Clout City
The Rise and Fall of the Chicago Political Machine
Published on 9. September 2025
Book
Hardback
400 pages
978-0-226-73370-8 (ISBN)
Description
Unearths the religious and cultural roots of a powerful political machine that empowered some everyday Chicagoans but ruled all of the city for decades.
In politics, clout is essential. Too often, it determines whether insider access is granted or denied, favors are given or withheld, and payoffs are made or received. But Chicago clout, as we know it today, is even more potent than that-it's the absolute currency of a social, cultural, and political order that is self-reinforcing and self-dealing. Or, at least, it was.
In Clout City, award-winning historian Dominic A. Pacyga reveals how cultural, ethnic, and religious forces created this distinctive system-and ultimately led to its collapse. Tracing clout's origins in the Irish Catholic-dominated working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, shaped by De La Salle Institute and home to the legendary Daley family, Pacyga shows how communal ties can be a force for good and also the deepest wellspring of corruption. He maps Chicago's unique politics to its remarkable history, from the Great Fire of 1871 through its rise and decline as an industrial center to its emergence as a global city in the early twenty-first century. With deep research and firsthand experience from a lifetime in the city, Pacyga argues that Chicago's politics is understood best as a mixture of cultural and religious influences and more worldly pursuits, exploring how both Jewish and Catholic communalism played central roles in the creation and sustenance of the Chicago machine.
Chicago's politics today aren't as defined by its distinctive brand of clout. But they are shaped by clout's decline and the ghost of the machine. Pacyga's tour of the city's multilayered past is an indispensable guide to its present and future.
In politics, clout is essential. Too often, it determines whether insider access is granted or denied, favors are given or withheld, and payoffs are made or received. But Chicago clout, as we know it today, is even more potent than that-it's the absolute currency of a social, cultural, and political order that is self-reinforcing and self-dealing. Or, at least, it was.
In Clout City, award-winning historian Dominic A. Pacyga reveals how cultural, ethnic, and religious forces created this distinctive system-and ultimately led to its collapse. Tracing clout's origins in the Irish Catholic-dominated working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, shaped by De La Salle Institute and home to the legendary Daley family, Pacyga shows how communal ties can be a force for good and also the deepest wellspring of corruption. He maps Chicago's unique politics to its remarkable history, from the Great Fire of 1871 through its rise and decline as an industrial center to its emergence as a global city in the early twenty-first century. With deep research and firsthand experience from a lifetime in the city, Pacyga argues that Chicago's politics is understood best as a mixture of cultural and religious influences and more worldly pursuits, exploring how both Jewish and Catholic communalism played central roles in the creation and sustenance of the Chicago machine.
Chicago's politics today aren't as defined by its distinctive brand of clout. But they are shaped by clout's decline and the ghost of the machine. Pacyga's tour of the city's multilayered past is an indispensable guide to its present and future.
Reviews / Votes
"Clout City is admirably detailed. . . . Pacyga provides a worthy rendering of a flawed and corruptible system that nonetheless helped usher countless working families into a better life." * Wall Street Journal * "A unique blend of the best recent scholarship combined with streetwise insights garnered from years of engagement with the politics and people of Chicago. Clout City convincingly ties the Democratic political machine to the unique social, cultural, and economic circumstances of the twentieth-century city. If you want to understand the politics of contemporary Chicago, you must read this book." * Theodore Karamanski, coeditor of Civil War Chicago * "No one knows Chicago's colorful history better than Pacyga, whose Clout City affirms his mastery of the subject. In this highly readable book, he presents a new interpretation of the Windy City's vaunted political machine that emphasizes the centrality of religious and cultural influences in forging this political leviathan. His argument will nudge historians and political scientists into viewing the famed Democratic organization with fresh eyes." * Roger Biles, author of Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People * "Pacyga tells the compelling story of the communal, social, cultural, and political forces responsible for the rise and fall of the Chicago Political Machine. He proves again that he is the preeminent Chicago political historian. This is ever more important as the post-machine era unfolds." * Dick Simpson, emeritus, University of Illinois Chicago and former Chicago alderperson * "A compelling account of the emergence of Chicago's fabled political machine in the city's late nineteenth-century immigrant neighborhoods. Clout City is a vital resource for anyone interested in both Chicago's political and social history and the history of American urban politics." * Robert Lewis, author of Chicago's Industrial Decline * "Pacyga brilliantly summons his unequaled knowledge of the texture of Chicago life to locate this tumultuous history of political power past and present in the city's always dynamic and often contested religious and cultural values. A truly revelatory study not just of Chicago politics but also of Chicago itself." * Carl S. Smith, author of Chicago's Great Fire *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
35 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 31 mm
Weight
694 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-73370-8 (9780226733708)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Dominic A. Pacyga is professor emeritus of history in the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, American Warsaw: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Polish Chicago, also from the University of Chicago Press.
