Word: warded
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This summer I worked as a planning intern in City Hall, where I befriended some of the cigar-chomping politicos who make the place their ward headquarters away from home. The following description of the Chicago patronage system was provided by men who admit they owe their livelihoods, and often their social lives, to the machine. All the detailed information was necessarily supplied by well-connected precinct captains, and as usual, the names are changed to protect the guilty...
Patronage jobs doled out by the city and county number not in the hundreds, but in the thousands and probably the tens of thousands. Johnny, a precinct captain in the mayor's ward, estimates that of the more than 35,000 employees the city hires directly, 80 per cent got their jobs through political connections. This figure does not include another 33,000 policemen, firemen and Board of Education personnel, many of whom also got their positions through a "sponsor." Even though I was only a summer intern in City Hall's "cleanest" department, seven fellow workers asked...
Most city job seekers have to be sponsored, which means they better have a letter from their ward office when they report to personnel. This infamous "letter," signed in most cases by the ward committeeman, states that the applicant has been faithful and useful to the ward organization (the Democratic one, of course) and is thus recommended for a position the committeeman knows is his to give out. Hiring is not automatic, though. If the applicant is totally unqualified for the job, the ward may be told to sponsor someone else--but this is far rarer than are incompetent employees...
...patronage, contracts, legal fees and other material incentives are the fuel the machine requires to function, then the regular Democratic ward organizations are the engines which use that fuel to keep the machine running strong. They are the base the machine rests on. The city is broken into 50 wards, each with its own boss, the ward committeeman, who is elected in the party's mayoral primary. Committeemen choose the man who will run for alderman or for the state legislature from their area--subject to Daley's approval naturally--and they often pick themselves. Since Democrats usually...
...ensure that advantage, jobs and other benefits are not given out piecemeal, but are used as "organizational cement." According to Johnny and Peter, who is also an 11th ward precinct captain, each ward is given a certain number of city and county (and state, when it is under regular Democratic control) jobs to hand out as it pleases. Tommy Donovan, the mayor's administrative assistant, is in charge of patronage for the city. He knows which jobs are open and who controls them. Since different positions carry different salaries and prestige, Donovan makes sure that the actual job distribution matches...