Mark West

In the period after the Civil War, corruption ran rampant in the United States.
Most cities had gangs which controlled city hall, and whose patronage insured the outcome of elections while dispersing public money to cronies.

Gangs like St. Louisí Whiskey Ring, Philadelphiaís Gas Ring, and the gangs under Chicagoís Long John Wentworth turned the public treasuries into checking accounts for the well-heeled and well-connected.

These gangs had as their sole goal theft, and they used any means they could cook up to achieve it. Incompetents were elevated to positions of authority, and then, as might be expected, they were unable to cope with the demands of office.

Political hacks found themselves in jobs expected to be sinecures; and in the happenstance that public necessity actually made some demand on them, they were woefully inadequate to the task. And the payrolls of the cities were flooded with hires who had no discernible jobs; under the Tweed Ring, in New York City, Central Park ìemployedî more than 4,000 groundskeepers, most of whom could only be found on payday, when they would line up outside city hall for blocks to receive their share of the fruits of the money tree.

Tweedís ring, known as Tammany Hall for the social club from which it sprang, was the epitome of graft and waste and patronage. The amounts of money the Tweed Ring siphoned off from the coffers of New York City were stupendous. The Booth Committee, a group that investigated the actions of the ring after it fell from power, estimated that the ring directly stole some $20 million from the city, which would be worth $263 million in current dollars; the total losses to the citizens ranged as high as $2 billion in current dollars, when fraudulent bonds are included.

The ring, under the leadership of William Marcy Tweed and his henchmen, took over the cityís government right after the Civil War by appointing the ìrightî men to key posts, particularly to the judiciary. Once that was done, Tammany Hall could count on official approval for almost anything it did ó and that included such maneuvers as state aid for parochial schools, the use of no-bid contracts, and the continual use of political placards and advertising to promote to a semi-literate constituency its own patriotism and the evil nature of its foreign-oriented, atheistic opponents in the opposing party.

One might imagine this sounds familiar.

What might not sound familiar is what brought the Tweed Ring to justice. A free press, under the leadership of the big New York newspapers, fearlessly scrutinized the dealings of Tammany Hall, printing reports with the facts concerning Tweedís graft and patronage.

Thomas Nast, the political cartoonist, relentlessly and ruthlessly lampooned Boss Tweed and his gang. And eventually, public opinion became so inflamed against the graft and corruption of the gang that the public officials who had not been corrupted were forced to act.

And thereís the tragedy of this story. William Marcy Tweed, Oakey Hall, Peter Barr Sweeney and the like were brought to justice by a press system not yet corrupted by the attraction of power, the ownership and control of the rich, and the opiate of celebrity. How nice it would be if we, in this modern era, could say the same.
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Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.