The Boss & The Machine

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt addressed the American Historical Association to call for American history to be written as compelling stories of literary quality. Editor Allen Johnson of Yale University responded by publishing the Chronicles of America series: 50 succinct volumes on regional and thematic American history. These books, intended for secondary schools and college students, are expository works of American history composed by competent historians in the 1920's, well before the special pleading and upending of social norms typical of histories after 1970. This series is focused on the mainstream of American political life and leadership from its initial volumes on Native Americans and European colonists to its final volumes on Woodrow Wilson, Canada, and the Hispanic Republics to our South.

The Boss & the Machine, Volume # 43 in the series, is the history of American political parties from the Constitutional debates to the Progressive Era. Author Samuel Orth explains the constituencies and concerns of the major and minor parties, the decline and rise of the Whigs and Republicans, the growth and patronage of the civil service, and the organization of the urban political "machines." In conclusion, the history evaluates the professionalization of the civil service as a means of combating corruption and the influence of the party "bosses" in the cities.

Two contemporary assessments of city machine politics are included in the appendix: Plunkitt of Tammany Hall and Theodore Roosevelt's "Machine Politics in New York City." George Washington Plunkitt was a New York City political functionary, and his testament of 1905 is a defense of the Tammany Hall organization. Roosevelt's 1888 essay is the Progressive exposition and accusation against the same system.

This work has been formatted and reprinted for Tall Men Books. It is not a facsimile reprint.