The Irish-born John Powers, along with John “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, were among the so-called gray wolves of Chicago’s early 20th century City Council. Though Powers has mostly been forgotten, he represents the hallmarks of the early political machine, the one that gave rise to mayors Anton Cermak, Ed Kelly and Richard J. Daley. It’s a system that’s gone now, but one that may resonate as we experience a mayoral race today.
Powers and the wolves didn’t just provide favors or jobs — though they did do both. They knew the neighborhood and voters intimately, from the tavern keepers to the priests, rabbis and ministers.
Powers signified a type of communalism, often bound by the church, that carried over from agricultural life in Europe. He was an owner of a saloon and a gambling house who was known for his fancy clothes and diamond ring. Though he was corrupt, his constituents looked up to him. His constituents wanted to be him someday. Powers was a protector of immigrant communities in an unfamiliar world of steel mills, stockyards and slaughterhouses. It was said he went to wakes nightly, carrying a rosary and a yarmulke in his pocket at all times. He was known for giving a turkey or a goose at Christmas to anyone in need. It was generosity but also realpolitik — the idea was that he would receive votes in return.
Catholic education and tenets of loyalty and hierarchy often were at the center of the communal structure — beliefs the machine was based on. At the head was the pope, then there were the cardinal, the bishops and the priests. In the city, there’s the head of the Democratic Party, the mayor, the committeemen, the aldermen and a legion of precinct captains. It’s perhaps no wonder that five Chicago mayors were educated at De La Salle Institute on the South Side. The word “patron,” after all, comes from the idea of a patron saint. Just as St. Jude is the patron saint of impossible causes and last resort, so, too, were the benevolent aldermen who were the natural leaders of their wards. In Judaism, there was the web of communalism and the sharing of aid that came from the shtetls of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine.
The communal response was one that arose out of the peasantry. Ethnic groups in Europe had to work together in order to survive serfdom, prejudice and poverty. The Bohemian-born Cermak — Chicago’s only immigrant mayor — labored in coal mines before settling in Pilsen and becoming Democratic ward committeeman in 1908. Cermak, a child of the patronage system, knew how to play the game. He united Czechs, Poles, Jews and the South Side Irish behind the anti-Prohibition United Societies for Local Self-Government. Cermak was first elected citywide as bailiff and then to mayor in 1931. Daley was a young precinct captain at the time.
Another South Side Irishman, Kelly, took over after Cermak’s assassination. It was the beginning of a power structure that would be in place for decades.
The mayoral power base began to change in the 1960s and ’70s as ethnic communities dispersed to the suburbs and the Shakman Decrees remade political hiring. Vatican II reforms did away with Latin and depleted the ranks of priests and nuns, and the power of the church waned as parishes closed. The major pillars of the communal system were starting to dissolve. By the time of Richard M. Daley, the old system was fading: The number of patronage jobs had dropped from around 35,000 to 5,000.
Nowadays, while we may see aldermen at block parties and business openings, many of us haven’t seen a precinct captain in more than 20 years. New centers of power such as the labor movement have emerged in the 21st century. And though the Cubs and White Sox made the playoffs, and the Bears are on the rise, politics remain Chicago’s favorite sport.
Author and historian Dominic A. Pacyga received the 2026 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award for “Clout City: The Rise and Fall of the Chicago Political Machine” and is now writing a memoir about growing up in Back of the Yards and working in the Union Stock Yards. Bob Dolgan is the director of communications for the Newberry Library.
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