WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.759 OK, I want to start with a visual that just completely 00:00:02.759 --> 00:00:06.080 shatters what we think a powerful politician 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:08.699 looks like. So forget the boring Navy suits, 00:00:08.759 --> 00:00:10.720 the flag pins, all that. Right. I want you to 00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:14.259 picture a man. It's Chicago, maybe 1890. And 00:00:14.259 --> 00:00:17.199 he's wearing a suit that is just electric lime 00:00:17.199 --> 00:00:19.480 green. And not just the suit. Yeah. We're talking 00:00:19.480 --> 00:00:22.539 a frock coat the color of, you know, a billiard 00:00:22.539 --> 00:00:25.000 table. Maybe a pink waistcoat, yellow gloves. 00:00:25.300 --> 00:00:27.760 Exactly. He looks like he just walked off a vaudeville 00:00:27.760 --> 00:00:31.120 stage. Or maybe out of a circus tent. He writes 00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:34.640 this really sentimental, just awful poetry. Awful. 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:37.100 He weeps openly at the opera, has this ridiculous 00:00:37.100 --> 00:00:38.899 mustache. You see this guy and you think, okay, 00:00:38.939 --> 00:00:42.000 local eccentric, town mascot maybe. But then 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:44.020 you pull back the curtain. Yeah. And you realize 00:00:44.020 --> 00:00:47.140 this man is John Bathhouse John Coughlin. And 00:00:47.140 --> 00:00:49.700 he, along with his partner, a tiny, quiet guy 00:00:49.700 --> 00:00:53.020 named Hinky Dink Kenna. He isn't a mascot. Not 00:00:53.020 --> 00:00:54.920 at all. He's running one of the most ruthless, 00:00:55.079 --> 00:00:59.320 efficient and notoriously corrupt political machines 00:00:59.320 --> 00:01:01.619 in American history. It's the ultimate paradox. 00:01:01.979 --> 00:01:04.420 So today we're doing a deep dive into the Lords 00:01:04.420 --> 00:01:07.599 of the Levee. We're looking at how a former masseur 00:01:07.599 --> 00:01:11.420 and a saloon keeper basically held Chicago in 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:14.659 a chokehold for nearly 50 years. Yeah. And the 00:01:14.659 --> 00:01:16.959 question isn't just how did they steal so much? 00:01:16.959 --> 00:01:19.379 It's how did they get people to love them for 00:01:19.379 --> 00:01:21.909 it? That really is the central tension, isn't 00:01:21.909 --> 00:01:24.010 it? I mean, Coughlin was the alderman of the 00:01:24.010 --> 00:01:27.609 first ward from 1892 all the way to 1938. That's 00:01:27.609 --> 00:01:30.609 a lifetime. It is a lifetime in politics. He 00:01:30.609 --> 00:01:33.810 was reelected 19 times, never defeated. 19 times. 00:01:33.870 --> 00:01:36.310 You don't win that many times just by, you know, 00:01:36.310 --> 00:01:38.390 stuffing ballot boxes, though, spoiler alert, 00:01:38.489 --> 00:01:40.349 they definitely do that, too. Oh, for sure. You 00:01:40.349 --> 00:01:43.030 win by being a character. So before we get to 00:01:43.030 --> 00:01:45.489 the corruption, we have to understand the bathhouse 00:01:45.489 --> 00:01:48.189 persona. Because he didn't start out as a political 00:01:48.189 --> 00:01:50.890 boss. No. His origin story is surprisingly humble. 00:01:51.290 --> 00:01:54.170 He was born in Chicago 1860. His parents were 00:01:54.170 --> 00:01:56.450 Irish immigrants and his dad ran a little grocery 00:01:56.450 --> 00:01:58.549 store. Right. Until the Great Chicago Fire in 00:01:58.549 --> 00:02:01.170 71. And that's when everything changes. The store 00:02:01.170 --> 00:02:03.989 burns down. The family loses everything. And 00:02:03.989 --> 00:02:06.109 usually, you know, in a politician's biography, 00:02:06.310 --> 00:02:08.909 that's the from the ashes I rose moment. Very 00:02:08.909 --> 00:02:12.379 serious. Very solemn. But not for Coughlin. He 00:02:12.379 --> 00:02:14.699 had a completely different take. He famously 00:02:14.699 --> 00:02:17.840 said why money didn't mean anything to me. I'm 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:19.819 glad that fire came along and burned the store. 