Book Report of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall Essay Example

day, but I’ve not gone in for dishonest graft. ”

Plunkitt’s main “honest” money-making scheme: buying land that he knows will be needed for a public project like a park or a bridge. Then he arranges to sell the land to the city at an inflated price. He also talks about buying excess granite from public projects and reselling it. For awhile, he has a monopoly on the business. Eventually though granite buyers from Brooklyn and New Jersey came to bid against him.

But instead of competing with them he offered to give them the granite they needed as long as they didn’t bid against him. In one case, by colluding other potential bidders Plunkitt gets 250,000 stones for the absurd price of $2. 50. Although he was making a lot of money from his schemes he was careful to not look rich. “Above all things,” he explains “avoid a dress-suit. You have no idea of the harm that dress-suits have done in politics. ” He goes on to say that he was once accused of buying a $10,000 automobile and a $125 dress suit right before an election and that he suffered badly at the polls for it. The people wouldn’t have minded much if I had been accused of robbin’ the city treasury... but the automobile and the dress-suit were too much for them. ”

Plunkitt also presents an anti-elite-education worldview. In the book he explains how to become a politician and he says that going to college detracts from your political ability, that scholars can’t possibly become effective politicians. Plunkitt maintains that a person who goes through college is handicapped and that the odds against

him succeeding are 100 to 1.

He also claims that civil service reform is a curse, that giving people qualification examinations is a travesty that will destroy patriotism and cultivate anarchy. He admits that he only went to school for three winters and that some of the Tammany leaders are illiterate. But he defends them, saying that if they were “book worms” or college professors they might “... win an election once in 4,000 years. ” Then he adds that the reason the Democratic Party is failing is because its leaders are reading too many books.

The author is successful in executing his purpose. By using interviews with Plunkitt he paints an unflattering picture of the political boss. The book helped educate the public about the political machines. After it was published, political bosses like Plunkitt were removed from power by the progressive movement and reforms like the Galveston Plan. In 2005, a century after the book was first published, Edward O’ Donell of The New York Times called the book “a classic piece of American literature. ” In my opinion the book is very readable, and thought-provoking.

It forced me to compare the political system at the turn of the century with our current system and helped me to realize that they aren’t tremendously different and that’s more than a little depressing.

Bibliography

1. Tijerina, Andres and Montgomery, William E. Vol. 2 of Building A Democratic Nation: A History Of the United States 1877 to Present. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2011.
2. Riordan, William L. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994. O’ Donell, Edward. “The Sage of Tammany Hall,” The New York Times, August 28, 2005.
   

http://www. nytimes. com/ (accessed November 29, 2009).