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Reading Plunkitt of Tammany Hall in the Context of Late Nineteenth Century Party Nationalization

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Polity

Abstract

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall is often read as simply an apology for machine politics. Drawing on a close reading of Plunkitt and contemporary Tammany sources, this article challenges the conventional reading of the text, and orients readers toward the book's critique of developments in national politics, particularly under the party leadership of Grover Cleveland and William Jennings Bryan. In addition to defending machine politics, Plunkitt defends the traditional, Jacksonian party organization against nationalizing trends in U.S. party politics at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

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Notes

  1. It might be suggested that Plunkitt cannot be read as a historically accurate account of the views of personage George W. Plunkitt, as the book is a compilation of newspaper articles written by New York Evening Post journalist William L. Riordon. Scholars, however, have neither elaborated Riordon's private motives, provided examples of places in which Riordon's agenda shines through, nor convincingly explained why Riordon might have wanted to distort Plunkitt's true aims. Terrence McDonald's conclusion that “Riordon's portrait of Plunkitt was consciously composed out of the cultural materials at Riordon's disposal” suggests that Riordon was a reliable recorder of the collective voice of Tammany Hall. He covered the “Tammany Beat” and became friendly with the Tammany pols he covered. Historian Allan Nevins, who also worked at the Post at the time, conjectured that Riordon was, in fact, a member of Tammany. Perhaps the best approach to the “voice” issue is to argue that Riordon had access to Tammany Hall and out of that experience wrote a book that accurately conveyed the typical thinking of Tammany braves, regardless if it accurately conveyed Plunkitt's distinctive views. Terrence J. McDonald, “Introduction: How George Washington Plunkitt Became Plunkitt of Tammany Hall,” in Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics, ed. William L. Riordon, (Boston: Bedford Books, 1994), 21–22, 26–29. Allan Nevins, The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism (New York: Boni and Liveright Publishers, 1922), 550. See also Arthur Mann, “Introduction” to William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1963), viii.

  2. There have been no systematic scholarly examinations of Plunkitt since its publication, beyond some fine introductions to later editions of the book that are cited elsewhere in this paper. Generally, scholars cite Plunkitt as an example of “just how much a part of the American democratic grain is corruption in politics,” or of a line of reasoning that “corruption exists because individuals perceive that there are benefits to corruption and that the costs are relatively low compared with the benefits.” Irving Louis Horowitz, “American Virtues/ Washington Vices,” Contemporary Sociology 15 (March 1986): 187–89, at 189; Kenneth J. Meier and Thomas M. Holbrook, “‘I Seen My Opportunities and I Took ‘Em:’ Political Corruption in the American States,” The Journal of Politics 54 (February 1992): 135–55, at 138. As a means of illustrating nineteenth-century political corruption, Plunkitt allegedly shows that “corruption, as a tool of criticism, was most powerful in our politics in the period from after the Civil War to the early twentieth century,” and that despite the pervasive practice of illicit methods, machines limited themselves through the distinction between “honest graft and dishonest graft,” preventing corruption from being an unmitigated drawback. S. M. Shumer, “Machiavelli: Republican Politics and Its Corruption,” Political Theory 7 (February 1979): 5–34, at 6; Martin Shefter, “Regional Receptivity to Reform: The Legacy of the Progressive Era,” Political Science Quarterly 98 (Autumn 1983): 459–83, at 466. John M. Allswang calls Plunkitt “the classic expression of this [the “quid-pro-quo” between immigrant voter and machine] from the machine politician's point of view.” Bruce M. Stave, John M. Allswang, Terrence J. McDonald, and Jon C. Teaford, “A Reassessment of the Urban Political Boss: An Exchange of Views,” The History Teacher 21 (May 1988): 309.

  3. Joel Silbey dates the consolidation of the traditional party organization to 1838 in The American Political Nation, 1838–1893 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).

  4. I have preserved the form in which Riordon presented Plunkitt's dialect.

  5. Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–96 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 164, 165; see also Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

  6. Alan Ware, The American Direct Primary: Party Institutionalization and Transformation in the North (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 21.

