Studs Terkel Interview [Cont.]

Just you.

And he got the votes of guys who were known as anti -Semites most of their lives.

It's a hierarchy of values.

Oh, he got a big vote.

Second time Ryan heroin better.

I mean, it's not what you're looking for.

Well, no, part of it is, and then part of it I'm going to ask you to be a little more specific about some of the see it strikes us that last year we came for the elections and we hung out with a lot of different aldermen, you know, Irish aldermen, black, Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans and it just the whole city strikes us as being very tribal.

Oh, and of course, but then isn't it so most industrial cities.

Never seen anything quite like Chicago.

Well, that's good.

I think you're right.

It is.

Well, stick with those bungalows for a minute and what's happening to the tribal aspect of it also.

You working now? See, when you speak of ethnicity and a moment ago you touched on something.

Chicago having a tribal aspect.

Moment ago we spoke of the Ukrainian neighborhood, the Lugan neighborhood, Lugan Lithuanian neighborhood, the Bohunk neighborhood, the Bohemian Czechs neighborhood.

There was a tribal quality, but since World War II changes have occurred, and ironically it was the New Deal that did it.

It was the GI Bill of Rights and so when the soldier came home from World War II, he could have a mortgage lifted or paid for and so in a new kind of suburb.

You see, until World War II, suburbs were where the rich people lived.

Most lived in cities, but now blue collar suburbs came into being, especially GI suburbs.

Like Livertown out east and Park Forest here in Chicago, they're the most noted and celebrated.

As a result of which something happened to tribalism to some extent.

The young kids who would have lived on the second floor of that bungalow that their father -in -law owned, the city they were paying for, now lived in the suburbs.

And once you live in the suburbs, something happens.

In Chicago it's key, no question, that the suburb is anti -city.

And the suburb very often takes advantage of the city without paying any taxes to the city.

And votes in the county, that somehow affects the city life too.

So the tribalism of the city has taken something of a beating in the movement away from parent and parent -in -law.

However, with the new arrivals, with Hispanic people and with black people, and for that matter, Asiatic people, just the other day in Chicago a gang of Cambodian kids kicked to death, the Filipino kids.

So we have, you see, there's sort of an egalitarianism among gangs in a sense of values.

You've got to be better than, better than the one just above you.

By the way, people hardly dream of being, of questioning those way, way up above.

It's the one simply there or the one below you.

Why does a poor white in the South so long been used against the black? Martin Luther King put it in a speech in Selma in Montgomery, at the end of the South Montgomery march.

Poor white is fed Jim Crow instead of bread, and he accepts that, but it's not very nutritious, you see.

And so Lillian Smith, the southern writer, spoke of poor white and rich white talking.

And the poor white is told by the rich white, I'll pay you half a buck an hour.

He said, I can't live a night, I've got five kids, I'll get a nigga for two bits an hour.

You're better than him.

Oh yeah, I'm better than him.

And so that's part of Chicago too, naturally.

Did the old man understand tribalism and does the young, daily the elder understand? Well, the old mayor, Richard the First, mayor of the elder, understood tribalism very well indeed.

He also had a great memory in Reiko's excellent book Boss, which is the best study of city power, I think, ever.

How the old man was not that brilliant at all.

He wasn't at all that brilliant.

If he were, the 1968 convention would never have taken that turn.

If he were more intelligent than he was, we have to emphasize this, of course he'd have fed those kids in Lincoln Park coffee and donuts, but he'd have broken it like that.

But he didn't.

He played right into their hands.

I mean, they didn't have a good cause.

The young people did have a good cause who were protesting.

But nonetheless, he could have swung that easily.

But in his own feeling of his own sense of power and isolation from the realities of the day, he did stupid things that resulted in what was called police riots.

But he knew tribalism very well indeed.

And he just kept track, kept accounts, and he had the favors he knew.

There was a payback to him.

How did it work? Oh, when a job, for example, being appointed, the old precinct captain would come out and he'd haul out that vote.

And it was automatic, his vote.

But something was happening.

Again, in his removal from reality, when he offended a black congressman who was a supporter for years, Ralph Metcalf, the congressman who was a former Olympic star, an honored guy.

And when Metcalf became anti -Daily, he spoke out for the first time, it was stunning.

And that, of course, sowed the seeds for the discovery of Harold Washington and his subsequent election.

