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Shady dealings are just part of the place, or as James puts it, "people were always on the make there. Merriner's centuries-spanning study of the city makes corruption seem endemic to Chicago. And the "good government types" in the city's white precincts - the so-called goo-goos - were also angered by the corruption and inequality. Washington "very articulately captured" the notion that blacks were routinely ignored by the city's government, Lipinski says. Many think the election in 1983 of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, was a direct result of this unequal system.
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"It was this parade of favor-askers, and if you were not somehow beloved or in the good graces of the alderman, you may or may not get your trash can changed that week." She recalls reporting from aldermen's offices on what were known as ward nights. Simon points out: "The beauty of the ward system was that you had somebody who lived in your neighborhood whom you could go to and say something as modest as, 'Look, I really need my trash picked up,' which is not modest, if it begins to pile up."īut Lipinski argues that this system failed to meet the needs of many Chicagoans. Unlike the many academics who focus on corruption, Rakove admired the Chicago Democratic organization. "It's there that you really see City Hall in Chicago as not just the epicenter of politics in Chicago, but in some ways of American urban politics at the time," Lipinski says. In Boss, Royko follows Daley through a typical day, much of it spent "on five" - the fifth floor of City Hall. Not literally, I don't think, but politically, you would be sent to Nowheresville." "If you crossed the mayor - or 'da mayor,' as I should say - he would basically cut your legs off. "He basically ran the city the way a dictator would," says James. "It underscores the fact that when politics is effective, it delivers services to people," Simon explains.īut however effective the Daley administration may have been, people took issue with his leadership style. Simon says Royko's book shows how well-oiled the Daley machine was and how reliably it served Chicagoans. He spearheaded a powerful political machine that was often accused of corruption. Daley, who served as mayor and Democratic Party boss of Chicago for two decades, from the mid-1950s to the mid-'70s. Any discussion of Chicago politics has to start with Richard J.