  7. As Steven Erie argues, the affairs of local party politics were deeply tied to those of their state and national allies. Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840–1985 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

  8. Jessica Trounstine, “Dominant Regimes and the Demise of Urban Democracy, Journal of Politics 68: 4 (November 2006): 879–93; Alan Ware, The Democratic Party Heads North, 1877–1962 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). See also Raymond Wolfinger, “Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts,” Journal of Politics 34:2 (May 1972): 365–98.

  9. Walter Dean Burnham, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe” American Political Science Review 59:1 (March 1965): 7–28.

  10. FDR experienced similar intra-party resistance to his own nationalizing ambitions. See Lyle Dorsett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the City Bosses (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977); Steven Erie, Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840–1985 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

  11. E. Vale Blake, History of the Tammany Society, or, Columbian Order, From its Organization to the Present Time (New York: Souvenir Publishing Co., 1901), 163.

  12. William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1963), 13–14, 88 (all citations to the text in this paper are from this version). The book contains an entire chapter devoted to “Tammany's Patriotism.” It describes the organization's July 4 readings of the Declaration of Independence, displays of American flags, and celebration of participating in such events as a physical demonstration of one's patriotism. Ibid., 69–72.

  13. Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest. Jensen's book is, by now, a classic in the field of historical election research, but his conclusions have not been integrated into the literature on local party politics. On the taboo against presidential campaigns and its decline during the period, see Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Melvin Laracey, Presidents and the People: The Partisan Story of Going Public (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); Gil Troy, See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

  14. Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

  15. John F. Reynolds, The Demise of the American Convention System, 1880–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  16. Jerrold G. Rusk, “The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split Ticket Voting: 1876–1908,” The American Political Science Review 64 (December 1970): 1220–38; John M. Dobson, Politics in the Gilded Age: A New Perspective on Reform (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972). Although Amy Briges's Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) documents nuanced variances in reform politics, it too presumes that reform most succeeded where reformers had the most power, and considers Plunkitt only in passing.

  17. Sean M. Theriault, “Patronage, the Pendleton Act, and the Power of the People,” The Journal of Politics 65 (February 2003): 50–68, at 66, 51.

  18. Ronald N. Johnson and Gary D. Libecap, The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy: The Economics and Politics of Institutional Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

  19. Ware, The American Direct Primary. See also Daniel Klinghard, The Nationalization of American Political Parties, 1880–1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  20. Scott James, “Building a New American Party: Patronage Discipline and the Emergence of Strong Party Government in the U.S. Congress,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 25–28, 2002, 24. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

  21. John Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

  22. Sidney M. Milkis, Political Parties and Constitutional Government: Remaking American Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

  23. Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 214; James W. Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 149–50.

  24. See, for instance, Stephen Skowronek's argument about the “state of courts and parties,” in Building a New American State; William E. Nelson, “Officeholding and Powerwielding: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Structure and Style in American Administrative History,” Law and Society Review 10 (Winter 1976): 187–233. Wilson Carey McWilliams explains that “the political party would begin … with the localities where popular judgment is sound and public control is possible,” and from there “an hierarchy of face-to-face societies, connected by relations of personal trust, would connect the locality and the central state.” “Parties as Civic Associations,” in Party Renewal in America: Theory and Practice, ed. Gerald M. Pomper (New York: Praeger, 1980), 59.

  25. Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), 12.

  26. Alfred Henry Lewis, Richard Croker (New York: Life Publishing Company, 1901), 344–35.

  27. Blake, History of the Tammany Society, 5. As Hofstadter notes, this argument rests on the Jeffersonian idea that two parties were inherent in human nature, which divides mankind into Whigs (the many) and Tories (the few). The former must maintain sufficient unity to protect and preserve republican government from the latter. Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System, 27.

  28. Lewis, Richard Croker, 145, 136.

  29. Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System, 225, 247. See also James W. Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), chapter 3, for a more thorough investigation of Van Buren's attempt to restrain the ambitions of national politicians.