00:02:19.979 --> 00:02:23.159 Which sounds completely insane. Why would you 00:02:23.159 --> 00:02:25.139 be glad your house burned down? Because of what 00:02:25.139 --> 00:02:29.500 he said next. Say, if not for that bonfire, I 00:02:29.500 --> 00:02:31.520 might have been a rich man's son and gone to 00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:34.289 Yale. And never amounted to nothing. Never amounted 00:02:34.289 --> 00:02:36.990 to nothing. I love that. So he saw the Ivy League 00:02:36.990 --> 00:02:40.550 as like the road to failure. Exactly. For him, 00:02:40.550 --> 00:02:43.349 the real education was the street and specifically 00:02:43.349 --> 00:02:45.490 the bathhouse. OK, so that's where the name comes 00:02:45.490 --> 00:02:48.590 from. That's it. He started as a rubber, a masseur 00:02:48.590 --> 00:02:50.969 in a bathhouse. And that's how he got the nickname 00:02:50.969 --> 00:02:54.849 Bathhouse John. You have to remember, back then, 00:02:54.909 --> 00:02:57.389 the bathhouse was a social hub. Right. It's where 00:02:57.389 --> 00:02:59.590 the wealthy merchants, the gamblers, the politicians, 00:02:59.789 --> 00:03:01.900 they all stripped down and... you know, talk 00:03:01.900 --> 00:03:04.280 shop. So he was literally rubbing shoulders with 00:03:04.280 --> 00:03:06.979 the power players. Literally. He saved his tips, 00:03:07.080 --> 00:03:09.680 eventually bought his own bathhouse, then a tavern. 00:03:09.699 --> 00:03:11.719 And the tavern, well, that's the classic entry 00:03:11.719 --> 00:03:14.039 point for Irish politics in Chicago. And he gets 00:03:14.039 --> 00:03:17.000 elected alderman in 92 with zero experience. 00:03:17.060 --> 00:03:19.990 None. Just because he was a known, liked guy 00:03:19.990 --> 00:03:22.409 in the neighborhood. And this is where that eccentricity 00:03:22.409 --> 00:03:24.830 factor just explodes. Because once he gets a 00:03:24.830 --> 00:03:28.050 little power, he doesn't try to fit in. He cranks 00:03:28.050 --> 00:03:30.750 the volume up to 11. We mentioned the green suits. 00:03:30.870 --> 00:03:33.009 Oh, the fashion was absolutely a strategy. He 00:03:33.009 --> 00:03:35.289 hired costumers who designed clothes for actors 00:03:35.289 --> 00:03:38.349 to make his suits. But my favorite example of 00:03:38.349 --> 00:03:42.090 his style is the poetry. The dog roll. Yes. He 00:03:42.090 --> 00:03:43.770 really thought he was a bard. He'd write these 00:03:43.770 --> 00:03:47.259 incredibly sappy, structurally... questionable 00:03:47.259 --> 00:03:50.759 poems there was one dear midnight of love and 00:03:50.759 --> 00:03:52.900 he didn't just like keep it in a drawer no no 00:03:52.900 --> 00:03:55.680 he had it set to music he tried to hire a famous 00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:59.099 opera singer to perform it she refused wisely 00:03:59.099 --> 00:04:01.900 so he got a friend's daughter to sing it at the 00:04:01.900 --> 00:04:05.099 chicago opera house the audacity is just incredible 00:04:05.099 --> 00:04:07.099 but the public kind of ate it up didn't they 00:04:07.479 --> 00:04:09.340 Oh, they loved it. It became a running joke. 00:04:09.539 --> 00:04:11.699 People would write terrible poems and sign his 00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:13.560 name to them in the papers. And he didn't