American Pharaoh

by Adam Cohen

  The chairman of the Cook County Central Committee held the ultimate power, but it was ward committeemen like McDonough who did most of the machine’s day-to-day work. Ward committeemen slated, or picked, candidates for ward offices from alderman down — and like McDonough, they not infrequently ended up as both ward committeeman and alderman. They were also in charge of distributing patronage to precinct captains and other ward workers, a difficult, sensitive, and time-consuming task. “A committeeman gets a phone call and is told, ‘I’ve got three crossing guards, one sanitation worker,’” said a committeeman with the Cook County Democratic Organization. “‘Do you want them?’ ‘How soon do you have to know?’ he asks. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’ You call back and say, ‘I want two crossing guards. I can’t use three. The sanitation worker — yes, I want that. Here are the names.’ The girl says, ‘Send them in to get their yellow slips,’ and they go in to get their yellow slips.” Being ward committeeman could be lucrative work, particularly for those who had law firms or insurance agencies on the side. Benjamin Lewis, a 24th Ward committeeman who was shot to death in the early 1960s under mysterious circumstances, once boasted that the post was worth $50,000 a year in insurance work alone. In exchange for his power and opportunity for enrichment, a committeeman was responsible for ensuring that his ward met the vote totals that the machine boss expected. Ward committeemen who failed to deliver on election day risked being “vised,” as the machine lingo put it, or fired, and replaced by someone who would do better. 49

  Daley’s new position of precinct captain made him a soldier in Mc-Donough’s 11th Ward army, and put him in charge of a unit of about four hundred to five hundred voters. Precinct captains were the prime practitioners of the retail politics that was the stock in trade of the old urban machines. A precinct captain was expected to form a close personal relationship with every voter in his territory; the machine relied on these personal contacts — rather than the strength of its candidates in a given year — to win. “I never take leaflets or mention issues or conduct rallies in my precinct,” a Chicago precinct captain once explained. “After all, this is a question of personal friendship between me and my neighbors.” To forge these connections, precinct captains were expected to be out in their neighborhoods virtually every night, attending community meetings, putting in hours in the ward office, or visiting voters in their homes. “I found that those who related to people and were sincere in trying to help their neighbors in the community turned out to be the best captains,” one ward committeeman once said. Jake Arvey, committeeman from the heavily Jewish 24th Ward, required his precinct captains to belong to a synagogue or church, and to fraternal organizations like the Knights of Columbus or B’Nai Brith. “Sure, I was looking for votes,” Arvey says. “But, in the process, I made them charity-minded, civic-minded, culture-minded, and sensitive to the needs of other people.” In his last mayoral campaign in 1975, Daley delivered a tribute to the underappreciated precinct captain. He “is as honest as the rest of us and he’s a better neighbor than most of us, for partisan reasons,” Daley said. “He has solicitude for the welfare of the family on his block, especially if they are a large family with dependable political loyalties. He gets your broken-down uncle into the county hospital. . . . He’s always available when you’re in trouble.” 50

  As a young precinct captain, Daley spent countless hours each week in one of Bridgeport’s great institutions: the 11th Ward headquarters. Daley’s new world had the feel of a Hibernian social club. One non-Irish Bridgeport native recalled how he felt when he stopped by for a political event. “In a short time the office was packed with precinct captains and workers — all Irish,” he says. “Outside of one Italian and myself, I saw nothing but red hair, freckles, and green eyes. I met an old high school chum who is now a helper in a precinct and who works at City Hall. I asked him how one can get into the organization. He smiled and said, ‘The first thing you have to do is be Irish!’” During election season, the 11th Ward was a campaign war room, where strategy was mapped out, precinct canvasses were analyzed, and campaign literature was handed out for distribution throughout the ward. The rest of the year, it functioned as a combination of constituent-service office and community center. 51

  In the 11th Ward offices, and every other ward office across the city, the machine dispensed favors systematically in exchange for political support. Priority treatment went to political and financial backers of the machine, and to those who came with a referral from their precinct captain — the kind of solid citizen that ward workers referred to as “one of our people.” But since the granting of favors was a form of outreach to the community, any ward resident not known to be actively hostile to the machine was eligible for help. Complaints about city services, like missing stop signs or irregular garbage pickups, were easily handled. If a constituent had his water cut off, a single phone call from the ward office to the water department could get it restored. The ward organization had volunteer lawyers available in the evenings to provide free legal advice on everything from immigration paperwork to criminal law problems. Precinct captains like Daley could find summer jobs for neighborhood youth, arrange scholarships to the University of Illinois, and even get constituents hospital care or glass eyes. “Everybody needs a favor sometimes, but some people are too dumb to ask for it,” a saloonkeeper-alderman from the 43rd Ward once reflected. “So I say to my captains, ‘If you notice a hole on the sidewalk in front of a fellow’s house, call him a week before election and ask him if he would like it fixed. It could never do any harm to find out.’” 52

