Mugwumps and other Do-Gooders

In the 1890s, “goo-goo” was a term used as shorthand for the members of the "Good Government Clubs" that rose up in opposition to the political "machines" that dominated the governments of many cities and states at the time (and, in many places, still do). Their opponents gave them the name. The City Club of New York City sponsored “Good Government Clubs” in every assembly district. Their efforts led to the election of a reform mayor in 1894, a setback for the political machine known as Tammany Hall. Mugwumps and Progressives also received the label “goo-goo.” The term is a mildly derisive label for high-mind citizens or reformers. The term goo-goo still has political currency. It has changed little in meaning since critics first used it in the late 19th century.

The presidential campaign of 1884 was between Democrat Grover Cleveland and Republican James G. Blaine. It made the goo-goos prominent. The reason was that the Democrat here made quite a name for himself by opposing on the political machines of the time, Tammany Hall. This endeared him to the mugwumps, a name their critics gave to them. Blaine had many enemies within the Republican Party, including the mugwumps. Their opposition called them “mugwumps.” Cartoons showed them with their face one side of the fence and their “wump” on the other side of the fence. They tried to be somewhat independent in a time when partisanship demanded that you be one side of the political divide or the other.  

Several historians of the 1960s and 1970s portrayed the Mugwumps as members of an insecure elite, one that felt threatened by changes in American society. These historians often focused on the social background and status of their subjects, and the narratives they have written share a common outlook. Mugwumps tended to come from old Protestant families of New York and New England, and often from inherited wealth. They belonged to or identified with the emerging business and professional elite, and were often members of the most exclusive clubs. Yet they felt threatened by the rise of machine politics, one aspect of which was the spoils system and by the rising power of immigrants in American society. They excelled as authors and essayists, yet their writings indicated their social position and class loyalties. In politics, they tended to be ineffectual and unsuccessful, unable and unwilling to operate effectively in a political environment where patronage was the norm.

From another perspective, however, "Machine politics" is another way of describing a political entity led by an individual or small group that maintains control over a city through a hierarchical system of patronage, rewards and punishments. The machine is more interested in benefiting itself than the public. Think of it as a kind of legal, political mafia, if you will.

In a more recent work, historian David Tucker (1998) attempts to rehabilitate the Mugwumps. According to Tucker, the Mugwumps embodied the liberalism of the 19th century, and their rejection by 20th-century historians, who embraced the government intervention of the New Deal and the Great Society, is not surprising. To Tucker, their eloquent writings speak for themselves, and are testament to a high-minded civic morality.

The "goo-goos" challenged the political machines through a series of reform movements driven by idealism and a desire for change. They were annoying with a good reason, and some politicians who try to go against the system today still retain the label. Being a "goo-goo" can be a very good thing because it turns the focus from what is expedient and self-serving to what is right and what benefits everyone.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., president of the Union Pacific Railroad and the American Historical Association

Henry Adams, author

Edward Atkinson, entrepreneur and business executive

Louis Brandeis, future Supreme Court Justice

Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard University

Josiah Willard Gibbs, professor of mathematical physics at Yale University

E. L. Godkin, editor of The Nation

Seth Low, Republican mayor of Brooklyn NY in 1884; lost his party's support due to his backing Cleveland, and stepped down rather than attempting to run for a third term in 1885

Thomas Nast, political cartoonist

Carl Schurz, former Senator from Missouri and Secretary of the Interior, editor of the Saturday Evening Post

Moorfield Storey, lawyer and NAACP president from 1909 to 1915

William Graham Sumner, social scientist, Yale University

Mark Twain, author, self-identified as a Mugwump in his essay, Christian Science

Horace White, editor of the Chicago Tribune