mind. 00:04:13.599 --> 00:04:16.120 He bathed in it. Made him seem accessible. You 00:04:16.120 --> 00:04:18.180 know, he wasn't some stiff bureaucrat. He was 00:04:18.180 --> 00:04:20.959 the bath. And then there's the elephant. You 00:04:20.959 --> 00:04:23.360 cannot tell the Coughlin story without Princess 00:04:23.360 --> 00:04:26.439 Alice. This is Pete Coughlin, the height of his 00:04:26.439 --> 00:04:30.259 using power for whimsy. He'd opened an amusement 00:04:30.259 --> 00:04:33.829 park out in Colorado Springs. Zoo Park. And he 00:04:33.829 --> 00:04:36.149 decided it needed an elephant. You need a star 00:04:36.149 --> 00:04:38.730 attraction. So he looks at the Lincoln Park Zoo 00:04:38.730 --> 00:04:41.350 in Chicago, a public zoo, and he sees they have 00:04:41.350 --> 00:04:43.389 an elephant named Princess Alice. Most people 00:04:43.389 --> 00:04:45.709 would just buy an elephant. But not Bathhouse 00:04:45.709 --> 00:04:48.930 John. He goes to the city council and makes a 00:04:48.930 --> 00:04:51.889 fiscal argument. He says essentially, why is 00:04:51.889 --> 00:04:54.009 the city wasting taxpayer money feeding this 00:04:54.009 --> 00:04:56.610 elephant? It's a burden. He framed stealing an 00:04:56.610 --> 00:04:59.319 elephant as budget cutting. And it worked. He 00:04:59.319 --> 00:05:01.420 actually argued that having another elephant 00:05:01.420 --> 00:05:03.500 was a waste, so he should just take Princess 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:06.220 Alice off their hands. He moved a public zoo 00:05:06.220 --> 00:05:08.620 animal to his private amusement park, two states 00:05:08.620 --> 00:05:11.490 away. That is the definition of chutzpah. But 00:05:11.490 --> 00:05:13.949 it also shows you how he operated. He could wrap 00:05:13.949 --> 00:05:16.870 this totally selfish desire in the language of 00:05:16.870 --> 00:05:19.110 public good. Or at least make it so entertaining 00:05:19.110 --> 00:05:21.250 people let him get away with it. Which is the 00:05:21.250 --> 00:05:23.870 perfect transition to the darker side. Because 00:05:23.870 --> 00:05:26.009 while he's distracting everyone with green suits 00:05:26.009 --> 00:05:28.810 and elephants, he and his partner, Michael Hinky 00:05:28.810 --> 00:05:31.490 Dink Kenna, were building a machine that was 00:05:31.490 --> 00:05:34.750 robbing that same public blind. Yeah, let's talk 00:05:34.750 --> 00:05:37.170 about that partnership. You've got Coughlin Loud. 00:05:38.120 --> 00:05:41.439 large, flashy, the front man, and then you have 00:05:41.439 --> 00:05:44.699 Kenna. Hinky -dink Kenna. Yeah. So small, so 00:05:44.699 --> 00:05:48.339 quiet, rarely smiled. Ran a saloon called the 00:05:48.339 --> 00:05:50.939 Working Man's Exchange. If Coughlin was the voice, 00:05:51.139 --> 00:05:53.740 Kenna was the brain. The organizational genius. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:55.660 He was the one who made sure the votes were counted, 00:05:55.800 --> 00:05:57.680 whether they were real or not. There's that great 00:05:57.680 --> 00:05:59.879 quote from the mayor at the time, Carter Harrison 00:05:59.879 --> 00:06:03.040 Jr. He asked Kenna, basically, is your partner 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:05.579 crazy? Right, which was a fair question. And 00:06:05.579 --> 00:06:08.290 Kenna defended him. He said, John isn't Dottie 00:06:08.290 --> 00:06:11.389 and he ain't full of dope. And then he says, 00:06:11.449 --> 00:06:14.110 to tell you the God's truth, Mr. Mayor, they 00:06:14.110 --> 00:06:16.209 ain't found a name for it yet. They ain't found 00:06:16.209 --> 00:06:18.769 a name for it yet. Like he was a force of nature. 