Content
Introduction: The Sacred and the Profane in Chicago's Politics
Chapter One: The Great Fire, an Assassination, and the Seeds of Change The Day Everything Changed-"Our Carter"
Chapter Two: Bridgeport and De La Salle Institute: The Birth of the Machine Bridgeport-The River and the Bridgeport Stench-Rum, Riot, and Romanism-The Working-Class Response-The Bridgeport Way-De La Salle Institute: The Cradle of Clout-Communal Catholicism and Clout-Patron Saints and Patronage
Chapter Three: The Communal Web The Priest, the Minister, and the Rabbi-The Saloon-The Ward Boss-The Gangster
Chapter Four: The Machine's Growing Pains Roger Sullivan and John Hopkins-Demographic and Technological Change-Young Carter-Patronage and the Traction Issue
Chapter Five: A Republican Protestant Proto-Machine William Hale Thompson-The Blond Boss-Mayor Thompson-A Democratic Reformer-The Return of Big Bill-Thompson's Last Hurrah! 1927-1931
Chapter Six: Bohemian Rhapsody: A New Ethnic Alignment Bohemia in Chicago-Anton Cermak: The Early Years-The United Societies for Local Self-Government-The Growth of a Communal Political Machine-Cermak Rising-Mayor Cermak
Chapter Seven: Bridgeport's Victory Frank J. Corr: A De La Salle Graduate-Mayor Edward Kelly: A South Side Irish Catholic Mayor-Kelly, the Policy Wheel, and the Growth of the Democratic Machine-Dawson, Clout, Community, and the Emerging Black Democratic Majority-Labor, Ethnic, Class Conflict and the Kelly-Nash Machine-Wartime Mayor
Chapter Eight: Clout and Communalism Triumphant Kennelly: A Bridgeport Reformer-A True Bridgeport Mayor-The Church Triumphant-A Battle Between the Sacred and Profane
Chapter Nine: Fragmentation: Clout and Communalism in Decline The Racial Divide: The Sacred and Profane in Conflict-Racial Clashes-The Chicago Freedom Movement-Coming Apart: The Democratic Convention-Dark Days
Chapter Ten: Changing Times Let the Chaos Begin!-The Democratic Civil War Begins: Bilandic, Byrne, Daley, and Washington-The Church Dispirited
Chapter Eleven: Not Your Father's Machine Restoration?-A New Machine?-A Neoliberal Machine-The Daley Family-The End of the Daley Era
Chapter Twelve: After the Daleys Emanuel Takes Control-The Sacred vs. the Profane in Englewood-A Second Emanuel Administration-The Last Gasp of the Old Machine: Burke and Madigan-A Progressive Interlude: The Lightfoot and Johnson Administrations-Conclusion: The End of the Communal Machine
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Chapter One: The Great Fire, an Assassination, and the Seeds of Change The Day Everything Changed-"Our Carter"
Chapter Two: Bridgeport and De La Salle Institute: The Birth of the Machine Bridgeport-The River and the Bridgeport Stench-Rum, Riot, and Romanism-The Working-Class Response-The Bridgeport Way-De La Salle Institute: The Cradle of Clout-Communal Catholicism and Clout-Patron Saints and Patronage
Chapter Three: The Communal Web The Priest, the Minister, and the Rabbi-The Saloon-The Ward Boss-The Gangster
Chapter Four: The Machine's Growing Pains Roger Sullivan and John Hopkins-Demographic and Technological Change-Young Carter-Patronage and the Traction Issue
Chapter Five: A Republican Protestant Proto-Machine William Hale Thompson-The Blond Boss-Mayor Thompson-A Democratic Reformer-The Return of Big Bill-Thompson's Last Hurrah! 1927-1931
Chapter Six: Bohemian Rhapsody: A New Ethnic Alignment Bohemia in Chicago-Anton Cermak: The Early Years-The United Societies for Local Self-Government-The Growth of a Communal Political Machine-Cermak Rising-Mayor Cermak
Chapter Seven: Bridgeport's Victory Frank J. Corr: A De La Salle Graduate-Mayor Edward Kelly: A South Side Irish Catholic Mayor-Kelly, the Policy Wheel, and the Growth of the Democratic Machine-Dawson, Clout, Community, and the Emerging Black Democratic Majority-Labor, Ethnic, Class Conflict and the Kelly-Nash Machine-Wartime Mayor
Chapter Eight: Clout and Communalism Triumphant Kennelly: A Bridgeport Reformer-A True Bridgeport Mayor-The Church Triumphant-A Battle Between the Sacred and Profane
Chapter Nine: Fragmentation: Clout and Communalism in Decline The Racial Divide: The Sacred and Profane in Conflict-Racial Clashes-The Chicago Freedom Movement-Coming Apart: The Democratic Convention-Dark Days
Chapter Ten: Changing Times Let the Chaos Begin!-The Democratic Civil War Begins: Bilandic, Byrne, Daley, and Washington-The Church Dispirited
Chapter Eleven: Not Your Father's Machine Restoration?-A New Machine?-A Neoliberal Machine-The Daley Family-The End of the Daley Era
Chapter Twelve: After the Daleys Emanuel Takes Control-The Sacred vs. the Profane in Englewood-A Second Emanuel Administration-The Last Gasp of the Old Machine: Burke and Madigan-A Progressive Interlude: The Lightfoot and Johnson Administrations-Conclusion: The End of the Communal Machine
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index