And he had the slightest idea about Harold.

Daily died before that, of course.

But when he offended, he said, you must remember that there was a phrase here called plantation politics.

And so the blacks of the city, the great in number, always voted Democratic Party because they had an overseer named Bill Dawson, Congressman Dawson, considered the most powerful black politician in America at the time.

And he was, more than Adam Clayton Powell, I'd say, because the control he had over the black vote, he would, of course, follow through on the whole Chicago tradition, or the hack political tradition of any large city, handing out favors and baskets, etc.

But he was the overseer for the machine.

But the machine today will never be what it was.

The opposition, the coalition, anti -machine, led by Harold Washington and others among Hispanic people, too, is now in disarray completely.

But that doesn't mean the machine has come back.

It's there now, and Daily can win hands down next election.

But it's never the same.

It won't be.

A new coalition can be formed that will challenge it if the situation presents itself.

It calls upon other matters, national as well as local, for that.

So Chicago right now, I don't think is that much different than any large American city.

As you said, to be a mayor of any large city is a hopeless task.

But you can't discuss a city unless you discuss a country, unless you discuss the world itself.

You can't discuss Chicago unless you discuss NAFTA or JAT and jobs taken away from the country.

You can't discuss that at all.

You can't discuss a city if you discuss the derogation of the labor movement.

It's coming back in some quarters, we know, but no question it's taking a terrible beating.

You can't discuss a city unless you discuss history and know a past.

And more than you can discuss race unless you know a past.

And so as you do the series on American cities, that past is always there.

You have to consider how the changes occurred and what it is that's made the changes occur.

Do you have a question? No, I just wanted to ask.

I know you got what you wanted.

Let me just take a couple more things.

One of the things that struck us about Chicago politics, it's both sledgehammer sometimes in style.

We went out with some crews where they were tearing each other's signs out in the middle of the night.

At the same time, it can be scalpel precise.

And somebody saying a word and the supporters pick things up.

And it seems somewhat Machiavellian and maybe Byzantine or Renaissance, whatever sort of analogy you want to make.

Well, Chicago, I suppose you could say Chicago is a muscular, again to use cliches, Sandburgian, the broad shoulders, big shoulders.

That it certainly is and has been.

At the same time, the politics were just a stage of development in a hack way, but sophisticatedly hack if there is such a phrase.

The nuances are involved.

Again, when I call on Royco, he would tell a certain restaurant in town where judges would gather and hack politicians.

And quasi -legal people would gather, some behooves.

There was no line of demarcation.

They all knew one another.

And Mike would describe the subtle way in which envelopes are passed back and forth.

No word need be said.

No word need be used.

Like I'm sitting there, a college boy, right near the radio station where we were.

It's a very celebrated place known for its corned beef sandwich.

And I'd sit there.

And there is Moshe Baer.

He's part of one of the Jewish boys of the syndicate.

And he's behind the counter.

Well, as far as I know, he's in Joliet in prison, see.

Because he was sentenced.

Now what's he doing behind the counter? I say, hey, Moshe, my God.

He doesn't see me.

So I sit down.

I have the salmon salad sandwich on right.

And Dorothy is the waitress.

She's a veteran.

Hey, Dorothy, has Moshe Baer there? She says, do you want a cup of coffee? Yeah, I said, what do you think about that? I'm so bright, a college boy.

You want some dessert with that, too? I said, oh, yeah, but I can't get over Moshe.

As I'm going outside, hey, Moshe, it's great seeing you.

I'm not there, you see.

So that's also the subtly.

The fact is he did wind up in the trunk of a car eventually.

But that isn't the point.

The point is things are done.

You don't say.

Of course he got a clout.

Of course he was out.

Of course he should be in Joliet.

And he wasn't.

And so this is more or less accepted.

And I think it works out.

It would work today, too, to a great extent.

It might be the clout of the actual mob, although I'm sure it still has, but other kinds of clout, the clout of a big realty guy, the clout of big money, we know that.

We see the contributions made.

We see PAC.

We see what's happening to candidates.

So why not Chicago? Why should we be deprived of that particular privilege and uniqueness? It just seems to be a place full of political intrigue, where everybody plays it.

Everybody knows that some alderman is maybe going to side with somebody else to elect a congressman.

There's just this enormous...

