Electoral Capitalism: The Party System in New York's Gilded Age by Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer (review)

Thomas Platt, a lieutenant in New York's Stalwart Republican political machine, did not mince words when he stated his motivation for serving the public: He would take office, he wrote, "only if I should be satisfied that there was money in it." Likewise, a Brooklyn district leader declared, "if I should obtain [an] appointment, the party would get back all I should get out of it" (63). Both men were clear that they expected to profit from their political work. This, according to the political scientist Jeffrey Broxmeyer, was the essence of electoral capitalism in the Gilded Age. Officeholders used their positions to acquire personal fortunes, some even becoming millionaires. Politics was one of capitalism's many fields in the late nineteenth century, operating parallel to the more traditional economic sphere of companies and commodities. Contrary to the early years of the American Republic, when esteemed white men of property entered politics out of a supposed selfless desire to serve, a new breed of aggressive office seekers dominated the Gilded Age. Wealth accumulation lay at the very center of party politics in New York and across the nation.

The rise of machine politics and the spoils system in New York is usually associated with Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall faction of the Democratic Party. In Electoral Capitalism, Broxmeyer brings to light a previously neglected aspect of the Tweed Ring's brief reign (1866–71): its use of banking to fund party and business activities on a "grand scale" (33). After the Civil War, party leaders throughout the nation were eager to take advantage of the ensuing golden age of capital. No longer were leaders content to simply collect a onetime assessment or lobbying fee, but they instead sought to harness the new techniques of finance capital to generate robust profits. Tammany Hall stood at the forefront of this effort.

Tammany's banking sector had three "mutually dependent layers" that were overseen by secondary players in the Tweed Ring—men such as Hank Smith, Walter Roche, and Henry Genet. Broxmeyer highlights their role to demonstrate that bossism was something more than the outsized personality and power of Tweed. For example, Smith was the head of the new Bowling Green Savings Bank, one of four banks that Tweed and his legislators in Albany had chartered between 1867 and 1869. The savings banks made up the innermost layer of Tammany's financial sector and were directly managed by the Ring members. The second banking layer was a commercial bank, the Tenth National, whose board was also dominated by Ring loyalists. As Broxmeyer explains, "With its position at the Tenth National, the Tweed Ring supplied its savings banks and political projects with an ample flow of credit" (42). The last layer consisted of banks in which Tammany officeholders held personal accounts that were used to deposit the kick-backs received from contractors. In sum, the Ring "had its own savings banks, a co-managed commercial bank, and a web of accounts scattered across the city" (42). Having ready access to this pot of money, in turn, allowed Tammany men to issue loans, engage in speculation, and lobby Albany.

In New York, a consensus formed around the logic of electoral capitalism. Boss Tweed and Tammany Democrats did not have a monopoly on Gilded Age spoils. A faction of the Republican Party (known as the Stalwarts), led by Senator Roscoe Conkling, also embraced a creative intertwining of capitalism and party politics. This "common investment" in wealth accumulation often resulted in cross-party alliances. The banker Hank Smith mentioned above was actually a Tammany Republican, part of a group that cooperated with Democrats in exchange for "cushy" patronage appointments (68). Republicans also partnered with Democrats to snatch up choice plots of public land in uptown Manhattan, which they intended to flip for...