Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (60 page)

Known to friend and foe alike as “Dagger John,” Archbishop John Hughes organized New York’s Irish Catholics behind demands for equal rights and cultural respect. He insisted that he was not a politician, but he certainly acted like one. (
Library of Congress
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William “Boss” Tweed became an enduring symbol of political corruption after he and his allies looted New York’s treasury for personal profit. But he remained popular among Irish immigrants, who saw his Tammany Hall as a bulwark against anti- Catholic nativists. (
Library of Congress
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Thomas Nast’s cartoons helped bring down Boss Tweed, but his illustrations also reflected an intense hatred for Tammany’s Irish-Catholic voters. In this image published by
Harper’s Weekly
in 1871, Nast pictured Catholic bishops as alligators coming ashore to feast on American children. In the background, Tammany Hall is pictured as St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. Tweed is at the top of a cliff, watching with approval as children are hurled toward the advancing bishopalligators. A public school building nearby has been destroyed, but a stouthearted, native-born American has come to the rescue of the nation’s children. (
Corbis
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Richard Croker was a child when he and his parents fled starvation and death in Famine-era Ireland. The first immigrant boss of Tammany Hall, Croker tightened discipline and grew wealthy off graft before retiring and returning to his native country. (
Bettmann/Corbis
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A fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 killed more than 140 workers. Here, family members line up to identify the bodies of those who flung themselves out of ninth-story windows to escape the flames. The fire led to demands for workplace reforms around the country. (
Bettmann/Corbis
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A skeptical press dubbed them the “Tammany Twins.” But Robert Wagner, left, and Al Smith, right, helped transform New York politics with their support for progressive social policies and greater government regulation of the private marketplace. (
Bettmann/Corbis
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Frances Perkins enjoyed working with Tammany figures like “Big Tim” Sullivan and Al Smith during her years as an advocate for social reform in New York. Franklin Roosevelt appointed her secretary of labor, the nation’s first woman Cabinet member, in 1933. (
AP Photo
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When he was a young Tammany district leader, Charles Francis Murphy sent cards to his constituents on Election Day if they hadn’t voted by midafternoon. Murphy himself needed no reminder. Here he is shown (center, wearing glasses) casting his ballot during his long reign as Tammany boss. (
Bettmann/Corbis
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Manhattan’s Gas House District got its name because of the enormous gas storage facilities that cast a shadow over the neighborhood’s tenement houses. Two of them are visible in this photograph of a busy street scene on the Lower East Side, home to Tammany’s most dependable voters. (
AP Photo/Library of Congress
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As a young state senator, Franklin D. Roosevelt described Charles F. Murphy as a “noxious weed.” But in 1917, a chastened Roosevelt posed for this picture with Murphy during an appearance at Tammany Hall on July 4. When Murphy died in 1924, Roosevelt issued a statement praising his onetime nemesis. (
Bettmann/Corbis
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Edward J. Flynn learned the game of politics from Tammany’s Charles Murphy. He grew close to Franklin Roosevelt in the 1920s, and on Election Night in 1932 Flynn (right) joined FDR and James Farley to monitor election returns. Flynn went on to become a key political adviser to the Roosevelt White House. (
Bettmann/Corbis
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