Editing Political Machine Era (section)

== End of the Machine Era ==

The Republican machine's decline began in the 1930s as the New Deal realigned American politics. Federal jobs and programs reduced dependence on local patronage, while the Democratic Party attracted voters who had previously supported Republican machines. The Great Depression discredited the business elite that had long allied with the machine. World War II brought further changes as returning veterans demanded better government and African American voters began shifting from Republican to Democratic allegiance. By the late 1940s, reform movements were gaining strength, and the machine's grip was weakening.<ref name="weigley"/>

The breakthrough came in 1951, when reform Democrats Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth won election as mayor and district attorney respectively, ending sixty-seven years of Republican dominance. The reformers enacted a new city charter that established a strong-mayor system, created civil service protections that reduced patronage, and modernized city administration. The 1951 reform did not eliminate machine politics entirely—Philadelphia Democrats built their own organization over subsequent decades—but it ended the particular era of Republican machine dominance that had defined the city since Reconstruction. The machine era had shaped Philadelphia's politics, government, and civic culture for nearly a century.<ref name="reichley"/>