00:06:19.029 --> 00:06:21.410 But their business model had a very specific 00:06:21.410 --> 00:06:25.149 name. Boodling. Boodling. It sounds like a cartoon 00:06:25.149 --> 00:06:28.029 noise, but it was serious, serious business. 00:06:28.110 --> 00:06:30.449 We need to break this down. People hear corruption 00:06:30.449 --> 00:06:33.490 and think of cash and envelopes, but the mechanics 00:06:33.490 --> 00:06:36.389 of bootling were really about franchises. Exactly. 00:06:36.470 --> 00:06:39.230 A franchise was a government -granted monopoly. 00:06:39.939 --> 00:06:43.220 So if you wanted to run a streetcar line or lay 00:06:43.220 --> 00:06:46.300 gas pipes, you needed the city council to give 00:06:46.300 --> 00:06:49.000 you the exclusive right to use the public streets. 00:06:49.279 --> 00:06:51.720 So if I'm a tycoon like Charles Tyson Yerkes, 00:06:51.740 --> 00:06:53.620 who's trying to build the transit system, I can't 00:06:53.620 --> 00:06:56.560 just build. You need permission. Yeah. And that 00:06:56.560 --> 00:06:59.019 permission is worth millions. Because if you 00:06:59.019 --> 00:07:01.120 get the franchise, you have no competition. It's 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:03.579 a license to print money. So a bribe of, say, 00:07:03.680 --> 00:07:06.279 $50 ,000 to get that vote, that's a drop in the 00:07:06.279 --> 00:07:09.069 bucket. It's a toll booth. Coughlin, Kenna and 00:07:09.069 --> 00:07:11.730 their crew, the so -called gray wolves, were 00:07:11.730 --> 00:07:13.910 standing at the gate. You want to do business 00:07:13.910 --> 00:07:16.850 in Chicago, you pay the wolves. That's it. They 00:07:16.850 --> 00:07:19.410 were selling public rights for private gain and 00:07:19.410 --> 00:07:21.850 they were just relentless. But here's what I 00:07:21.850 --> 00:07:24.410 don't get. This wasn't a secret, right? Reform 00:07:24.410 --> 00:07:27.129 groups like the Municipal Voters League, the 00:07:27.129 --> 00:07:31.009 newspapers, they were screaming about this. Constantly 00:07:31.009 --> 00:07:34.230 on the front page. So how did the voters in his 00:07:34.230 --> 00:07:37.050 ward? The people in the levee put up with it. 00:07:37.129 --> 00:07:39.970 That's the key. Yeah. And the answer is they 00:07:39.970 --> 00:07:43.029 were providing a social safety net. Remember, 00:07:43.110 --> 00:07:45.129 this is before the New Deal. There's no Social 00:07:45.129 --> 00:07:48.050 Security, no unemployment, no welfare. If you 00:07:48.050 --> 00:07:50.209 lost your job, you were on your own. Unless you 00:07:50.209 --> 00:07:52.209 knew your alderman. Right. If you were starving, 00:07:52.370 --> 00:07:54.850 Kenna gave you a turkey. If you needed coal for 00:07:54.850 --> 00:07:57.470 the winter, Coughlin sent a truck. Your son gets 00:07:57.470 --> 00:08:00.310 arrested. Kenna's lawyer was there before the 00:08:00.310 --> 00:08:02.449 ink was dry on the police report. So they weren't 00:08:02.449 --> 00:08:04.250 just buying votes. They were buying loyalty. 00:08:04.769 --> 00:08:07.350 They were purchasing survival. The graft money 00:08:07.350 --> 00:08:09.490 from the streetcar lines and the vice districts, 00:08:09.610 --> 00:08:13.329 it subsidized this primitive welfare state. The 00:08:13.329 --> 00:08:16.430 voters knew Coffin was a crook. But he was their 00:08:16.430 --> 00:08:19.069 crook. And his neighborhood, the Levee, was the 00:08:19.069 --> 00:08:21.930 vice district. Brothels, gambling saloons. The 00:08:21.930 --> 00:08:24.410 Lords of the Levee. It was a symbiotic relationship. 