  30. Martin Van Buren, The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920), 314, 320, 172. Van Buren's lavish praise for the Erie Canal, which was constructed by his rival, DeWitt Clinton, suggests a root source of his mistrust of national public works projects: when instigated by national politicians, internal improvements direct people's awe and gratitude to national elites rather than to state and local ones. National politics—especially in an age replete with fervor for internal improvements—could easily sap the power of politicians most closely controlled by the common man. Van Buren called Hamiltonianism a “sapping and mining policy.” Martin Van Buren, Inquiry into the Origin and Causes of Political Parties in the United States (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), 260.

  31. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 63–64.

  32. Ibid., 54.

  33. Particularly in Steffens's 1904 book, The Shame of the Cities (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963), which Plunkitt references directly; Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 29–32.

  34. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 29.

  35. Blake, History of the Tammany Society, 179. On non-partisanship and elitism, see Ceaser, Presidential Selection, 6, 149–150.

  36. On early stirrings of this constituency, see Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  37. Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

  38. Reynolds, The Demise of the American Convention System. Carpenter and Moore suggest that organizations can perform the function of entrepreneurs, particularly “when a new cohort of members arrives,” and begins to press for changes in normal operating procedures. Reforms of this sort are often riddled with ambiguities because “officials may speak noncommittally and ambiguously because they fear doing the ‘wrong thing’ by saying something contentious, explosive, inappropriate, or unapproved.” This was precisely the dynamic underway in the late-nineteenth century, as political leaders cautiously embraced the notion of nationally conducted campaigns, without explicitly reconciling the threat it posed to the established partisan order. Daniel P. Carpenter and Colin D. Moore, “Robust Action and the Strategic Use of Ambiguity in a Bureaucratic Cohort: FDA Officers and the Evolution of New Drug Regulations, 1950–70,” in Formative Acts: American Politics in the Making, ed. Stephen Skowronek and Matthew Glassman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 340–62.

  39. Democrats did not even form a national committee until 1848. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 52.

  40. “Harrity Made Chairman,” New York Times, July 22, 1892, 1.

  41. Cleveland had been hostile to Tammany since his days as New York's Governor. An example of the newly centralized structure's use was the sidelining of Tammany's representative on the national committee. Tammany agreed to support Cleveland only after extracting a number of concessions, including the selection of Tammany ally Robert B. Roosevelt as the national committee's treasurer. But under the new structure Roosevelt was excluded from most important fundraising efforts because he was not appointed to the advisory committee. He complained to Cleveland that he was not allowed to know the names of donors and was not informed of meetings of the advisory committee (Robert B. Roosevelt to Cleveland, October 22, 1892, series 11, box 10, Cleveland Papers). Roosevelt wrote to the advisory-committee chairman:

    it is plain that the large contributions will only be paid to you …. I will get the small contributions and will attend to paying the bills as far as the receipts will go and I suppose that a good deal of the money you get will be distributed directly as has been done without it going through my hands at all. (Robert B. Roosevelt to William C. Whitney, September 25, 1892, book 76, William C. Whitney Papers, Library of Congress)

    Men like Roosevelt were notorious for funneling funds to local allies, which explains why Tammany was interested in having him on the committee. This practice was so common that a Democratic editor doubted that any national fund could accomplish the party's goals because “as soon as the workers in our ranks know we are gathering money they will themselves want to spend it” (James W. Scott to Whitney, August 13, 1892, book 75, Whitney Papers).

  42. No title [Resolutions in Regard to Democratic Committees], no date [1892], book 72, Whitney Papers; “Already Hard at Work,” New York Times, July 28, 1892, 8; “Harrity Made Chairman,” New York Times, July 22, 1892, 1; No Title, New York Times, July 22, 1892.

