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"It's Philanthropy But It's Politics Too": How Tammany Hall Filled the Void after New York City’s Public Charity Failed, 1857-1905
Abstract
New York City’s political machine at Tammany Hall is most often associated with audacious graft and electoral fraud. Recently, however, its legacy of providing material aid to the city’s working class has been receiving a new look by historians. A long-neglected topic, this thesis shows how Tammany Hall’s network of neighborhood ward heelers and precinct captains won the loyalty and votes of working-class constituents by finding practical ways to meet their material needs and, in the process, created a surprisingly effective proto-welfare state. The first part of this paper looks at the decline and collapse of municipal poverty relief programs in New York City from the 1841 to 1898. Attacked by wealthy reformers as a cause, not a solution to entrenched poverty, the drawdown of New York City’s effective poverty relief programs created an opening for machines politicians to earn votes by providing similar charitable services to the city’s large working-class population.
The second part of this paper examines the actual working of poverty relief systems at a neighborhood level, dividing it into three different categories. First, ward heelers used their positions at the center of neighborhood life to connect constituents with employment in the city government or with friendly private businesses. Second, machine politicians used money stolen from the city treasury for informal gifts of cash, food, and other necessities that they gave to poor residents. Third, Tammany-elected politicians successfully lobbied New York State to fund private charitable services already operating in poor neighborhoods, especially those run by the city’s Catholic churches.
Tammany Hall’s negative reputation has been defined almost exclusively by the city’s upper-class elites, who, in their roles as newspaper editors, historians, and politicians, opposed its program of charitable aid, along with its undeniable record of municipal corruption. Without downplaying the latter narrative, this paper centers the experience of Tammany Hall members themselves and the groups their aid benefited, rescuing the voices of New York City’s working class from historical erasure.
Citation
Grigsby, Patrick Wayne (2023). "It's Philanthropy But It's Politics Too": How Tammany Hall Filled the Void after New York City’s Public Charity Failed, 1857-1905. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /198928.