Keeping It Like It Is

...Marzullo only shies away from one man, a fellow soliciting a donation for the Illinois Right to Life Committee...

...Unlike many political analysts, Rakove has had actual experience as a worker for the Chicago machine...

...In addition, Rakove differs from most former machine candidates, not to mention precinct captains, by virtue of his formal training in political science...

...Can the Chicago machine continue to thrive...

...You watch the 77-year-old Italian-born grandfather help virtually everyone who turns to him...

...The phenomenon had its genesis in the early 19th-century laws eliminating property qualifications for voting and creating a large, unskilled, uneducated electorate...

...Rakove's primary interest, though, lies in attempting to answer two interrelated questions: Why is the Chicago machine alive and well when other once-powerful big-city machines are only memories...

...In his view, black independents and civil rights activists have little political influence in Chicago at least partly because Daley has successfully co-opted many black leaders into working as members of or in cooperation with the regular Democratic party...

...As the black population of Chicago continues to grow, says Rakove, the machine will change from being Irish dominated to being controlled by a black-ethnic alliance...

...Milton Rakove's book is a study of the last of the big-city machines in modem American politics, Richard J. Daley's outfit in Chicago...

...The classical theory of democracy posited that the vote was a privilege to be exercised with due deliberation and thoughtful conscience...

...In 1970, he was the Democratic candidate for the Cook County Board in the suburbs??knowing full well he would never win, yet knowing also that allowing the party to use him in this fashion would assure his making contact with people he could not meet any other way...

...No Northern metropolis can boast optimum integration of its public schools or genuine integration in its housing, and the percentage of blacks on the city payroll is higher in Chicago than in New York or Los Angeles...

...Still, it is difficult to see in what tangible way Chicago's black citizens would be better off in another city without a machine...

...The party came to serve as an intermediary between this citizen and "City Hall...

...At all levels, the party is continually slating more blacks for office and giving increased responsibility to black officials...

...Rakove brings him along to share an evening with Alderman Vito Marzullo, Democratic committeeman for the 25th ward, who says: "Anybody in the 25th needs something, needs help with his garbage, needs his street fixed, needs a lawyer for his kid who's in trouble, he goes first to the precinct captain...

...But neither is his book an authorized paean to the present Chicago machine...

...But his most provocative analysis centers around his answer to the second question, with its prediction that the Chicago machine will continue to thrive but under a black domination...

...In short, the Windy City's ethnics, now second and third generation, have gained political power and are wedded to retaining it...

...He succeeds in a way that I think makes his entire book valuable, especially for anyone seriously concerned with the state of urban politics in America...

...a young black college graduate seeking a job in private industry, a hungry woman in need of $50...

...Rakove does not think the blacks will destroy the Daley machine...

...In most cities, the political machine faltered during the Depression...

...This is not because Marzullo has any feelings pro or con about abortion, but rather because "1 don't want to get into any of those controversies...

...Although several books and countless articles have already appeared on this subject, Don't Make No Waves is a welcome addition to the genre at least partly because of the unusual combination of qualifications the author brings to his task...

...People for it and people against it.' The successful machine politician never makes waves...

...the new black leaders will be hardheaded, pragmatic men who will play the political game with the rules they learned from their white-ethnic predecessors...

...local government was distant and impenetrable...

...Mayor Daley opted for slating the black and forced the white man to move to the northwest side and contest another district...

...Reviewed by Hindy Lauer Schacter Lecturer in Public Administration, Medgar Evers College, City University of New York During the second half of the 19th century party machines, replete with bosses and corruption, ruled almost every large Northern city in America...

...The Democrats, so the argument goes, cannot press for genuine integration in the public schools or in housing, first because that would upset their white ethnic constituency, and second because Daley's Irish-dominated organization cannot really empathize with the problems of poor blacks...

...It includes several examples of Mayor Daley showing the "chairman" to be ignorant and petty...

...If the captain can't deliver, that man can come to me...

...He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, where he served as a research assistant to Hans J. Morgenthau, and he teaches at the University of Illinois and Barat College...

...Their college-educated sons and daughters, meanwhile, flee to the suburbs where they can abjure any association with the old order, and where they are effectively defanged as enemies of machine rule since they no longer vote in Chicago elections...

...The federal government began to offer financial and social services to the poor...

...My house is open every day to him...

...Eventually, it will go black, both in its base in the city's electorate and in the Democratic party hierarchy...

...Rakove believes that Daley or no, the college-educated offspring of the Irish, Italians, Greeks, Lithuanians, and Poles living within city limits would flee to the suburbs in search of better schools and backyards...

...But the black politicians will not attempt to radically reform the city's political system, for to do so would threaten their own "power and perogatives...

...Between 1968-70, he served as a precinct captain in the 49th ward...

...Then the education-level of the electorate started to rise...

...To many of the urban poor, however, the entity of the city was merely an abstraction (they owed allegiance to their own small neighborhoods...

...The neighborhood club assumed the role of protector of the poor, providing shelter, food, jobs, recreation, and aid in return for a vote...

...Marzullo is in the business of exchanging service for potential votes...

...If the prediction materializes, after enduring centuries of political subservience black people may soon find themselves in control of the politics and government of America's second largest city...

...The result of all this is that he delivers what his subtitle promises, "an insider's analysis of the Daley machine.' He has an invaluable first-hand grasp of the details of precinct and ward work, the bedrock of the political organization's endeavors, and soon the reader does too...

...Several years ago, Chicago lost two congressional seats and there was conflict over whether a black or white incumbent congressman on the West side should retain his seat...

...Rakove is no less interesting pursuing his political scientist's inclination toward analysis of broad trends, causality and prediction...

...Not easily swayed by the reformers, Rakove understands the quid pro quo benefits the Chicago machine provides, and he does not scorn its often working-class constituents...

...Little concerned with ideology, they dedicated themselves to the proposition that a successful organization could not only gain and retain city and county offices but reap the concomitant rewards of power and profit as well...

...Particularly rewarding, though, is his examination of the history and theory of urban political organizations...

...Rakove maintains that Chicago's machine continues to govern because most of its citizens "are pacified by the maintenance of good city services.' They do not concern themselves "with momentous philosophical and ideological issues, he continues, and will not throw out a government that provides "a first-class police department, one of the best fire departments in the country, excellent public transportation facilities," and so on down the line...

...he predicts they will inherit it...

...Many urban reformers who want to end Chicago's machine rule, in fact, pin their hopes on its expanding black population...

...One of Chicago's leading reformers, Studs Terkel, says the Mayor is "marvelous when it comes to building things but when it comes to healing the aches and hurts of human beings, Daley comes up short...