Charter Changes in Boston from 1885 - 1949

A state's ability to design a municipality's governing structure is a distinctive feature of our American society. As William Marchione, Jr. states, should be remembered that the American political system does not recognize an inherent right to local self-government. Cities and towns are the products of state governments and derive their authority from them.1 The altering of Boston, Massachusetts' charter for example, reflects political struggles within the state and the city. The politics of Boston are integrally linked to the politics of the state of Massachusetts. These facts came together in the formation of Boston's first city charter of 1822. This was a document shaped by Yankee Federalists within Massachusetts's General Court. The Federalists, representing Boston's wealthy merchant elite, used the charter to limit the growing power of the populace and to maintain their prerogatives. The General Court, being the legislative arm of the state, was empowered by the state constitution to have the authority to structure the legal code under which the newly incorporated city of Boston would function. Federalists used the legal authority of the state over the municipality to insure their minority voting interest would be preserved.2 This pattern, begun in 1822, of an elite minority using its power to manipulate the charter of Boston through the state legislature would often be repeated. This paper investigates the most significant charter changes beginning in 1885 going up to 1949. These changes demonstrate the evolution of political power shifts between the Yankees and the Irish surrounding the mayoralty and city council. The political vehicle used by the Irish and other ethnic immigrants was the Democratic Party. Generally in Massachusetts, the Republican Party represented Yankees mechanics, farmers, small business people and Yankee elites. Exceptions existed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Elite Yankees were with the Democratic Party in the late nineteenth century as Mugwumps and many French Canadian immigrants voted with the Republicans until the 1920s. However, overall the Irish/ethnic versus Yankee political conflict was manifest in Democrat versus Republican Party politics on the state and municipal level of Massachusetts and Boston. The nineteenth century witnessed enormous change for Boston and the state. First, industrial manufacturing began in earnest with the formation of the Boston Associates and their mill factory systems in Waltham and Lowell in the early nineteenth century. This started America as a manufacturing nation, introducing large private corporations with factories. second, Boston became the financial, residential, cultural and political seat for the Yankee corporate elite. This gave the city new importance for corporate owners. Third, the 1847 Irish potato famine brought large numbers of destitute Irish immigrants to Boston. These poor foreign non-protestant people became a troubling challenge to the pre-existing Yankee host society who existed ethnically and culturally unaltered for 200 years. Despised and hated, the Irish suffered brutal poverty finding little opportunity within Boston, and a scant bit more working in the outlying factory towns owned and operated by the Yankee elites. Unlike the state constitution, the U.S. Constitution gave power to foreign-born nationals, like the Irish, the right to become citizens. It also insured that their children, born in the U.S., would be harbored under all of the Constitution's privileges and political opportunities. This meant that Irish Americans became voters, who through political organizing could elect officials to influence the government of the city, state and the nation. In politics, votes are everything and the Irish would only be able to gain power for themselves if they were able to garner the votes. As the end of the nineteenth century approached Boston was not the city it had been 100 years previously. …

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