The two-party system 61secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, auditor and others, are usually
subject to election. These officials may exercise statutory powers weakening
the position of the governor. Furthermore, they may not be members of the
same political party. Thus a Democratic governor may be faced with a Re-
publican lieutenant governor and secretary of state, a Democratic treasurer
and auditor, and a Republican attorney general. In many states officials such
as the secretary of agriculture or the superintendent of public instruction
may also be elected. A wide variety of offices at county and other levels of
government are elective – sheriff, superintendent of schools, county surveyor,
coroner, constable or fire chief – although in the larger cities these posts may
be appointive offices. All these elected offices are, of course, in addition to
the elected positions of state Senator or Representative, mayor, councilman,
or county commissioner. Even the judiciary is elective, in whole or in part, in
thirty-four states.
There is, therefore, a plethora of elective offices, legislative, administrative
and judicial, many of them with their own special powers, and able to resist
direction or domination from above. This combination of direct election and
checks and balances provides a political system of such complexity that few
of those involved in it, either as electors or officials, can hope fully to grasp
its implications, or to know how to work it. It is this complexity that gave rise
to the ‘politocrats’ or political ‘bosses’ whose ability to work the machinery of
government, usually by erecting a system of corruption and influence, made
them enormously powerful. The boss could create a political ‘machine’ based
upon the provision of rewards to supporters and party workers in return for
their unquestioning allegiance. The enormous numbers of poor and illiter-
ate immigrants at the beginning of the twentieth century provided a clien-
tele that needed services in the form of help with finding jobs, relief when
sick or unemployed, or help with legal problems, and who were prepared to
give their support in the form of votes to whoever provided these services.
This unquestioning electoral support gave the political machine the ability
to dominate the government of a county or city, and to use its financial re-
sources to its own ends. Inevitably, such an operation involved corruption and
intimidation, and often also connections between the machine and organised
crime. The bosses themselves might not even hold elective office but directed
affairs from behind the scenes through their control over the party machine.
Thus a system that was intended to ensure the responsibility of government
to the people actually resulted in the exercise of power in a quite irrespon-
sible way. Although county and city bosses at the beginning of the twentieth
century could be all-powerful in their own bailiwick, it was a political system
that was very difficult to extend to encompass the politics of a whole state. A
few, notably Huey Long of Louisiana, became state bosses, but generally the
system added to, rather than detracted from, the decentralised character of
American politics. Really cohesive power and organisation was to be found at
the county level, but rarely above that level.
The circumstances that gave rise to the machines and their bosses have