Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

"This is sort of a primary source. Plunkitt, a somewhat corrupt politician, unabashedly defends the system he was part of in his own words. It’s a wonderful picture of how [the New York Democratic party organisation] Tammany Hall worked and how New York worked. It’s not filtered through the lens of either later historians or through the lens of progressive muckrakers. His humanity, his life, comes out in the book. Plunkitt famously made a distinction between honest and dishonest graft. Dishonest graft, explicitly getting paid for some public service or taking from the treasury – was explicitly not allowed, even by Tammany Hall. But honest graft, which is buying up land that he knew would be needed for some public improvement project and then reselling the land to the government at a profit, was OK by him and something he became rich by doing. Voters, ethicists and anyone in government today may not see the distinction as being all that material. But you’ve got to admire his pluck. Cities require government. There is a huge externality when you crowd people together in dense urban areas. There are costs associated with crime, disease, infrastructure and traffic congestion. There is a reason why people in New York like government more than people in Montana: they need it more. But because they need government they also reveal the weaknesses of the public sector. This is particularly obvious in the developing world today, where municipal governments are so tragically unable to provide decent services. Tammany Hall is a place that, after [its mid-19th century leader, William] Tweed, seemed to be all right at providing services – although there were a lot of transfers that went along with them to Tammany Hall’s friends. Plunkitt reminded us of how challenging it was for America to come to a place where there was a modicum of honesty in our municipal governments. Public ownership is one of the ways that people historically tried to deal with the corruption within our cities. Now privatisation is seen as the solution. But certainly the private provision of things like street sweeping were a bonanza for corrupt politicians during the Tweed regime. Politicians would award the contracts, the services would be badly performed, and money would flow back to the corrupt politicians who handed out the contracts. Having public services obviated the need to award contracts to private companies, which essentially made it more difficult to steal. This is a very live issue in the developing world. The question is whether the public failures in the developing world should prompt the provision of things like water services from purely private providers. Or are we afraid of creating exactly what happened in New York in the 19th century, where a lot of money was paid out of the public purse with little actual provision of services? Tammany Hall spoke up for poor New Yorkers and produced some legitimate politicians. But I’m sorry, I can’t provide a full-throated defence of graft like Plunkitt."