An excellent example ... the demise of Tammany Hall in the 1960's was a victory by the clean government movement, though not as big as establishing a career civil service in the Federal government.

By the 1950's, Tammany Hall was notorious and seen as an aberration, but when it got its start in the 1790's, it was the norm ... just one political machine among many, looking out for the interests of its own as the other political machines looked out for the interests of their own, the urbanization of the pre-Civil War fraternal organizations that looked after civic affairs in many a small town and representative of the Jacksonian ideal of patronage politics.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.