Talk:Ward heeler

POV

Wow, this is negative. My great grandfather was a ward heeler for the Democrats in Boston. He used to greet Italian immigrants off the boat, many of whom couldn't speak English, and help them find a job and a place to live. He had to explain to some of them that you couldn't keep goats in a tenement. Of course the immigrants were grateful, and voted for the party that had helped them.

From an article about Martin Lomasney: "Martin was a frequent visitor at the immigration center in East Boston where he attended the arrival of each new shipload of nationals from the old country. At the turn of the century, many of the immigrants were arriving in response to the ads of the shipping companies, some of them illegally, without credentials concerning relatives in America and means of support. It frequently happened that as soon as a man left the gangplank, his "cousin" would greet him with news of a job, and, just by coincidence, a place to live in Ward Eight. It never has been difficult to get a man a pick-and-shovel job. But Martin's interest didn't end there. There are many people in Boston today whose grandparents received coal from Martin when their money was low. Whenever there was a death in a family which couldn't afford the expense of a funeral, Martin would buy a coffin and pay for the burial plot. There was once a man in the West End who was suffering from tuberculosis. Such a man was useless with a shovel, and when Lomasney learned that the city would no longer hire him, he gave the patient money enough to start a notion store." [1]

Obviously I have my own POV issue, so probably shouldn't be the one to expand this article, but someone ought to mention that ward heelers helped a lot of poor, powerless people. --MopTop (talk) 15:34, 9 September 2017 (UTC)