Hartsfield dismantled patronage politics, destroying ward organizations and white working-class clout.

Evidence

When he first took office, for instance, the mayor tightly restricted city spending with a new budget law. The patronage system on which aldermen and city councilmen depended soon dried up. Then, in 1939, Hartsfield and his allies in the Chamber of Commerce moved quickly to create a civil service system, robbing the precinct politicians of their appointment power, too. Meanwhile, the mayor and his new departmental heads eliminated nearly two hundred positions in city government and tightened their control over the remaining employees. By the end of the 1930s the ward organizations of the city were fading fast and, with them, the political clout of the city’s white working class. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 68

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s core thesis that modern conservatism grew from white reaction — but here the mayor’s reform politics displaced white working-class ward power, ironically prefiguring their later abandonment to segregationist/suburban politics.