Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

3THE GENESIS OF A POLICED SOCIETYIN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT,New York's Tammany Hall was exceptional only in the level of its success. Similarmachines emerged in nearly every American city. Powerful neighborhoodbosses arose and affiliated, gaining control through a system of patronage andprotection, keeping it through increased applications of the sanle means, andadministering civil affairs along lines which were not merely partisan, but personalisticas well. Favoritism became the central principle of local government.The machine was urban America's outstanding contribution to the artof municipal government. Exemplified by Tammany Hall, it emerged inNew York, Philadelphia, and other eastern cities in the early and middlenineteenth century and in Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, and otherwestern cities not long after. A highly decentralized outfit, the machinewas an association of loosely affiliated and largely autonomous wardorganizations whose power depended on their ability to get out the voteon election day. Whether allied with the Democrats, as in New York, theRepublicans, as in Philadelphia, or neither party, as for a while in San Francisco,the ward bosses operated in much the same way in most Americancities. They gave out contracts to local businessmen, found and if need becreated jobs for recent immigrants, provided opportunities for aspiringpoliticians, and otherwise exchanged material inducements for politicalloyalty. In return for delivering the vote, the ward bosses demanded agood deal to say not only about the policies of the mayor's offices and citycouncils but also about the operations of the police departments and othermunicipal agencies.1Under the machines, the resources of the government were the spoils of victory,belonging le&