00:08:24.939 --> 00:08:27.439 The vice lord paid the machine for protection 00:08:27.439 --> 00:08:29.660 from the police. The machine used that money 00:08:29.660 --> 00:08:32.480 to win elections. And the police, well, they 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:34.080 did what the aldermen told them to do. Which 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:36.919 brings us to the 1894 election. I want to slow 00:08:36.919 --> 00:08:39.120 down here because this whole thing plays out 00:08:39.120 --> 00:08:41.639 like a heist movie. It shows you the machine 00:08:41.639 --> 00:08:44.840 in action. This is their first real test. Coughlin 00:08:44.840 --> 00:08:46.899 is running against a guy named Billy Skakel. 00:08:47.399 --> 00:08:50.340 And Skakel isn't some reformer. No, he's a rival 00:08:50.340 --> 00:08:53.610 gambler. It's shark versus shark. Skakel ran 00:08:53.610 --> 00:08:56.250 for alderman out of spite because Coughlin let 00:08:56.250 --> 00:08:59.230 a competitor move in on his turf. And Skakel 00:08:59.230 --> 00:09:01.870 had money and muscle. So how does the machine 00:09:01.870 --> 00:09:04.490 fight back? It starts with the nominating convention. 00:09:04.909 --> 00:09:07.009 Which was a complete farce. The sources say it 00:09:07.009 --> 00:09:09.789 lasted only a few minutes. Why? Because a big 00:09:09.789 --> 00:09:11.389 prize fight was starting and all the delegates 00:09:11.389 --> 00:09:14.190 wanted to go. They just shouted Coughlin and 00:09:14.190 --> 00:09:16.830 ran out. Priorities. But the election day itself. 00:09:17.559 --> 00:09:19.720 That was Kenna's masterpiece. It really was. 00:09:19.879 --> 00:09:22.539 Skankle was actually popular. So Kenna organizes 00:09:22.539 --> 00:09:24.500 what you could call the homeless infantry. He 00:09:24.500 --> 00:09:27.259 went to the flop houses, the rail yards, recruited 00:09:27.259 --> 00:09:30.000 hundreds of homeless men. The deal was simple. 00:09:30.179 --> 00:09:33.580 50 cents, a meal, and a place to sleep. In exchange, 00:09:33.919 --> 00:09:36.299 you vote for Coughlin. And probably not just 00:09:36.299 --> 00:09:38.379 once. As many times as you could get away with. 00:09:38.460 --> 00:09:40.240 It was an assembly line of fraudulent votes. 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:44.240 But they also needed intimidation. So Kenna calls 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:48.100 in the Quincy Street Gang. That sounds unpleasant. 00:09:48.620 --> 00:09:50.799 These were the toughs, the bouncers, the leg 00:09:50.799 --> 00:09:53.019 breakers. Ken has stationed them near the polling 00:09:53.019 --> 00:09:56.580 places to discourage any Skakel voters. And the 00:09:56.580 --> 00:09:58.159 police were just letting this happen. The police 00:09:58.159 --> 00:09:59.940 were part of the rig. The mayor was on their 00:09:59.940 --> 00:10:02.759 side. He ordered the police to actually detain 00:10:02.759 --> 00:10:05.240 Skakel's campaign workers until the polls closed. 00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:07.980 He even had them shut down any saloon that supported 00:10:07.980 --> 00:10:10.899 Skakel. It's total warfare. You've got bribery, 00:10:10.960 --> 00:10:13.600 intimidation and state power all working together. 00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:16.309 And it worked. Coughlin went on a landslide. 00:10:16.330 --> 00:10:18.889 The Chicago Tribune was horrified. They wrote 00:10:18.889 --> 00:10:20.769 that the methods would have disgraced even the 00:10:20.769 --> 00:10:23.529 worst river parishes of Louisiana. That is a 00:10:23.529 --> 00:10:27.169 serious burn for 1894. But Coughlin didn't care. 00:10:27.309 --> 00:10:29.870 He had the seat. And he wasn't afraid to use 00:10:29.870 --> 00:10:32.549 that power for petty revenge either. We have 00:10:32.549 --> 00:10:34.090 to talk about the boxing ordinance. Oh, it's 00:10:34.090 --> 00:10:37.649 wonderfully petty. So a rival named Sol Van Praag 