THE PASSING OF THE BOSSES?
By D. W. BROGAN "Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great is pass'd away."
IF (as some competent observers think) the day of the great city boss is over in American politics, the political observer may be permitted to quote Wordsworth without committing himself to permanent lamentation. Once they held East and West in fee, North and South too. And there can hardly be a great city in the United States that has not at one time or another been ruled by a boss, and some great cities have hardly ever been ruled any other way.
Yet there are some signs that this historic American political insti- tution is .passing away. In the past few weeks we have seen two unprecedented defeats for the old order, the overthrow of the Hague machine in Jersey City and the triumph of Franklin D. Roosevelt II in the twentieth New York Congressional district where the heir of the great name got more votes than all his opponents together— and among them was the official nominee of Tammany Hall. It is an age of change, indeed, when such things can be. For the boss is a very old American institution, going back at least to the beginnings of the constitution, and even further back if such revolutionary leaders as Sam Adams are so classified—as they might well be. But even back to Aaron Burr and the early days of Tammany, when both were contemporaries of Pitt and Napoleon, is a long time. And hopes of the disappearance of the boss have been so often dis- appointed that even today the sceptical observer will keep his fingers crossed and be content to note those changes in political manners and social conditions that make it possible that, at last, the bell is tolling for the bosses.
For too long the boss was studied and condemned in a fine frenzy of moral indignation. Often he deserved all the indignation, but the condemners themselves did not always come into court with clean hands. They had no more real use for an objective, incor- ruptible, strong and socially beneficent state or city government than the boss had. They wanted lower taxes, less mere stealing, less toleration of petty crime, prostitution, gambling, but they were less willing to see an administration in power that would put down other crimes such as the stealing of franchises (concessions for the monopolising of the supply of power, transport), or which would really reform the tax system and-enforce rigorously the claims of the city on "the good, the wise and the rich "—to quote the old federalists' definition of their own party supporters.
When one looks back over fifty years or so, it is obvious that two such political leaders as the Carter Harrisons of Chicago were as representative of the voters—and as legitimately representative— as were the new millionaires of Michigan Avenue. Neither group wanted to make of Chicago a modern Athens or Sparta. No doubt, from many points of view, Chicago would have been better governed by a German burgomaster of the old type. But then it wouldn't have been Chicago or an American city at all. The boss, that it to say, provided something that his clients wanted and needed. They were often deeply ignorant of political machinery. (One neglected reason for the political predominance of the Irish was the excellent training in practical politics they got in Ireland in the struggle against the Saxon.) They often knew no English. They were economically vulnerable. And the boss educated them (up to a point), assimilated them, helped them. The boss and the machine were Americanising forces. They translated the strange, indeed unintelligible, institutions into something comprehensible. Some- body had to do it, and no one else did, least of all the complacent preachers of a very abstract conception called "good government." And it is naive to think that bosses and machines were confined to immigrant areas, or that rural Anglo-Saxon America knew nothing of "ways that were dark and tricks that were vain." It was in rural and moral New Hampshire that (the American) Winston Churchill set his excellent studies of the railway machine, and some observers think that the only equivalent for the unshaken resolution of Philadelphia no: to be reformed is to be found in a good many rural counties of the Middle West.
The practical cessation of immigration has, nevertheless, made the boss less necessary and less effective. He is now dealing with literate English-speaking voters with higher needs than the clam- bake and the sack of coal in a hard winter. It is probably by for- getting this that Tammany has just invited the resounding smack in the face it has got in New York. Gone arc the days when, as the late representative for Mr. Roosevelt's district tells us in his lively autobiography, he was nominated for Congress by a tele- phone call from Charles Murphy, the last effective boss of Tammany Hall. True, Sol Bloom, once thus nominated, could have kept his seat for ever had he lived for ever, but long before his death he had ceased to be just the Tammany representative—and Tammany had, as it proved, lost the right of presentation.
Probably the most important change of all was brought about by the extension of social services under the New Deal. The charities of the machines, the " fixing " by the boss, were less and less important to voters who turned, in distress, to regular, legal instru- ments of relief. It was this change that made it possible for La Guardia, by winning three elections against Tammany, to per- form an electoral miracle more astonishing than Roosevelt's four terms. And even bosses who held their ground had to do far more for their voters than dole out favours and jobs. Even Frank Hague, now the dethroned boss of Jersey City, did (at excessive cost) a good deal for the poor of his bailiwick, as well as sending to Congress for many terms a very enlightened representative in the person of Mrs. Norton. So it was with the Kelly machine in Chicago,
Then issues have entered into local politics, not mere variations on party loyalty and on "turn the rascals out." True, they some- times came in in the past, as under Tom Johnson in Cleveland nearly fifty years ago, but that was usually an affair of one man. Now there is a new climate of opinion. Perhaps, in this new chilling wind, the boss will die. After seeing Boss Hague in all his glory receive President Truman in his good city with all the dignity, of a great Italian urban tyrant receiving an impecunious Emperor or harassed Pope, one found it hard to believe in his defeat. But that defeat came from a revolt within the machine, and, perhaps, only exemplifies the truth of the rule laid down by the greatest living boss, Mr. Ed Flynn of the Bronx, that a boss, even Mr. Flynn himself, cannot transfer power—as Mr. Hague was trying to do. No doubt the new bosses will have to have more general ideas, more understanding of the times, than had. the Hagues or Vares. Mr. Flynn himself is, in education, manner and behaviour, very unlike the old-fashioned boss of the cartoonists. But it is his opinion that the two-party system in America means machines, and "there is always one man who is boss of each machine." Maybe the boss is dead ; maybe he is merely transformed, has merely learned to sing songs of social significance. There is, after all, a story that Mr. Flynn never felt more at home than when his great and good friend. F.D.R., sent him on a mission to the Kremlin.
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