  43. Burnham, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” 25.

  44. In 1896 the advisory committee was composed of representatives of “organizations which are working together with the Democratic Party in common cause,” such as Populists and Silver Republicans who could tap those factions’ donors. In 1900, the committee was composed of representatives from states dominated by Republicans and from states deemed to be “doubtful.” It was a strategic decision to attract elites who sympathized with the national candidate, but were located where local Democrats were weak or did not support Bryan's financial agenda. “Jones Will Have Advisors,” New York Times, August 28, 1896, 6; “Jones Selects Advisors,” New York Times, August 29, 1896, 3; “Jones's Strange Advisors,” New York Times, August 9, 1900, 6.

  45. Quoted in Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, 273.

  46. Plunkitt, 27–28. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics.

  47. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 91. As Terrence J. McDonald points out, this chapter was one of three that had not previously been printed in the Evening Post. McDonald notes that “not one of the themes and phrases that made the book famous appeared in the interviews in the Post,” including “honest and dishonest graft” and the “reformers only mornin’ glories” arguments (McDonald, “Introduction: How George Washington Plunkitt Became Plunkitt of Tammany Hall,” 28). The hostility to printed campaign literature is a theme that appears quite prominently in both the book and the magazine. It is beyond the scope of this essay to speculate as to the extent to which Riordon substituted his own voice for that of his interlocutor's. But the absence in this chapter of the other unique themes that McDonald singles out for such suspicions and the formulaic re-presentation of Plunkitt's views argue for the chapter's authenticity as an expression of the district leader's own opinions.

  48. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 90, 98.

  49. Ibid., 88.

  50. Ibid., 18, 58. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics, 90–95, 179.

  51. Plunkitt's figures are questionable, if for no other reason than that the Citizens’ Union ticket won an overall victory in the city elections that year.

  52. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 26.

  53. Ibid., 27.

  54. Ibid., 13, 89.

  55. See, for instance, E.E. Schattschneider's account of the 1896 election in The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (Hillsdale, IL: The Dryden Press, 1975), chapter 5.

  56. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 26.

  57. Paul W. Glad, McKinley, Bryan, and the People (New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1964), chapter 6.

  58. On the traditional norms of candidate behavior, see Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Melvin Laracey, Presidents and the People: The Partisan Story of Going Public (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); Gil Troy, See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

  59. Wage Earner, “Practical Talks About Silver,” New York Times, July 31, 1896, 3.

  60. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 26, 10, 8. Again, John Reynolds's The Demise of the American Convention System is helpful in demonstrating the trendiness of this style of politics.

  61. Richard Franklin Bensel, Passion and Preferences: William Jennings Bryan and the 1896 Democratic National Convention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 238, 270–76.

  62. William Jennings Bryan, The First Battle: A Story of the Campaign of 1896 (Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1896), 199. Good accounts of the silver associations can be found in both J. Rogers Hollingsworth, The Whirligig of Politics: The Democracy of Cleveland and Bryan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) and Paul W. Glad, McKinley, Bryan, and the People (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1964).

  63. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 83.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Tammany endorsed Bryan—as it did every Democratic presidential nominee—but with reluctance. At its traditional ratification ceremony in 1896 a prominent Tammany chieftain insisted that “nothing was left undone … by the delegates from this State to influence the majority of [the Democratic] convention.” They tried to reject Bryan and the Democratic silver plank, but in the end the convention “did not agree with us.” Believing that “the power of organization is best maintained, and success in its undertakings ensured, by the loyal and united support of its representatives to the policy of its councils when properly promulgated,” Tammany issued an endorsement. The New York Times reported that Plunkitt himself publicly endorsed the ticket despite revealing a lukewarm sentiment. This was a conscious attempt to dampen enthusiasm for the national ticket that “meets with the disapproval of many Democrats,” without explicitly bolting the party and thus surrendering favor with the national organization (“Tiger Takes the Ticket,” New York Times, August 1, 1896, 1). See also Blake's account of the lack of enthusiasm for Cleveland's nominations in 1884 (132) and for Bryan in 1896 (162–63), History of the Tammany Society.

