Heidi’s Reviews > Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago > Status Update

He recalled Regan's Colts, the Irish thieves and street fighters who became the most potent political force in neighboring Canaryville, and his own neighborhood's Hamburgs, who got their start the same brawling way before turning to politics and eventually launching his career. There lay the danger of the black gangs...these young toughs could be dictating who their alderman would be if he didn't stop them.

"I don't see any more serious division in our country than we had in the Civil War and at other times." - Daley, discussing antiwar dissent

"They should have printed what he meant, not what he said." - Earl Bush, Daley's press secretary

"The honest policemen were distinguished by their rank, which was seldom above patrolman...Nobody wanted to work a traffic car with an honest partner. He was useless on a vice detail because he might start arresting gamblers or hookers. So the honest ones were isolated and did the nonprofitable jobs. It had to be so, because a few good apples in the barrel could ruin the thousands of rotten ones."

"The party permits ordinary people to get ahead. Without the party, I couldn't be mayor. The rich guys can get elected on their money, but somebody like me, an ordinary person, needs the party. Without the party, only the rich would be elected to office."