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3. Crime, corruption and political contributions in the United States.
Corruption has been an established part of political life in America for the last century and a half. With the rapid growth of New York City and the influx of waves of immigrants, leaders of the Democratic Party -the dominant force in the Metropolis - won elections by accepting bribes from property developers, by putting supporters on the city payroll, by using corrupt judges to speed the naturalization of immigrants in return for the promise of their votes, and by other forms of corruption. The Democratic Party organization or 'machine', as it was called, became a byword for corruption. Its leader, 'Boss' Tweed was expelled after his exposure in 1868 by The New York Times. But urban corruption did not disappear.
By the turn of the century, the campaigning journalist, Lincoln Steffens, wrote a set of devastating articles about St Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York titled The Shame of the Cities, published originally in 1904. (Steffens, 1957.)
After a period of attempted political reforms before the First World War, corrupt 'machine polities' remained as strong as ever in the 1920s and 1930s. The constitutional prohibition against alcohol created a massive market for bootlegged liquor. Organized crime and political corruption flourished. It was the heyday of gangsters such as Al Capone. By this time, organized crime was becoming associated with gangs of immigrants from Italy, though members of all ethnic groups contributed to the crime wave.
By the 1950s, committees of the United States Congress were beginning to investigate and to highlight the extent of organized crime, labor racketeering and political corruption in America's cities. The 'high command' of the criminal world was reputed to consist of the leaders of some twenty Italian criminal 'families' each with their 'boss', 'underboss' and formal hierarchy. There were disagreements between law enforcement officials and criminologists about whether organized crime in the United States involved a unified, Italian-led network or whether there existed a large number of decentralized 'independent' gangs. There was nevertheless little doubt that a number of cities and states such as Illinois (particularly Chicago), New Jersey and Pennsylvania were deeply affected by organized crime and by the attendant political corruption. By contrast, states such as Wisconsin and Minnesota had a reputation for clean politics. In cities and states where politics was regarded as corrupt, decent citizens frequently avoided the political arena; corruption was thus a self-perpetuating phenomenon.
Despite the local variations, it was clear that corruption after the Second World War was entrenched in the politics of about a quarter of the states of the USA. According to one of the most respected scholars of political financing, some 15 percent of funds for state and local election campaigns in America derived in the late 1950s from the underworld. (Heard, 1960, 154-68.)
According to a theory popularized in the 1950s by the sociologist, Robert Merton, organized crime and political corruption persisted because they fulfilled an essential function in American life: they provided a way for members of disadvantaged ethnic groups - particularly Italian-Americans - to ascend the social ladder, something which they were blocked from doing by more conventional means. Members of poor communities living in urban slums could only gain wealth, it was argued, through sporting prowess (particularly professional boxing), through show-business (Frank Sinatra was a prime example) or through organized crime and political corruption.
With the expansion of educational opportunities in the postwar boom years, and with the movement of many immigrant communities from the cities to the suburbs, the social conditions which had fostered crime and corruption would disappear. Economic improvement rather than attempts at the institutional reform of city government would make organized crime and political wrongdoing wither away.
The expectation that the growth of middle-class life would produce a cleaner politics was dashed in the early 1970s. In 1972, the police caught the members of a team belonging to the re-election campaign of the incumbent (Republican) president of the United States, Richard Nixon, as they attempted to break into the headquarters of the Democratic Party. The headquarters was situated in a block of luxurious apartments overlooking the Potomac River called 'Watergate'. This was the start of what came to be known as the 'Watergate Affair'. As a result of the scandal and its attempted cover-up, Nixon was forced to resign from office in 1974.
But it was not only the fate of President Nixon which was sealed by the Watergate Affair. The scandal of the break-in to the Democratic Party headquarters for the purpose of illegal bugging was the trigger for an explosion of investigations and press reports into a multitude of corruption cases (especially in The Washington Post). Vice-President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign because of proven bribery in his former position as governor of the State of Maryland, there were revelations of massive, illegal political contributions by major United States corporations.
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