  Machine politicians were adept at taking credit for every favor they dispensed — so voters would remember on election day. When machine aldermen contacted city agencies for their constituents, they requested written responses. Letters agreeing to take the requested action were sent to the alderman, so he could in turn pass the good news on to the voter. Letters of refusal went directly from the agency to the constituent. Machine officials often took more than their share of credit. When one alderman got a stop sign installed at a dangerous intersection, he sent a letter to every registered voter in his ward claiming that it was the machine’s doing — even though it began with local block associations, who had conducted a petition drive for the sign. Sometimes the machine took credit less formally. If the organization succeeded in intervening with the water department and getting a voter’s water restored, one machine operative says, “on election day the precinct captain would ask you about your water.” 53

  Working as a precinct captain in the 11th Ward organization, Daley got an ideal introduction to the craft of machine politics. In the weeks before an election, the precinct captains were expected to canvass each home in their precinct at least twice to find out which way every voter was leaning — an early forerunner of the opinion poll. A captain was expected to be able to predict his vote almost exactly; missing by more than ten or so votes could result in a reprimand. A few days before the election, the precinct captain reported the results of the canvass to his ward committeeman. The committeeman, in turn, delivered the aggregated numbers for his ward to the machine boss. In addition to giving the machine a preview of how things looked for the election, the precinct-by-precinct canvass allowed captains to familiarize themselves with the individual circumstances of every voter. A captain could find out which of his voters were wavering and needed further persuasion, which needed transportation to the polls, and which would need to be reminded to vote. He could also learn which voters were determined to vote Republican, and therefore should not be encouraged to vote. A captain’s machinations to maximize the Democratic vote in his precinct could be quite elaborate. Just before the 1939 mayoral election, an Italian family with six voting-age members moved into Arvey’s 24th Ward. The precinct captain paid them regular visits, discussing over red wine how they planned to vote. “Six votes is an awful lot,” noted Arvey. But the captain soon realized that the head of the household was related to a leading Chicago Republican. Wh
en the captain asked him to vote in the Democratic primary, he refused. “I can’t do that!” he said. “My cousin is a Republican committeeman. How would it be if I voted in the Democratic primary?” After the captain pursued the family for a month, a compromise was arrived at. The man and his wife, who shared a last name with the cousin, could vote Republican. The man’s two daughters and sons-in-law, who had different names, would vote the straight Democratic ticket. 54

  On election day, precinct workers often turned to more blatant forms of persuasion. Precinct captains handed out turkeys, nylons, and cash in exchange for votes. A captain from the poor West Side 27th Ward was once convicted of buying votes for one dollar a head. In the South Side 4th Ward, a newspaper reporter observing the voting caught a precinct worker handing out bags of groceries. “We gotta get these voters out any way we can,” the worker explained. On skid row, precinct captains often lured winos with free liquor. The fact that bars were legally closed on election day worked in the machine’s favor: many alcoholics considered the few minutes it took to vote a small price to pay to make the shakes go away. Clory Bryant, who ran for alderman in the early 1960s against the machine’s candidate, saw the effect of the machine’s generosity toward voters first-hand. “I had asked a neighbor of mine was she going to vote for me,” Bryant says. “As a matter of fact, I says, ‘I know you’ll vote for me.’ And she said, ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t, because my alderman always gives me a Christmas tree for my vote. And I know you can’t afford to go around buying these many trees.’” Bryant did not get her neighbor’s vote. The machine also did favors for neighborhood organizations that could help it win votes. The West Side 25th Ward Organization used to give regular donations to the thirty-five churches in the ward. One election day, the ward boss arrived at a polling place located in the basement of St. Roman’s Church. The priest was handing out coffee and doughnuts. Asked what he was doing, the priest responded, “What the hell do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to get some Democratic votes.” Ward organizations also wielded the stick in order to round up votes. Captains in black precincts frequently told voters they would lose their government benefits if they failed to vote a straight Democratic ticket. “Every welfare recipient is afraid to oppose the wishes of the precinct captain,” the pastor of a Mennonite church once complained. “Everyone living in public housing is afraid. They have been told that the machine alderman is the one who ensures them living quarters.” It was not an idle threat. Welfare programs were so rule-bound at the time, and enforcement was so arbitrary, that a determined precinct captain often could get a voter’s benefits cut off if he really wanted to. Saying hello to the precinct captain at the polls every year also came in handy when a public-housing recipient’s refrigerator or stove broke down. 55

  In addition to his position as precinct captain, Daley was now working for McDonough in his City Council office. The job of “secretary” to an alderman was not glamorous. Daley was one of a corps of glorified gofers. But McDonough was a garrulous, old-style politician who liked to spend most of the workday at the saloon or the racetrack. He was more than willing to have the hardworking and detail-oriented Daley plow through the draft bills and proposed budgets that regularly crossed his desk. Working at the City Council, particularly for such a lackadaisical alderman, gave Daley a chance to observe city government up close. It also put Daley in the political mix, letting him make personal connections with machine politicians from across the city. Daley’s work for McDonough fit a pattern he followed throughout his career: he apprenticed himself to powerful men and made himself indispensable by taking on dull but necessary jobs. “I’ll tell you how he made it,” Daley’s friend-turned-rival Benjamin Adamowski once said. “He made it through sheer luck and by attaching himself to one guy after another and then stepping over them.” 56