00:10:37.649 --> 00:10:40.549 causes some trouble for the machine. Coughlin 00:10:40.549 --> 00:10:43.460 decides to destroy him. Von Praag had organized 00:10:43.460 --> 00:10:47.179 a huge boxing match, a huge moneymaker. And Coughlin 00:10:47.179 --> 00:10:50.419 decides to just cancel it. He introduces a city 00:10:50.419 --> 00:10:53.460 ordinance banning fighting, but he does it the 00:10:53.460 --> 00:10:55.220 night before the fight is scheduled. For maximum 00:10:55.220 --> 00:10:58.320 damage. Exactly. But then he realizes the new 00:10:58.320 --> 00:11:01.240 ordinance might not hold up. So he digs into 00:11:01.240 --> 00:11:04.340 the archives and finds an ancient ordinance banning 00:11:04.340 --> 00:11:06.980 bare -knuckle fighting. But they were using gloves. 00:11:07.379 --> 00:11:09.559 Didn't matter. Coughlin argued the spirit of 00:11:09.559 --> 00:11:11.830 the law applied. He sent the police to storm 00:11:11.830 --> 00:11:14.149 the ring right before the semifinals, arrested 00:11:14.149 --> 00:11:16.870 the fighters, the ref, everyone. He ruined the 00:11:16.870 --> 00:11:19.570 event, cost Van Praag a fortune, and sent a message. 00:11:19.710 --> 00:11:22.389 Do not cross us. It's terrifying power, but they 00:11:22.389 --> 00:11:24.490 also knew how to celebrate it. The first ward 00:11:24.490 --> 00:11:26.629 ball. The annual fundraiser. Yeah. This wasn't 00:11:26.629 --> 00:11:28.269 your typical rubber chicken dinner. Paint the 00:11:28.269 --> 00:11:30.669 picture. Okay, imagine the Chicago Coliseum, 00:11:30.730 --> 00:11:33.370 the biggest hall in the city. It's packed. And 00:11:33.370 --> 00:11:36.799 the guest list is a sociological nightmare. You've 00:11:36.799 --> 00:11:40.059 got high society businessmen next to safecrackers, 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:42.759 pickpockets, madams, hitmen. It's the cantina 00:11:42.759 --> 00:11:45.879 scene from Star Wars, but in Chicago. With a 00:11:45.879 --> 00:11:47.899 lot more booze. Yeah. They were raising over 00:11:47.899 --> 00:11:51.799 $50 ,000 a night, which is millions today. It 00:11:51.799 --> 00:11:54.080 was the complete merger of crime and politics 00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:56.559 out in the open, daring anyone to stop them. 00:11:56.700 --> 00:11:59.320 But that party couldn't last forever. What happened? 00:11:59.799 --> 00:12:01.799 How does a machine that strong finally start 00:12:01.799 --> 00:12:04.279 to break? Well, the world changed around them. 00:12:04.360 --> 00:12:07.000 The biggest blow was prohibition. Right. If your 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.440 whole power base is saloons, banning alcohol 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:11.580 is kind of an existential crisis. They just dried 00:12:11.580 --> 00:12:14.039 up all the easy money from the levy. And at the 00:12:14.039 --> 00:12:16.559 same time, the reform movement was finally getting 00:12:16.559 --> 00:12:19.120 real traction. The chaos of the first ward ball 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:22.039 became too much of an embarrassment. The mayor 00:12:22.039 --> 00:12:24.779 banned it in 1909. The beating of the end. It 00:12:24.779 --> 00:12:27.139 was a slow decline. Coughlin had to close his 00:12:27.139 --> 00:12:29.850 zoo. He lost his summer home. And then there's 00:12:29.850 --> 00:12:32.330 the personal tragedy of his finances. You'd think 00:12:32.330 --> 00:12:34.509 a guy who stole that much would die rich. But 00:12:34.509 --> 00:12:38.590 he didn't. No. Coughlin had his own vice. Horses. 