What Bonded Immigrants to Urban Machines? The Case of Jacob Arvey and Chicago’s 24th Ward

Immigrants were at the base of America's twentieth-century urban machines. In the familiar story, "bosses," usually of Irish extraction, met the needs of recent immigrants, shepherded them to naturalization and then to the ballot box. To understand urban machines, we have to learn how...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of policy history Vol. 25; no. 4; pp. 463 - 488
Main Author ARNOLD, PERI E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.10.2013
Subjects
Arvey, Jacob
Benefits
Bonds
Central Government
Chicago, Illinois
Cities
Competition
Culture
Immigrants
Immigration
Ireland
Jewish people
Loyalty
Municipal government
Naturalization
Political leadership
Politicians
Russia
Russians
Voters
Voting
United States > US
Chicago Illinois
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Summary:Immigrants were at the base of America's twentieth-century urban machines. In the familiar story, "bosses," usually of Irish extraction, met the needs of recent immigrants, shepherded them to naturalization and then to the ballot box. To understand urban machines, we have to learn how bosses held immigrant voters' loyalty. For cities that experienced consolidation of political factions into machines, this issue becomes particularly important. In those cities, competing faction leaders reduced political competition by consolidating their power into a centralized organization, exchanging autonomy for security. In managing that consolidation, leaders had to retain and transfer the loyalties of their immigrant factions to the more distant, consolidated machine. As Oscar Handlin noted in his classic work on immigration, the most successful ethnic leaders "expanded their roles beyond the little group within which they had grown to power." This article explores that bond in the case of a Russian Jewish, Chicago ward and its leader, Jacob M. Arvey, in the era of the consolidation of that city's powerful machine. The literature on urban machines stresses the importance for them of ethnic voters, but we lack a compelling explanation for how machines maintained immigrants' loyalty. Clarence Stone writes that the machine had to grow resources to maintain the organization "while providing enough benefits to maintain" a loyal electorate. Adapted from the source document.
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ISSN:0898-0306
1528-4190
DOI:10.1017/S0898030613000262