New York - A Documentary Film

Introduction

  • bureaucracy occasionally lets you down: corruption does reign during this era of American history

  • 1871 - work on Brooklyn Bridge, major political scandal (unfinished courtroom in progress for 12 years, no end in sight)

  • Tammany Hall - new kind of corrupt, only associated with bad, shady things

    • also did good things for people

    • precursor to the mafia on the lower east side

    • went to Irish/German immigrants, offered a voice, knowing they’d reap the gratitude when it came time to vote

    • so many people needed HELP - rent, out of work, eviction, child not doing well in school, this local Tammany leader would step in and offer support

  • Why was the political machine so attractive to immigrants?

    • William M. Tweed: a 4th generation Scots politician who cared for his constituents

    • first recognized the value of moving this mass of people to a political end

    • stole 15 million dollars from 100s of city projects - consolidated more power under himself than anyone in the city’s history

  • Reformers

    • Special project of Tweed’s: the courthouse, price explodes and costs more than the price of parliament

    • people were tired of looking in, powerless

    • “No kings or monarchs had risen to power as fast as Tweed the First; nothing beyond the reach of the insatiable gang.” -NYT

“I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures!” -Tweed

  • Truth

    • Tweed took the fall for the SYSTEM. the bankers, the people who weren’t indicted for what they should’ve, the “upstanding” men who hid beneath the shadows

    • convictions later overturned, but lived his last

    • ran away to Spain, but was recognized thanks to—-wait for it—Thomas Nast’s political cartoons.

      • man rly tried to pull a napoleon. damn

  • victims of the spoils system

    • James A. Garfield - Civil War hero and 9th term congressman, shot after his

      • one of the most extraordinary/brilliant men to have been in the presidency, reportedly

      • born in a log cabin, put himself through college by working as a carpenter and janitor

      • by 26, his college’s president

      • off-the-charts intelligence & wit

      • didn’t want to run for president—was never about that life—but the Republican party wanted him to run so he obliged

  • This weird ass man (Charles Guiteau) who’s failed at everything in the world

    • thinks he has a divine message from God to kill the president

  • Assassination Attempt

    • shot at Garfield non-fatally at 9:30 AM in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., in his back

    • American doctors didn’t believe in microbes/germ theory at the time, instead believing in the miasma theory (“bad air”)

      • handled him without antimicrobials/sanitation

      • treated him on the floor of a train car, effectively infecting him (badly)

    • passed away little over two months later after suffering a lot of agony and losing over a hundred pounds

  • Impact

    • civil service reform + brings people together and heals this deep wound through a common understanding of loss