Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster (15 page)

At the street level, the benefits of the Fair were even more immediate. The bordellos and gambling parlors went on a hiring binge to keep up with the influx of trade. Visitors from Paris, Berlin, London, and elsewhere made their way to the South Side Levee district, where the dance halls, panel houses, and honky-tonks stayed open till the crack of dawn. Grifters, bunco men, scam artists, pickpockets, sneak thieves, and gangsters from all over the country flocked to Chicago to prey on the immense gathering of suckers.

It seemed the party would never end, but then, on the night of October 28, 1894, it did. Just hours after Carter Harrison had given a speech praising his native city for its fearless, enterprising spirit, a city official who felt he had been overlooked for a plum municipal appointment entered the mayor’s residence and shot him three times at close range. Within minutes, Our Carter was dead.

The shocking murder of the mayor threw the city of Chicago into an uncharacteristic funk. Although the criminal underworld had nothing to do with his death, the tawdry nature of Harrison’s assassination reverberated throughout the gaming parlors, whore houses, and saloons where the city’s political schemes were hatched. The revulsion at such an act brought about by perverse political ambition on the part of the killer did not reflect well on the city’s political machine. Consequently, Mike McDonald once again slipped into retirement and disappeared from the scene.
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The rackets went into remission, but they did not disappear. Those in the know understood that the death of Harrison and retirement of King Mike created a vacuum that needed to be filled. There were many suitors from a legion of alderman, vice lords, and would-be gangsters who relished the possibility of following in the footsteps of Mike McDonald. But none were more skilled and formidable than two aldermen from the First Ward, a couple of Irish bull terriers who were so notorious that they were known almost exclusively by their colorful monikers: Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John.

Dawn of the Irish Political Boss

In the long history of American politics, few figures had more influence over the day-to-day livelihood of their constituents than the ward bosses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, their legacy is largely forgotten. If they are remembered at all, it is as crude, bellicose mini-dictators who practiced a kind of gangster politics that existed in the decades before the New Deal and long before the political reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. Their historical image has largely been determined by the negative press they received in the newspapers and magazines of their day, most of which were owned by wealthy WASP families and were pro-big business, pro-Republican Party, and solidly against labor unions.

Out in the streets of America’s most bustling municipalities, however, it was a different story. Political bosses in many large and midsize cities were tolerated—if not enthusiastically supported—by working men and women, immigrants, and small business owners who viewed their boodling and other forms of political graft as nothing more than a redistribution of the country’s riches.

Early on, Irish immigrants and Irish Americans were ceded an inordinate amount of political capital by the nation’s burgeoning immigrant population. Generations of Germans, Swedes, Poles, Jews, and Italians supported and even promoted Irish political leaders, for a variety of reasons. In the Irish they recognized a taste for politics that came from a culture based on social gatherings at the local saloon and parish. The Irish understood the craft of giving and receiving favors as the basis of a political system. Also, they did not shy away from—and even seemed to relish—the art of confrontation, which was important in American politics, where nothing was given away free. It was apparent that immigrants would not get far in the United States without putting up a fight, and the Irish were good fighters (most of the early boxing champions were Irish) or at least wily enough to know how to manipulate a hostile political system in their favor. After all, they had been doing it for generations back in the Old Country.

Finally, and most importantly, the Irish spoke English. Other immigrant groups that did not speak the native tongue saw this as a tremendous advantage. Thus the Irish were designated as political leaders by generations of nonnaturalized citizens who not only recognized them as fellow immigrants, but also saw the qualities that transformed the best of the lot into natural leaders.

This is, of course, a broad oversimplification; not all immigrants were willing to extend political power to what some perceived to be a rowdy, fast talking, alcohol-swilling race of hooligans. But the record is impressive: Throughout the land, in big cities and small towns, Irishmen and Irish Americans filled out the ranks of local political machines in numbers that far exceeded their percentage of the overall population.

Without a doubt, the granddaddy of all political machines was the Tammany Tiger. In New York City, the Irish did exist in large numbers, and they exerted this numerical strength in a manner that shaped the direction of the city (and, by extension, the nation) for generations to come. Tammany-style politics became synonymous with political gangsterism and corruption, particularly in the years following the downfall of the Tweed Ring. In U.S. cities large and small, whenever local aldermen or other municipal figures became embroiled in any kind of financial scandal, they were inevitably satirized in the press by editorial cartoonists who sought to link local corruption with the same mentality that flourished in New York. “We don’t want that kind of politics here” was the implied message, as if political corruption were some kind of big city, Irish immigrant phenomenon that was being foisted on an unsuspecting public. In fact, the political bosses were able to seize the levers of power in these cities for one simple reason: They delivered.

It all began at the entry level with the precinct caption, who was hand picked by the ward boss. Each ward was divided into numerous precincts; the local captain was almost always a saloon owner whose place of business served as a central meeting hall for disseminating information throughout the neighborhood. Next up the chain of command was the ward boss, a figure of note in the community who probably started as a precinct caption and rose above the fray by way of physical and political muscle. The ward boss was chosen by consensus from within the controlling democratic club or society, which voted semiannually on such matters. Both the precinct captain and the ward boss were commonly referred to as ward heelers, a term used to describe anyone who “worked the ward” by giving out turkeys to the poor and needy on holidays and soliciting votes and support for the organization.

If you served the party with distinction as a ward boss, you might be put forth by the Machine as a candidate for alderman. Alderman was an elected position and as such required certain skills many ward bosses might not have—such as a talent for oratory. Although many aldermen were not necessarily good public speakers, those who were tended to get the most press and became symbols of the Machine.