  66. Lewis, Richard Croker, 349.

  67. Ibid., 79–80, 332. Plunkitt echoes this argument in his chapter on “Ingratitude in Politics,” in which he claims that “the politicians who make a lastin’ success in politics are the men who are always loyal to their friends.” He then he holds up Croker as the embodiment of the principle. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 35.

  68. Blake, History of the Tammany Society, 162.

  69. Geoffrey Blodgett, The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 205.

  70. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 17.

  71. Lewis, Richard Croker, 149.

  72. Blake, History of the Tammany Society, 164–5.

  73. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 98.

  74. Blake, History of the Tammany Society, 157.

  75. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 81.

  76. Jeffrey M. Berry and Deborah Schildkraut, “Citizen Groups, Political Parties, and Electoral Coalitions,” in Social Movements and American Political Institutions, ed. Anne Costain and Andrew S. McFarland (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).

  77. Donald R. Brand, “Reformers of the 1960 s and 1970s: Modern AntiFederalists?” in Remaking American Politics, ed. Richard A. Harris and Sidney M. Milkis (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).

  78. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: The Free Press, 1949), 70–81.

  79. Lewis, Richard Croker, 349, 150.

  80. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 11, 12. “Herr Most” likely refers to Johann Most, a prominent anarchist who was blamed for inciting an assassination attempt on a Carnegie Steel executive in 1892. Eric Rauchway, Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 17, 103.

  81. Bridges, Morning Glories. M. Margaret Conway and Frank B. Feigert, “Motivation, Incentive Systems, and the Political Party Organization,” American Political Science Review 62 (December 1968): 1169–70. Untitled review by Dayton E. Hickman under “Briefer Notices,” American Political Science Review 43 (April 1949): 386–402, at 388.

  82. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 18. See, for instance, Raymond Wolfinger's point about the machine's embrasure of “blue ribbon” candidates “when they think that their popularity is necessary to carry the ticket to victory.” Raymond Wolfinger, “Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts,” The Journal of Politics 34 (May 1972): 394.

  83. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 17–18.

  84. Reform was, according to another nineteenth-century New York politician, “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Alfred R. Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling: Orator, Statesman, and Advocate (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1889), 541.

  85. Quoted in Robert McElroy, Grover Cleveland: The Man and the Statesman (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1923), 81. Cleveland was also supported by upstate New Yorkers who resented Tammany's role in state politics, and saw Cleveland's embrace of reform as a means of diminishing its role. Hence, Plunkitt's complaint against “upstate Democrats controllin’ our State convention, and sayin’ who we shall choose for President.” Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 43.

  86. Lewis, Richard Croker, 145–47. See similar themes in Plunkitt's chapter “On Ingratitude in Politics,” in which he describes the betrayal of his former protégé, “The” McManus. Plunkitt never says that McManus indulged in reform politics, but Plunkitt complains that “in campaigns he was sometimes on the fence, sometimes on both sides of the fence, and sometimes under the fence. Nobody knew where to find him at any particular time, and nobody trusted him.” Although it could have been said about many politicians before, this accusation of rank opportunism echoes Plunkitt's critique of the opportunistic embrace of reform. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 33.

  87. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, 39, 40, 12.

  88. Wolfinger, “Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts,” 365–98.

  89. Ceaser, Presidential Selection.

  90. As Donald Stokes demonstrated, this decoupling affected the way citizens approach politics. Since the turn of the century, national issues and events have become more salient and state and local events less salient in voters’ political thinking. “Parties and the Nationalization of Electoral Forces,” in The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, ed. William Nesbit Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 182–202.

  91. See James C. Scott, “Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change,” American Political Science Review 63 (December 1969): 1146–47.

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Thanks to the anonymous readers for Polity who aided this piece in its development. Also thanks to John Berg, Cedric de Leon, Dustin Gish, Douglas Harris, Sidney Milkis, Richard Powell, and David Schaefer.

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Klinghard, D. Reading Plunkitt of Tammany Hall in the Context of Late Nineteenth Century Party Nationalization. Polity 43, 488–512 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2011.8

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