Morrison Era

By Joseph B. Parker

This book traces the career of Lesseps S. Morrison, mayor of New Orleans from 1946 to 1961, and his political organization, the Crescent City Democratic Association (CCDA). The author, Joseph B. Parker, examines Morrison's time in office as an example of the reform politics movement that was sweeping the country at that time. Parker believes that few reform leaders were realistic in their approach to using political machines to accomplish their objectives. Morrison, Parker claims, belongs to a select group of realistic reformers that also includes Robert M. La Follette, Hiram Johnson, and Fiorello La Guardia. Morrison and New Orleans are not Parker's only concerns, however. Parker also focuses on reform politics and its influence on American cities everywhere. He examines the rise of political machines and their positive and negative effects on major cities across the country. Morrison Era traces not only the period of Morrison's mayoral term, but the entire reform politics movement in New Orleans. Parker gives an overview of the major machines and reformers in American cities before focusing on New Orleans, including a history of New Orleans and its politics from Reconstruction to 1926. He also provides a brief political history of New Orleans from 1926 to 1946, before turning to the structure of the CCDA. He traces the functions of the CCDA, examining it as a political machine that helped Morrison control most aspects of New Orleans government, and concludes with the gradual decline and fall of the CCDA.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 31, 1999
• ISBN: 9781455609017

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Machines and Reformers in American Cities

The American city provides great variation in the types of political systems and the forms of electoral competition. A 1962 survey of twenty-four cities uncovered eight major patterns of electoral competition.

The first electoral system of note is that of the dominant (usually Democratic) organization which is relatively cohesive, strongly controlled, and secure. In the second type one party (usually Democratic) dominates, but a good government (anti-organization) group holds some offices or at least exercises substantial influence. The two factions operate in an uneasy alliance. Though primaries are occasionally contested, these opposing groups tend to cooperate in general elections and in most phases of the conduct of government. A third category is that of the one-party city with two or more enduring factions and perhaps a few ephemeral splinter groups. In the fourth type the dominant (usually Democratic) party is divided by shifting coalitions based on ward organizations or by weak control of city-wide primaries due to competition from ethnic and/or interest groups. Cities of this variety may occasionally witness two-party rivalry. The fifth system is one in which a local party competes with one of the national parties. Cincinnati was for many years the most prominent example of this pattern. A sixth type is that of general two-party competition, though the 1962 survey found such competition rare. In the seventh category competition is formally partisan, but informally nonpartisan. And finally thirteen of the twenty-four cities examined employed nonpartisan elections.¹

This volume examines bifactional competition in the city of New Orleans from Reconstruction to 1964, with special attention to the years 1945-1962. From 1874 to 1945 the New Orleans electoral system could have been classified in category number one, that of the dominant, strongly controlled party, since the Regular Democratic Organization was rarely out of power during this time. After 1945 it fell into the third listed category with two well organized factions competing for power. Though these opposing groups were generally viewed as reform versus machine, surface impressions were somewhat deceiving; in order to hold political power the reformers had to become rather machine-like in their behavior.

Before examining machine and reform politics in New Orleans, however, it may prove useful to explore the salient features of urban machines and reform movements which have operated in the United States. Tightly organized urban political parties have been generally regarded as one of America's unique political institutions. In striking contrast to the weakness and disorganization of the national parties in the United States, the municipal parties have been characterized throughout most of the country's history by their hierarchical strength.² These political organizations have been opposed consistently by reformers who sought to drive them from office and to change the governmental structure upon which they thrived.

¹ Charles Gilbert and Christopher Clague, Electoral Competition and Electoral Systems in Large Cities, Journal of Politics, XXIV (May, 1962), 324-30.

² Fred I. Greenstein, The Changing Pattern of Urban Party Politics, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCLIII (May, 1964), 2; E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (New York: Farrow and Rinehart, 1942), 162-69.

Urban Political Machines

The strong urban political parties eventually became known as machines. The name was intended as a term of opprobrium, but the title was not inappropriate in view of the extent and the reliability of the organization's control over its following.

A political machine is a party organization that depends crucially upon inducements that are both specific and material. ... A specific inducement is one that can be offered to one person while being withheld from others. A material inducement is money or some other physical thing to which value attaches. ... It (the machine) is distinguished from other types of organization by the very heavy emphasis it places upon specific, material inducements and the consequent completeness and reliability of its control over behavior which, of course, account for the name machine. 3

So extensive has been the machine's activity on the American urban scene that a well-known political scientist contends, Between the Civil War and the Second World War all large cities and many small ones were at one time or another in the grip of machines. ⁴ New Orleans, perhaps more than most cities, has long felt the presence of machine politics. Since the end of Reconstruction, the New Orleans political scene has been characterized by the clash of machine and anti-machine or reform forces. The machine in the great majority of cases has prevailed in the struggle.

