During the last two years of General Tso’s Sickness insanity I’ve taken to watching three BBC TV documentary series from more than fifty years ago, each one of them labeled as a “personal view” of their particular subjects by the men who wrote them and introduced them.

I was a kid when they were first broadcast, so have no memory of them, but they’ve all turned out to be great TV, if you can get past the lack of High Definition!

  1. Civilisation by Kenneth Clarke (1969)
  2. America by Alistair Cooke (1972)
  3. The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski, (1973)

The other day, writing about the current corruption of Washington D.C., in particular that of the current President’s son, Hunter Biden, I was reminded of one part of an episode from Cooke’s America series. Titled The Huddled Masses, it dealt with the massive wave of immigrants from Europe that poured into the USA in the late 19th century. They needed help, and as Cooke describes it:

For that there was a character who haunted the docks and covered the tenements. He’s a type who is not greatly admired by students of political science. But nonetheless he was the lifeline between the castaway and the new society. He was usually, in New York, a Jew or an Irishman, a native American. But his parents had been immigrants, and he knew well what were the primitive needs of people.

I’m talking about the American politician.

In exchange for your vote – and that was always well understood – he would get you a job. He’d get your son out of trouble. He would hound the landlord to repair the toilet or the bathtub. You had a plain daughter? He’d go to work on the marriage broker. In bad times he brought you coal and food. He filled out your tax forms. He knew when the baby was coming, and he got the doctor.

And he did all these things through a chain of command that reached all the way up to the county leader or even to the mayor. And because he did them, he ran the cities, well or badly.

It was called Tammany Hall and it was as crooked as hell. Cooke describes the likes of Boss Tweed, whose pals made “clerical errors” in the city finances amounting to $200 million (about $5.6 billion in 2022). Richard Croker, who returned to Ireland with a stable of thoroughbred horses and a Cherokee wife decades younger than him: it was he who coined the title of this post. And George Washington Plunkitt. All were Democrats.

So yes, they were crooks, as much or perhaps more than the Bidens and the rest of the current Washington D.C. crowd.

But the difference is captured in Cooke’s description of them; they actually did good for the ordinary voters in the real and direct ways that count in everyday life.

By contrast the current crop do good entirely for themselves and for the wealthy and connected people they deal with via the mechanism of our giant governments. The voters may get the scraps of whatever vast spending bills are passed, but that’s about it; real trickle-down economics, and with almost no personal contact.

Plunkitt and company also worked hard at it: what follows are his diary entries describing his typical day:

2 A.M.: Wakened by a boy with message from a bartender to bail him out of jail.

3.A.M.: Back to bed.

6.A.M.: Fire engines. Up and off to the scene to see my election district captains tending the burned out tenants. Note names for new homes.

8:30 A.M.: To police court. Six drunken constituents on hand. Got four released by a timely word to the judge. Paid the other’s fines.

9 A.M.: To Municipal District Court. Told an election district captain to act as lawyer for a widow threatened with dispossession. Paid the rent of a poor family about to be dispossessed and gave them a dollar for food.

11 A.M. to 3 P.M.: Found jobs for four constituents.

3 P.M.: An Italian funeral. Sat conspicuously up front.

4 P.M.: A Jewish funeral. Up front again in the synagogue.

7 P.M.: Meeting of district captains. Reviewed the list of all voters. Who’s for us. Who’s agin.

8 P.M.: Church fair. Bought ice cream for the girls. Took fathers out for a little “something” round the corner.

9 P.M.: Back to clubhouse. Heard complaints of a dozen pushcart peddlers about the police and assured them I would visit Police Headquarters next morning.

10:30 P.M.: A Jewish wedding. Had sent handsome present to the bride.

Midnight: To bed.

Where I’m sure he fell asleep counting votes.

Given the choice between a grifter like that and our modern versions, I’d vote for Plunkitt every day of the week and twice on Sunday.