Oh, that's then, for example, when McGovern was the Democratic candidate for president, of course he was shafted by the Chicago machine, as much as he was in other cities, too.

And often the precinct captain would say, now look, you want to vote for this particular alderman, vote for this guy's state representative, never mind the president.

We're not saying vote for McGovern.

Don't.

In fact, they were discouraging you from doing that.

No, no, just vote for the guy close to that ward, the guy close to that precinct.

The precinct can protect its own captain to protect its own job, too, of course.

Oh, that was often the case.

Certainly the case of George McGovern, there was a definite shafting.

One more question.

Chicago alderman, sort of a figure of legend, what is a Chicago alderman? What is a Chicago alderman? Well, the old -time alderman would say Patty Bowler.

Patty Bowler of the 43rd ward.

Patty was a bartender, so this is pretty daily.

He was there during Daily of the Elder, but he was there, of course, during Daily of the Elder, served for terms and terms and terms.

Patty, they want to get Patty.

And they had him on something.

And someone raised the point in the city committee, says, what are we hollering about? He said, Chicago ain't ready for reform.

Let's all go to my bar and have a drink.

That was Patty.

They can't be that obvious now.

You see, what's happened is the big roundhouse puncher has been replaced by a deft, well, not too deft, but by a boxer who's deft.

But they're not that brilliant boxers either.

They just run around.

You know, the guys who backtrack a lot do that.

But the old roundhouse puncher is gone.

That time is over.

Now you have something else.

I suggest something less.

If something better, I'd love to see it.

There was a moment in Chicago when that coalition out of the 60s came into being later on in the next decade with Harold Washington.

That was an astonishing moment.

And if Harold Washington, he was re -elected the second term.

And by the way, the re -election was much easier than the first because some of the old boys, the old guard, were seeing the garbage just picked up on time.

You can only play that old game, City Falling Apart.

Now there's a cartoon, if you can get that cartoon there.

See the one up there? Can you get that? By Oliphant.

And it's when Day Daily died.

The cartoon is the trains will no longer run on time.

A takeoff on Mussolini, of course.

And I'll never forget that there were people who were scared that he wouldn't let his daughter go out at night.

He was a corporation counselor, a corporation businessman.

He wouldn't let his daughter go out at night because he was going to fall apart.

Because Day Daily died.

Now when Harold Washington died, that same man encountered me, I encountered him somewhere at lunch.

And he said, I wonder who's going to be the mayor.

Not Harold Washington's dead was going to happen to the city.

I wonder who's going to be mayor.

So they gave you an idea as to what he felt.

Not simply about race, but about Daily and myth and legend.

Mr.

Turkle, in the old days of Daily the First, Do you want to trade places with me? No, no, that's all right.

It's in Daily the First.

They said that politics, good politics was good government, good government was good politics.

Okay, this city, things ran.

People thought they ran because of the politics.

Can you explain that to somebody who doesn't know anything about politics? Look at me too.

I don't think people ever thought they ran the city.

There was the cliché, there was that phrase, good politics is good government.

What do you mean by good politics? What those who said it meant was, listen to us.

Don't question us.

We'll see the garbage is picked up on time.

We'll see that the trains run on time.

Any efficient administrator could do that.

Those are essentials.

Those are the sine qua nones of a government.

But people, hey, these guys are good.

Don't question me.

And of course, bring us the vote.

And of course, a lot of stuff took place while people don't question.

They were questioning, well, a very good way.

There are seeds, seeds of dissent that led to good things for a moment in the 60s.

There was a neighborhood, a blue collar neighborhood, a white, we call, ethnic neighborhood, old neighborhood, that was about to be destroyed because the city plus the cement lobby plus the South Street brokers were planning an expressway to go through it, to speed the traffic as though we need speedier traffic, expressway to go through that would destroy this neighborhood.

And as they got up in that meeting, they were worried stiff and crying, whose house is going to go first? Whose block is going to go first? Someone got up, Mary Lou Wolf, a woman of nine kids who never quite got up and said, why should anybody's home go first? Do we need this expressway to begin with? Let's fight it.

And they did.

It was called Citizens Action Program, CAP.

And guess what? They stopped the expressway.

Thoughts of that's a little Hispanic woman, china doll, and a young mother of about six kids stopped waste management and coming down and depositing stuff in her community by using Solinsky techniques, techniques of a government, of a community organization in which you think of stuff that hadn't been thought of before.