A major characteristic of the machine is its dependence upon inducements, either specific and material or, to a lesser extent, the nonideological, psychic benefits such as personal and ethnic recognition, camaraderie, and the like. 5 While the use of such incentives is not unique to the machine, this political organization is rather extreme in its manipulations, as Edward Banfield points out:

³ Edward C. Ban field and James Q. Wilson, City Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press and M.I.T. Press, 1963), 115.

⁴ Ibid.

Every political party (like every other formal organization) must maintain what Chester I. Bernard calls a combination of inducements (in the case of the machine, friendship, jobs, favors, protection, money) that will elicit from various classes of actors (voters, precinct captains, ward leaders, elective officials) the actions the organization requires; it must then use these actions to replenish its supply of inducements so that it may elicit more actions, and so on. Because of its heavy reliance upon personal, material inducements, the machine represents an extreme—and therefore analytically interesting—type of organization. Analysis of the extreme type is likely to be productive of insights into the equilibrium of incentives of other kinds of party organization, including those that are very unlike it.6

Contrary to the opinion of many reformers, the key to the machine's success is not illegal manipulation of the ballots. While such dishonest political techniques as ballot box stuffing, use of repeaters, and the endless chain have been employed by machines, they have not based their achievements on these practices. The successful machine operates 365 days a year in the business of distributing favors with the intention of gaining a handsome return election day on its investment of effort.⁷ The machine does not win elections by buying votes on election day; rather, it is constantly buying votes since its inducements are aimed at the purchase of support. According to Martin Meyerson and Edward Banfield, the Democratic machine in Chicago thrived on an extensive system of inducements. In Chicago a political machine distributed 'gravy' to its officials, its financial backers, and to the voters. In this way it induced them to contribute the activity required—to ring doorbells on election day, to give cash, and to go to the polls and vote for its candidates—and in this way it gained possession, through its control of the city or county government, of a renewed supply of 'gravy.' ⁸ In a similar vein, the immortal sage of Tammany Hall, George Washington Plunkitt, vividly explained the operation of the New York machine's welfare system:

⁵ Greenstein, The Changing Pattern of Urban Party Politics, 3.

⁶ Edward C. Banfield (ed.), Urban Government, A Reader in Administration and Politics (2nd ed. rev.: New York: The Free Press, 1969), 166. See also Chester T. Bernard, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938). Bernard discusses political organizations on pp. 156-57.

⁷ George M. Reynolds, Machine Politics in New Orleans, 18971926 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 129-30.

What holds your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families and help them in different ways they need help. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire on Ninth, Tenth, or Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night, I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the fire engine. If a family is burned out I don't ask whether they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity Organizations Society, which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide they were worthy of help about the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for them up till they get things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics, too—mighty good politics. Who can tell how many votes one of these fires bring me? The poor are the most grateful people in the world, and let me tell you, they have more friends in their neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs.⁹

⁸ Martin Meyerson and Edward C. Banfield, A Machine at Work, in Banfield (ed.), Urban Government, 174.

⁹ William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1963), 27-28.

William Riordon, speaking of Plunkitt and his fellow district leaders in the Tammany organization, said that the effective leader seeks to reach the hearts of the voters. He does not bother about reaching their heads. It is his belief that arguments and campaign literature have never gained votes. During the golden age of machine politics in New York, leaders of competing political organizations raced to see who could arrive at the scene of a fire and render service to its victims first, who would give the most lavish wedding gifts, and who could furnish the most mourners at funerals.¹⁰ Robert K. Merton provides a cogent analysis of the machine's performance of the welfare function:

It is well known that one source of strength of the political machine derives from its roots in the local community and the neighborhood. The political machine does not regard the electorate as an amorphous, undifferentiated mass of voters. With a keen sociological intuition, the machine recognizes that the voter is a person living in a specific neighborhood, with specific personal problems and personal wants. Public issues are abstract and remote; private problems are extremely concrete and immediate. It is not through the generalized appeal to large public concerns that the machine operates, but through the direct, quasi-feudal relationship between local representatives of the machine and voters in their neighborhood. Elections are won in the precinct.¹¹

For the machine to function effectively, there must be a supply of voters available who place little value upon their votes and who are willing to exchange their votes for the machine's inducements. Therefore, a second feature of the political machine is its dependence upon a pool of voters whose ballots can be purchased. Such a supply of voters was available in virtually every large American city prior to the New Deal.

¹⁰ Ibid., 90 98. See also Charles Garrett, The La Guardia Years, Machine and Reform Politics in New York City (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 196l). 7.

¹¹ Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: The Free Press, 1957). 73-71.

The rapid urbanization of the United States between 1840 and 1920 brought with it a dependent population which had need of the services of the machine. Particularly dependent upon the philanthropy of the machine was the immigrant population which sought refuge in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I, 25 million immigrants were absorbed by the United States.¹² The failure of the other legitimate agencies and institutions to satisfy the needs and wants of these people made them dependent upon the benevolence of the machine. To the new arrivals entering a strange country with the burden of cultural and language barriers, the machine politician was a friend, frequently their only friend.¹³ The machine met the immigrants at the