When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia: The Emergence of the Republican Machine, 1867–1933

Amazon.com Price: $30.95 (as of 16/04/2019 06:49 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

In 1903, Muckraker Lincoln Steffens brought the city of Philadelphia lasting notoriety as “essentially the most corrupt and essentially the most contented” urban center in the nation. Famous for its colorful “feudal barons,” from “King James” McManes and his “Gas Ring” to “Iz” Durham and “Sunny Jim” McNichol, Philadelphia offers the historian a classic case of the duel between bosses and reformers for regulate of the American city. But, strangely enough, Philadelphia’s Republican machine has not been subject to critical examination until now. When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia challenges conventional wisdom at the political machine, which has it that party bosses controlled Philadelphia as early as the 1850s and maintained that regulate, with little change, until the Great Depression. In keeping with Peter McCaffery, alternatively, all bosses were not alike, and political power came only regularly through the years. McManes’s “Gas Ring” in the 1870s used to be not as powerful as the well-oiled machine ushered in by Matt Quay in the late 1880s. Through a careful analysis of city records, McCaffery identifies the beneficiaries of the emerging Republican Organization, which sections of the local electorate supported it, and why. He concludes that genuine boss rule did not emerge as the dominant institution in Philadelphia politics until just before the turn of the century. McCaffery considers the function that the machine filled in the life of the city. Did it in the long run serve its supporters and the community as a whole, as Steffens and up to date commentators have suggested? No, says McCaffery. The romantic image of the boss as “good guy” of the urban drama is wholly undeserved.

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Americas » United States » State and Local » When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia: The Emergence of the Republican Machine, 1867–1933

Recent Products