Our Enemies in Blue. Kristian Williams
deviance; it resembled nothing so much as institutionalized corruption, state-sponsored crime. Graft and the abuse of power were not merely allowed, they were expected, required, and enforced—within the police department and throughout the city administration. The political machine may best be understood as an exercise in government of, by, and for corruption.
This fusion of government and criminality follows a certain kind of logic. In “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” Charles Tilly argues:
Banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war making all belong on the same continuum.… [C]onsider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments’ provision of protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering. To the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are the consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket.27
The history of American cities gives concrete expression to Tilly’s theoretical claim. In the classic political machines, government agencies and organized criminal enterprises were not only moral equivalents, they often comprised the same people. Nineteenth-century policing did not just resemble racketeering, it was unmistakable gangsterism.
The police were a central component of this system. Both the protection schemes that ensured the cooperation of the underworld and the brawling gangs that controlled the polls on election day relied on—at the very least—the acquiescence of the police. In many respects the development of the political machines depended upon the simultaneous development of the modern police. At the same time, the modernization of policing made possible important advances in municipal government. In particular, the police provided the means by which the power of local government could be consolidated into a single coherent system. In this respect, the rise of political machines resembled the earlier rise of the state itself. A brief comparison of these processes may tell us something about the engineering of power and the uses of policing in establishing its claims.
Machine Politics, State Power, and Monopolies of Violence
In general terms, we can discern a common principle underlying the creation of local political machines and that of national states. As Tilly explains: “A tendency to monopolize the means of violence makes a government’s claim to provide protection, in either the comforting or ominous sense of the word, more credible and more difficult to resist.”28 He identifies four activities characteristic of states:
(1) making war (defeating external rivals);
(2) making states (destroying internal rivals);
(3) protection (defending clients from their enemies); and,
(4) extraction (acquiring the resources to do the other three).29
Cities have not, since the colonial period, usually been forced to contend with external rivals, and thus have not been concerned with making war. But the other three tasks find clear analogies in the processes of municipal government, especially during the machine period. And at both the national and the municipal levels “all [these activities] depend on the state’s tendency to monopolize the concentrated means of coercion.”30
Philadelphia’s history illustrates some more specific parallels. In the first half of the nineteenth century, urban growth had spread beyond the city’s jurisdiction, practically uniting it with nearby townships over which it had no authority. The urban area was divided between several municipalities, and these were themselves divided geographically into neighborhoods, politically into wards, and socially along religious and ethnic lines—with a strong correlation between these sets of divisions. It was nearly impossible to keep order. Catholics and Protestants fought in the streets, White mobs attacked Black people and abolitionist speakers, and the city government could do practically nothing, even within the limited area of its authority.31 The localized, ward-based system of city politics inhibited the government’s ability to enforce its will within the neighborhoods. Yet, in the course of a few years, Philadelphia was transformed from a fragmented megalopolis with only a nominal central authority to a modern city with a unified government, a citywide political machine, and a police system to enforce the will of each.
Much of the disorder in nineteenth-century Philadelphia was perpetrated by the city’s volunteer fire departments. Neighborhood-based fire companies adopted the ethnic and religious identities of their members, and often saw themselves as the champions of their neighborhood’s traditional culture and honor. Firefighting became a source of neighborhood pride, and offered an opportunity to settle scores against rival groups. Demographic shifts and overlapping jurisdictions led to frequent turf wars; firemen would often fight one another while a blaze continued unabated. When opportunities for battle did not present themselves, they were sometimes created: fire companies would set fires in other precincts and then ambush their rivals.32
These brawls became neighborhood affairs, involving large sections of the community. Many of the fire companies affiliated with youth gangs, some with names like “Killers,” “Rats,” and “Bouncers.”33 As the police at the time were also organized into separate ward organizations, they were ill-suited for suppressing such riots. Not that they were eager to: the cops generally felt little inclination to interfere with these battles, except in support of their neighborhood company.
This situation put conflicting pressures on the political system. On the one hand, it created demands for more centralization, such as government-run fire departments and a single police force capable of suppressing disorder. On the other hand, ward leaders saw the political potential of the fire companies and were quick to avail themselves of this additional source of election-day muscle.34 The balkanized state of the city therefore left local political bosses in a bit of a bind. Their personal fiefdoms were inextricably tied to the ward-based structure of government; it allowed them a distinct realm of influence and a base of support for pursuing their agenda in the citywide political arena. But the exercise of this authority relied on a certain minimum degree of public order—which this same ward structure, with its rivalries and fragmentation, constantly threatened.
The outcome of this dilemma is revealing. In 1850, a “marshal’s” police force was created for the entire city of Philadelphia. Police in the suburbs and the four city districts continued to act independently, but were also called on to cooperate with the marshal’s force. The first marshal, John Keyser, recruited the new police directly from the youth gangs associated with Nativist fire departments, reasoning that he could form a “strong-armed force prepared to slug it out with fire gangs.”35 By co-opting the most militant element of the fire companies and consolidating them into a single, citywide force, the marshal’s police organization afforded the new cops the opportunity to defeat their traditional rivals and greatly enhanced the power of the city government—as well as, for a time, that of the Nativist party machine.
Catholic gangs and fire companies, while overpowered, were not especially impressed with their rivals’ new authority. One gang, the Bleeders, told in a song of being attacked by “a band of ruffians … they called themselves Police.” And when the Nativists lost control of the city government, Keyser’s replacement—a Democrat—filled the force with Democrats, also recruited from fire company gangs.36
In 1854, the legislature revised the city’s charter to cover the entire contiguous urban area, incorporating outlying districts into the city.37 The new charter required a centralized police department and allowed for a city-controlled fire department as well. The mayor was given the power to appoint police officers and set the department’s rules, and the city council was responsible for determining the size and organization of the force. The council created an 820-man department, divided between fourteen precincts corresponding to the ward districts. One alderman was elected to serve as magistrate in each district, and a single marshal was appointed to oversee the entire operation.38 In effect, this arrangement put the new police directly in the service of the reigning political machine.39
But the consolidation of power may not have been everything the ward leaders had hoped for. In many respects, the beginnings of a central authority relied on a corresponding decline in local power. The survival of the central power structure demanded the eventual elimination of its potential rivals. So long as local political