So they couldn't get to see the governor at the time.

He just had new furniture put in his office and they kept waiting.

So then they came with the little kids who had taffy apples.

And the kids' taffy apples were practically making a mess out of the new furniture.

It was just a cliche.

And once people see that when you say good politics, you mean good for you.

It began as good for whom is the point.

And that led to some pretty good movements.

And now there seems to be a sense of despair and a disarray aspect.

Can I ask one more question over here? And you should answer to Louie.

Yeah.

You know, I was reading your book Chicago, and you were talking about going to rallies when you were a kid with your brother.

And Chicago, at least as I remember it, Chicago was also known for local political campaign songs.

Do you remember any of them? Well, I'm thinking now about moments my brother and I went to the Ashland Auditorium, which is a famous union hall on Ashland and Van.

Now it's part of an expressway.

That's part of the course.

But then, before going for a chocolate malter, that legate drugstore across the street, we'd go to this place.

Everything was for free.

He was a guy running against the old crooked Republican mayor, Big Bill Thompson.

The man who threatened to punch King George the Fifth in the nose.

And there was Deaver, a rather respected Democrat, who ran against him.

It was a Deaver gathering.

And everything was there.

The idea, I don't remember the exact songs, I'm sure there was a song about Deaver.

And there were wrestling matches, and there were little Egypt dancers.

There was everything taken, of course, free popcorn and Cracker Jacks and hot dogs.

And those were rallies in the old time tradition.

They may still be going on, I imagine.

But that, as I remember, was a neighborhood rally.

By the way, that was in the neighborhood.

Not only was it for Judge Deaver, it also probably was for the alderman as well.

Although, oh, that matter of, well, the I Know Songs today, this goes way back, the whole matter of songs during elections, during the Roosevelt campaign, Franklin D.

There were dozens of songs, as I can happy days again, Row, Row, Row with Roosevelt, there were Teddy Roosevelt songs.

Always were songs, less of that today, I think.

Less participation today, far less.

But the idea of campaign songs were always part of a pattern.

So there's a certain, now, you see, there's a danger in nostalgia here.

There's a danger of speaking of the good old days.

They weren't.

But I think there was more of the, you must admit, there was more of the human touch.

Now, imagine today, without television, without television, people would meet.

Now they're home.

There is no tavern gathering, for better or for worse.

There is no church gathering, political, I mean, for better or for worse.

It's at home, and you also, whoever has the most dough wins it.

Now, there's always been the case, but not as blatant as it is now.

It's bragged about.

It was never talked about before.

The guy's better candid, he's got more money.

And no one discusses the immorality of it, the non -democracy of it.

And then it was always the case, but it was hidden.

It's like scabs today.

When scabs go by, they pose for the camera.

Never was that the case.

It was through the back door, always.

Even Ford scabs, you see.

Always the back door.

So in a sense, we have something shameless.

And that the dough itself becomes a factor that is an advertised factor.

And so the events I'm talking about were better, because there was a human touch to it.

There was a sound of a shout.

There was a voice you actually heard, rather than see or imagine hearing on television.

That's part of it.

Can you tell us the Latin inscription story again? The Chicago slogan, the original slogan of Chicago, the official slogan, Orbs in Horto, Latin, orbs, city, Horto, Horto, cultural, city in the garden.

But later on, as years passed, and you go through Daly and Cermak and Johnny DePauw and the old man and the patty, bowler, down through the years, it was very simple.

Mike Royko or Nelson Aldrin said, The slogan should be changed from Orbs in Horto to Ubii, U -B -I, Est -Mea, M -E -A.

Ubii Est -Mea meaning, where's mine? And that is what they say should be the Chicago slogan.

And I say it should be the slogan for every large city in this country.

Do you believe that you can understand America by looking at its politics? You should look at Louis on this, but that's the core of our thing.

Can you understand this country by looking at the way our politics is practiced? Well, you understand that we're looking not at national politics.

It has to be at local politics, at neighborhood politics.

It has to be that specific.

You see the guy, and he says, I'll get your kid out of that jam he's in.

I'll get that window that your kid broke paid for.

Don't worry about that.

You may not get this job, but I'll say a word or two about you here.

In that sense, favor for favor.

On one condition.

This was Curley in Massachusetts, Curley in Boston.

