Yesterday's Robin Hood: The Rise and Fall of Baltimore's Trenton Democratic Club

Abstract

BALTIMORE'S Jack Pollock has never been a city-wide boss in the sense of old-fashioned bosses like Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John of early twentieth-century Chicago. Tom Pendergast of Kansas City, Boss Hague of Jersey City, Boss Crump of Memphis, Mayor Curley of Boston, and Baltimore's own Sonny Mahan; all these were types of urban bosses who are either gone or rapidly passing out. They often seemed quite romantic, these Robin Hood-like brokers of electoral power who organized the vote of the early undifferentiated immigrant masses. Jack Pollock has not the same type of power as these earlier bosses, nor does he serve the same functions. Yet, Pollock has had such absolute power in his home district-Baltimore's Fourth-and has had such a pervasive influence that he has served proper Baltimoreans for almost twenty years as a convenient scapegoat to be loaded down with responsibility for the crimes and civic failings of the community. And Pollock has, until just recently, borne up under the load with great eagerness and cheerfulness. Well he could. He was built of Promethean proportions, a great hulk of a man who grew up an orphaned street gamin in Baltimore's East-side slums and soon was fighting small-time bouts as a heavyweight. His rise was phenomenal. He became quickly a mythological figure. In the aura of mystery which surrounded him there was all the vicarious excitement of the tale of the dead-end kid become overlord. He was extremely good newspaper copy, and the Baltimore Sun fed the Pollock myth as it