people were extended the hand of friendship — and I do believe it was friendship — then well, you know, maybe they would show their appreciation on Election Day.

So Tammany becomes associated with immigrants around the time of the famine immigration. On the relationship between Tammany Hall and the Irish immigrant population.

The immigrants got respect from Tammany Hall. Now, whether it was calculated or not is a matter of debate. What they did was in essence create an informal social welfare system when of course none existed, so that, eventually, if you were an immigrant and you needed some advice or you needed a job or, frankly, if you just needed some respect, Tammany Hall was willing to give you that.

In return, of course, Tammany expected you to turn out early and often and vote on Election Day. On Tammany Hall's progressive response to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which killed garment workers. In alone, New York passed all sorts of factory reforms. Now, that's what you would've expected after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire — everybody expected that Albany would come back with laws for sprinklers.

These are important laws, I don't mean to diminish them, but they expected all kinds of workplace reforms.

What they might not have expected was a push for things like unemployment compensation, eventually for the beginnings of the minimum wage. In , New York passed a law that said that employers had to give their employees one day of rest for every seven. This was not really related to making the workplace safer. So what Tammany did was they took this workplace catastrophe of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and used it as an excuse, if you will, to begin to implement these progressive laws that maybe had been talked about for a long time but finally Tammany had the power and the will to enforce them.

On the rhetoric New York media employed against Tammany Hall. A lot of their rhetoric is this palpable anti-Catholicism and anti-immigrant. One reformer — who wasn't speaking for The New York Times or any newspaper but I think his sentiments pretty much summed it up — a guy by the name of Andrew White who was the president of Cornell University said in the late 19th century that: The problem with New York is that it is being ruled by peasants who were freshly raked from the Irish bogs and from Italian robber nests and Bohemian coal mines The newsletter highlights recent selections from the journal and useful tips from our blog.

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Read Article ». He served a frustrating term in Congress during the sectional tensions of the s and then happily returned to local politics, where he believed the action was.

He quickly became one of the leading politicians in New York City, and one of the most corrupt. By the late s, Tweed had ascended through a variety of local offices, including volunteer firefighter, school commissioner, member of the county board of supervisors, and street commissioner.

He learned to make political allies and friends and became a rising star. Tweed engineered a deal in which some family men rather than just the rich received exemptions and even a loan from Tammany Hall to pay a substitute.

He had won a great deal of local autonomy and control, which the federal government had to accept. In , the state legislature granted New York City a new charter that gave local officials, rather than those in the state capital in Albany, power over local political offices and appointments.

Tweed doled out thousands of jobs and lucrative contracts as patronage, and he expected favors, bribes, and kickbacks in return.

Some of that money was distributed to judges for favorable rulings. Massive building projects such as new hospitals, elaborate museums, marble courthouses, paved roads, and the Brooklyn Bridge had millions of dollars of padded costs added that went straight to Boss Tweed and his cronies.

The Tweed ring pocketed most of the money. The ring also gobbled up massive amounts of real estate, owned the printing company that contracted for official city business such as ballots, and received large payoffs from railroads. Soon, Tweed owned an extravagant Fifth Avenue mansion and an estate in Connecticut, was giving lavish parties and weddings, and owned diamond jewelry worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Most people in local government received their jobs because of patronage rather than merit and talent. The Tweed Ring also manipulated elections in a variety of ways. It hired people to vote multiple times and had sheriffs and temporary deputies protect them while doing so.

It stuffed ballot boxes with fake votes and bribed or arrested election inspectors who questioned its methods. As Tweed later said, The ballots made no result; the counters made the result. Sometimes the ring simply ignored the ballots and falsified election results.

Tammany candidates often received more votes than there were eligible voters in a district. Although Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall engaged in corrupt politics, they undoubtedly helped the immigrants and poor of the city in many ways.

Thousands of recent immigrants in New York were naturalized as American citizens and adult men had the right to vote. Because New York City, like other major urban areas, often lacked basic services, the Tweed Ring provided these for the price of a vote, or several votes. Tweed made sure the immigrants had jobs, found a place to live, had enough food, received medical care, and even had enough coal money to warm their apartments during the cold of winter.

In addition, he contributed millions of dollars to the institutions that benefited and cared for the immigrants, such as their neighborhood churches and synagogues, Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages, and charities. When dilapidated tenement buildings burned down, ring members followed the firetrucks to ensure that families had a place to stay and food to eat.

Immigrants in New York were grateful for the much-needed services from the city and private charities.