This research examines the political development of the City of Los Angeles during the "patronage period." For the purposes of this research, the term "patronage period" is defined as the 1870-1939 time frame. In reality, patronage never disappears from political activity. Therefore, in effect, this research reviews a period in Los Angeles when the functioning of patronage or machine politics was more or less openly acknowledged.
The late-nineteenth century in the United States was a period of rapid social transformation (Lee 539). The old political institutions, largely adapted to a static, agrarian society, were no longer adequate for the needs of a modern industrial society. Class conflicts developed as rapid economic growth brought with it trusts and monopolies, growing labor unrest, and a corrupting alliance of government and business·government by patronage Large-scale immigration led to the development of urban slums, inadequacies in public services, and a "proliferation of machine politics" (Lee 539). Traditional societal elites felt threatened as the principles of "limited majoritarianism and elite governance were challenged by the growing demand for mass participation" (Lee 539). Populists were equally discontented as the concentration of economic power led to fundamental political inequality (Ross 1991).
The major administrative reforms in the public sector in this period were the civil service reform movement in the 1870s and 1880s and the municipal reform movement that began in the early-1900s (Lee 541). Both "movements strongly suggested biases against mass democracy and sought the reversion of power to the hands of elites, professions, and scientists along with the reform of institutions according to scientific principles" (Lee 541). A strong thesis in the literature is that centralized machine organizations gained control of municipal governments because such governments, organized on the concept of the...