This was, I'm sure, Hague, probably in New Jersey.

Every crook, for that matter, was able to do it because he was able to have a little certain kind of local clout to get it.

So in that sense, you understand it.

What can you do for me? Where is mine? So if you follow what can you do for me as part of the political, now we'll take a sophisticated voter or an idealistic voter, someone beyond that to say, that's not it.

What's happened to our community? And that's what we've been lacking for a long, long time.

Now that was beginning to be the case in the decade that has put down by every hack in town the 60s.

You know it's fashionable to put down the 60s today.

They say, dope began, the family values, just whatever that means, extremism, sexual promiscuity.

No one speaks of the 60s and the young with causes outside themselves.

Freedom of summer, civil rights, anti -war.

So the 60s was a moment that also had a sense of community to it as well.

In that sense, that precinct captain was no longer, at least in many quarters, the all -important figure he is today.

Not the precinct captain, but politics in its traditional, low -level sense.

You know, in reading your books, through my adult life, the thing that I love the most about them is hearing the voices of people.

Letting people talk for themselves so I can hear what they sound like, what they think like, what they feel.

You've done this at some, as we've been sitting talking, but what would the voice of people in Chicago politics sound like? Well, first, as a Chicago dialect, by the way.

There is a Chicago dialect.

For Daly is Irish American.

He's Irish ancestor, and yet his dialect is Slavic.

When you hear Daly's voice, it's not Irish rogue, as it might be for a Bostonian.

It isn't at all.

It's Slavic.

You'll hear down by the, you see, and you have sometimes the article is not used.

Down by house, they don't say that, but often it's said by the steel worker who came from Poland, let's say.

And because Chicago is a tremendous Slavic Eastern European, the biggest Polish city in the world outside of Warsaw, the biggest Catholic city.

But it's interesting that Chicago's dominant dialect would be Slavic.

Today, of course, it's changed considerably with the big migration, in migration of Hispanic and Southern Black and Asiatic.

So it is taking a change, as it is in many cities of the country.

I think we see I'm repeating my, I'm not giving you what you want, but you can pick up stuff here and there.

Sure, sure, sure.

But politics, I mean, is there a Chicago voice in terms of how they think about politics, how people on the street talk about politics, care about politics? I guess what we're saying is that when we went and recovered the stuff last year, you know, we went with Black Alder, we went with Mexican Alder and Puerto Rican Alder and Irish Alder.

And if I closed my eyes and I heard what they were saying to people, the way they were addressing the troops, I didn't, you know, they were all, they sounded the same because there was this street level precinct captain organization stuff that I just haven't heard in other places.

Don't you find that in other cities? No, no.

That's why we're here.

Well, I accept that as a matter of course for other cities because I've lived in Chicago almost all my life.

So therefore I accept that tribal aspect you talk about, although some cities are more homogenous than Chicago.

But I mean large American cities, I could be similar to Chicago, but apparently it isn't.

It does have a certain kind of robust, for want of a better phrase, tradition.

For better or for worse.

Chicago after all has had a Zipna 68 convention, the 1919 race riot of course.

Not that other cities haven't had, God knows they have since then.

But Chicago is one, I suppose you call it a city of extremes as well.

Not accidental, and this is the part that we can close with, the respectables of Chicago, especially upper class respectables.

Do not mind Chicago's reputation through the 30s and 40s as the home of Al Capone.

Oh God, they don't mind it because someone gives them the air of ravenousness.

Gives them the air of having lived a life they never dreamed of because their lives are so dull and drab.

And they deep, deep down know it, you see.

And so when they travel to Europe and these posh resorts where they may be, Chicago, oh boom boom, that's the usual reaction.

Oh not really, says the star watcher, but she loves it.

She loves it because it gives her a feeling, hey maybe she is like Betty Davis or Clare Trevor.

Oh boy, she loves it because her own life is not there.

And so that aspect of Chicago is still carried on.

So I always like to speak of Chicago as not, you know, people have the most, what a corrupt city, not more corrupt.

Certainly Jersey City under Hague, or Newark, which was Jersey City under Hague, is corrupt or more so.

We know the corruption of the Southwest, but Chicago's corruption had always an aspect of color to it, a monogamous to it.

So I call it the Big Daddy of corrupt cities.

I think we got it.

I think we got it.

Maybe you got one of two things.

No, no, that's great.