Almost every localized political organization throughout the United States had its unofficial bard, or public speechifier, who personified the Machine mentality as it applied to the local political arena. Perhaps no one became more famous than George Washington Plunkitt, alderman from New York City’s Fifteenth Assembly District, whose long-winded, off-the-cuff political tracts were recorded by a journalist and in 1905 published under the title
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics
. In the book, Plunkitt distinguished between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft,” famously summarizing his philosophy as “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.” According to Plunkitt, honest graft was the simple use of insider information or sweetheart contracts to enrich the organization; dishonest graft was “blackmailin’ gamblers, saloon keepers, disorderly people, and the like.”

At the heart of Plunkitt’s treatise is the sacred belief that “all politics is local,” and any political leader worth his salt must have the common touch:

There is only one way to hold a district: you must study human nature and act accordin’. You can’t study human nature in books. Books is a hindrance more than anything else. If you have been to college, so much the worse for you. You’ll have to unlearn all that you learned before you can get right down to human nature, and unlearnin’ takes a lot of time. Some men can never forget what they learned at college…. To learn real human nature you have to go among the people, see them and be seen.
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Plunkitt’s published talks, and later his book, made the rounds in various precincts and wards throughout the United States, becoming a kind of bible for aspiring political bosses. The wit, wisdom, and methods of the Tammany bard were adapted to a staggering number of U.S. municipalities.

By the turn of the century, Irish-run political machines were flourishing or in development in a number of localities, including obvious “Irish towns” like New York, Brooklyn (which merged with New York in 1898), Albany, San Francisco, and Boston, where James Michael Curley, a young ward boss, exhorted his followers to “Vote early and often for Curley.” Alderman Curley’s popularity was such that when he was convicted of fraud for taking a civil service exam on behalf of a constituent, he was reelected by a huge margin from his jail cell.

Curley’s electoral success was not surprising given Boston’s large Irish population, but political machines also sprung up in cities with minimal Irish constituencies. For example, in Kansas City, Missouri, a young saloon keeper named James Pendergast (the son of immigrants from County Tipperary) founded a Machine that would pass leadership from one sibling to another and dominate the local political scene for half a century.

Of all the places where the Irish political bosses plied their trade, however, none was more storied and rambunctious than the city of Chicago. Although the city’s Irish population never topped more than fifteen percent, Irish political leaders in Chicago were everywhere, especially in the river wards, where vice mongers, wharf rats, dock workers, labor vampires, corrupt cops, and gangsters gathered excitedly like rats at a cheese factory.

The First Ward Levee district was the center of all vice in Chicago, and it was presided over by John “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna. Of the two, The Bath was the loudest and most ostentatious. Born in a tough Irish slum neighborhood in the First Ward known as Connelly’s Patch, Coughlin was an outgoing, good-natured youth who made friends wherever he went. At the age of nineteen, he landed a job as towel boy and errand runner at a Turkish bath at 205 Clark Street in the heart of the First Ward. At this bathhouse, where prize fighters, jockeys, race-horse trainers, politicians, and prominent merchants hung out, young John Coughlin acquired his nickname as well as his seemingly magnanimous world view.

“I formed my philosophy,” The Bath liked to say in later years, “while watching and studying the types of people who patronized the bathhouses. Priests, ministers, brokers, politicians, and gamblers visited there. I watched and learned never to quarrel, never to feud. I had the best schooling a young feller could have. I met ’em all, big and little, from La Salle Street to Armour Avenue. You could learn from everyone. Ain’t much difference between the big man and the little man. One’s lucky, that’s all.”

The Bath was a snazzy dresser—or at least snazzy by his own standards, which usually involved Prince Albert vests, loud plaids, the garish colors of sporting men, the bowlers and silk top hats of the aldermen and gamblers, along with lavender gloves and tan spats.

He was a stout man, six feet tall, with a belly that began to grow in his early twenties and just kept growing for the rest of his days. He sported a stylish handlebar mustache and a carefully coifed pompadour. When Bathhouse John entered a room, the whole world took notice.

He got his political start courtesy of King Mike McDonald, who gave Coughlin the okay to run for First Ward alderman after a sit-down at Billy Boyle’s chophouse off Gambler’s Row, where McDonald liked to conduct business while eating huge helpings of salt pork with truffles. It was there that McDonald passed along a piece of advice that would become Bathhouse John’s avowed guiding principle.

“Never steal anything big,” King Mike told the aspiring alderman. “Stick to the little stuff. It’s safer.”

With Mike McDonald’s blessing and through his own innate talents as a campaigner, Bathhouse John easily won his first election in April 1892. For the next forty years, he was the First Ward’s primary representative on the city council.

Almost immediately, Coughlin recognized that the surest means for an alderman to create advantageous financial opportunities for himself and his supporters was to become a committeeman. It was in committee hearings that city ordinances were considered, jobs created, and patronage schemes hatched. Well-placed committeemen were very likely to be offered bribes by shady businessmen looking for certain favorable ordinances to pass into law. Behind closed doors, these entrepreneurs might grumble that doing business in Chicago involved a kind of extortion, but they paid willingly because the alternative was likely to be just as costly. Thus, committeemen who were paid an official rate of three dollars a council meeting wound up with huge summer homes, racing stables, and prosperous side businesses, claiming they were able to acquire such amenities through “good investments.”

For the aldermen, being on a prized committee was also a tremendous display of power, which is why Bathhouse John Coughlin was thrilled to have maneuvered his way onto the prestigious Reception Committee for the 1893 World’s Fair after less than a year in office.

Much of Coughlin’s power resided in his oratory skills, which he displayed on a regular basis in the city council meetings at which he might debate the pros and cons of a particular ordinance for hours. Once, when a new political alliance that called itself the Municipal Reform Party vowed to field candidates and drive corrupt aldermen from office, The Bath delighted his fellow council members and the press with his opinion on the matter.