00:12:38.590 --> 00:12:40.990 He was obsessed with horse racing. Poured his 00:12:40.990 --> 00:12:43.309 entire fortune into his stable. But the horses 00:12:43.309 --> 00:12:45.210 weren't any good. They were terrible. He was 00:12:45.210 --> 00:12:47.549 just throwing bad money after bad horses, always 00:12:47.549 --> 00:12:49.649 thinking the next race would be the one. By the 00:12:49.649 --> 00:12:52.809 1930s, he was broke. What about Kenna? That partnership 00:12:52.809 --> 00:12:55.870 faded, too. In 1923, the ward boundaries changed. 00:12:56.210 --> 00:12:58.549 Kenna saw the writing on the wall. He stepped 00:12:58.549 --> 00:13:01.230 down, let Coughlin stay on as arterman, but Kenna 00:13:01.230 --> 00:13:03.470 was effectively retired. So Coughlin was left 00:13:03.470 --> 00:13:07.330 alone, a dinosaur in a lime green suit. Precisely. 00:13:07.330 --> 00:13:10.129 By the 30s, the press called him a vestige of 00:13:10.129 --> 00:13:12.629 a past era. The feared Lord of the Levee was 00:13:12.629 --> 00:13:15.649 gone. When he died in office in 1938, at 78, 00:13:15.850 --> 00:13:18.490 he was penniless. Penniless, the guy who treated 00:13:18.490 --> 00:13:21.210 the city treasury like his personal ATM. Left 00:13:21.210 --> 00:13:24.090 nothing behind. Nothing but the legend. So when 00:13:24.090 --> 00:13:26.029 you look back at Bathhouse, John, what's the 00:13:26.029 --> 00:13:28.289 legacy? Is he just a crook in a funny costume? 00:13:28.590 --> 00:13:31.330 I mean, he's definitely a crook. A 2012 study 00:13:31.330 --> 00:13:34.169 ranked him and Kenna as the third and fourth 00:13:34.169 --> 00:13:36.789 most corrupt officials in Illinois history. And 00:13:36.789 --> 00:13:39.500 that is a very competitive list, I'll bet. I 00:13:39.500 --> 00:13:41.360 think he represents something deeper about American 00:13:41.360 --> 00:13:44.539 politics. He represents the transaction. He never 00:13:44.539 --> 00:13:47.480 pretended to be a saint. He basically said, I'm 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:49.500 going to steal, but I'm going to entertain you, 00:13:49.600 --> 00:13:51.120 and I'm going to make sure you have coal in the 00:13:51.120 --> 00:13:54.299 winter. And for 50 years, the voters said, deal. 00:13:54.759 --> 00:13:57.700 It's the charisma trap. We forgive so much if 00:13:57.700 --> 00:13:59.779 a politician is one of us or if they make us 00:13:59.779 --> 00:14:02.980 laugh. We do. And you see the DNA of the Coughlin 00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:05.240 -Kenna machine in Chicago politics for the rest 00:14:05.240 --> 00:14:07.500 of the century. The organization they built. 00:14:07.899 --> 00:14:10.240 Didn't die with them. The machine just kept humming. 00:14:10.519 --> 00:14:13.899 It did. Because the underlying need for a safety 00:14:13.899 --> 00:14:17.720 net, for favors, for a fixer, that never goes 00:14:17.720 --> 00:14:20.080 away. Well, that is a lot to process. We went 00:14:20.080 --> 00:14:23.399 from bad poetry to elephants to streetcar monopolies. 00:14:23.460 --> 00:14:25.960 Just other day in the first ward. I want to leave 00:14:25.960 --> 00:14:28.320 our listeners with this thought. We like to think 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:30.360 we've evolved past the days of Bathhouse John. 00:14:30.600 --> 00:14:32.980 We have ethics committees, transparency laws. 00:14:33.279 --> 00:14:36.470 But ask yourself. How much eccentricity do we 00:14:36.470 --> 00:14:39.169 still tolerate today? If a politician is entertaining 00:14:39.169 --> 00:14:41.809 enough or charismatic enough, do we still turn 00:14:41.809 --> 00:14:43.889 a blind eye to the boodling that's happening 00:14:43.889 --> 00:14:46.190 right in front of us? It's a question worth asking. 00:14:46.590 --> 00:14:48.590 Thanks for diving in with us. We'll see you on 00:14:48.590 --> 00:14:49.009 the next one.