  In 1923, Daley began taking pre-law and law school classes four nights a week at DePaul University. Getting a law degree while juggling work and political responsibilities would ultimately take Daley more than a decade. “Daley was a nice fellow, very quiet, a hard worker, and always neatly dressed,” a fellow student, who would later be appointed a judge by Daley, recalled. “He never missed a class and always got there on time. But there was nothing about him that would make him stand out, as far as becoming something special in life. Even then, he misused the language so that you noticed it. He had trouble expressing himself and his grammar wasn’t good.” But Daley succeeded in law school by the same plodding persistence he brought to every task he undertook. “I always went out dancing every night, but Dick went home to study his law books,” recalled a friend from youth who later went on to head the plumbers’ union. “He would never stop in the saloon and have a drink.” 57

  Daley’s career progressed as his patron, McDonough, moved up through the political ranks. In 1930, the machine slated McDonough for county treasurer, and when he was elected he brought Daley along as his deputy. As county treasurer, McDonough was even less conscientious than he had been as an alderman. The dry financial work of the county treasurer’s office offered McDonough even less reason than the City Council had to remain at his desk. While his boss frequented racetracks and speakeasies, Daley applied the skills he had acquired in the De La Salle counting rooms to the county treasury. In his new job, Daley learned the intricacies of local government law and municipal finance, and how to work a budget. And he saw firsthand how a government office operates when it is inextricably tied to a political machine. He learned how the machine larded the county treasurer’s office with patronage appointees who were hired for their political work. And he saw how it ensured that county funds were deposited with bankers who contributed to the campaigns of machine candidates. 58

  While Daley was toiling away at night law school, he met Eleanor Guilfoyle at a neighborhood ball game. Her brother Lloyd, a friend of Daley’s, made the introduction. “Sis,” as she would always be known, came from a large Irish-Catholic family in the neighboring Southwest Side community of Canaryville. She had graduated from Saint Mary High School and was working as a secretary at a paint company and caring for an invalid mother when Daley asked her out on their first date, to a White Sox game. “We had a very happy courtship,” Sis once recalled. “I used to meet him after law school and go to the opera.” “Of course I knew Dick was bound to succeed — even when I first met him,” she would say later. “Anyone who would work in the stockyards all day long, then go to school at night was determined to get ahead.” Daley pursued marriage as he pursued everything else in his life — carefully, even ploddingly. Their courtship lasted for six years, until he had finished law school and had begun to establish himself professionally. The couple married on June 17, 1936, when Daley was thirty-four and Eleanor was twenty-eight. It was three years after his graduation, and the same year that he entered into a law partnership with an old friend, William Lynch, the politically minded son of a Bridgeport precinct captain. 59

  CHAPTER

  2

  A House for All Peoples

  The Democratic machine that Daley had joined was largely the invention of a Bohemian immigrant named Anton Cermak. Cermak was born in 1873, outside Prague, and came to America at the age of one. His family settled in Braidwood, a coal town sixty miles southwest of Chicago. As a teenager, Cermak headed for the big city and settled in Lawndale, a West Side neighborhood where Russian and Polish Jews and Bohemian Christians lived together in relative harmony. Cermak supported himself as a peddler, selling kindling from a horse-drawn wagon, but he was drawn to politics and quickly showed an aptitude for it. Cermak was a leader of his tightly knit Czech community, and with its backing was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1902. He was also helped early in his career by another important constituency: supporters of alcohol. In turn-of-the-century Chicago, the battle between Prohibitionists and “wets” was the defining political schism. Cermak’s zealous anti-Prohibition advocacy quickly earned him the nickname the “voice of liquor.” As he rose to greater
power, the liquor interests — notably a powerful saloonkeepers’ trade association — always remained at the heart of his political base. 1

  The most important thing big liquor did for Cermak — more important than providing financial and electoral support — was to introduce him to ethnic coalition politics. Like many divisive political issues, Prohibition was a proxy for deeper social insecurities. The anti-liquor cause drew its strongest support from native-born Americans, and many Chicago immigrants regarded it as a thinly veiled assault on them and their way of life. Chicago’s badly fragmented immigrant community — divided by language, religion, and in many cases Old World enmities — united in opposition to this blue-blooded assault on their neighborhood saloons. In 1906, the German-language newspaper Abendpost brought Chicago’s disparate immigrant groups together into a pro-liquor coalition. This alliance eventually grew into the United Societies for Local Self-Government, a multi-ethnic lobbying group. By 1919, United Societies had more than one thousand ethnic organizations and one-quarter of a million people affiliated with it. Cermak was the group’s secretary and its leading spokesman, which put him at the forefront of the most powerful pan-ethnic political coalition Chicago had ever experienced. Cermak had by now begun to shift his own political focus away from Spring-field and back to Chicago. In 1922, after two decades in the state legislature, he was elected president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. It was a powerful post, as was reflected in the nickname he soon acquired — “the mayor of Cook County.” 2