Otho Williams McD. Cushing (October 22, 1870 – October 13, 1942) was an American artist, known primarily for his early 20th century illustration and cartoons, for magazines and posters His sometimes-homoerotic style, often featuring classical figures, was influenced by Frederic Leighton, J. C. Leyendecker, and Aubrey Beardsley.

Otho Cushing was born in Fort McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland on October 22, 1870. He was the son of U.S. Army officer Harry Cooke Cushing (1841–1902) and Martha Wetherill (née Budd) Cushing (1846–1931). Among his siblings was Nicholas Cooke Cushing and Harry Cooke Cushing Jr. His maternal grandfather was Princeton University professor Samuel Budd and was a descendant of Nicholas Cooke, a colonial governor of Rhode Island.  He spent his youth in different cities where his father was stationed; in 1880 the family lived in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1887, he finished his secondary education at the Bulkeley School in New London, Connecticut. He studied art at Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and in 1891 at the Académie Julian in Paris, where his teachers included Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens.  He returned to Boston in September 1893 and became drawing instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He published drawings in Life magazine. Around 1900, he returned to Paris, where he became artistic director of the European edition of the New York Herald. While sailing on the RMS Oceanic in 1901, Cushing spent time with fellow first class traveler, Mary Lawrence, who wrote about him in her diary, stating: "He is absolutely as perfectly made as one of his own Greek gods and goddesses. From top to toe he is absolute grace."  When he returned to the United States, he joined the art staff of Life and lived in New York. His drawings were "highly stylized, and, at first, depicted handsome young men and women in Greek or modern costumes." In 1907, Life published a series of his cartoons about President Theodore Roosevelt entitled The Teddyssey (a parody of The Odyssey).  In 1917, he left Life and joined the Army Air Service, serving as a captain in charge of "supervising the camouflaging of American airfields on the Western Front". Several of his posters and drawings deal with the American involvement in World War 1. After the war, he retired to New Rochelle and embraced a career as watercolorist.

After 1854, it expanded its political control even further by earning the loyalty of the city's rapidly expanding immigrant community, which functioned as its base of political capital. The business community appreciated its readiness, at moderate cost, to cut through regulatory and legislative mazes to facilitate rapid economic growth.

By 1872, Tammany had an Irish Catholic "boss". In 1928, a Tammany hero, New York Governor Al Smith, won the Democratic presidential nomination. However, the organization also served as an engine for graft and political corruption, most infamously under William M. "Boss" Tweed in the mid-19th century. The Tammany ward boss or ward heeler, as wards were the city's smallest political units from 1786 to 1938, served as the local vote gatherer and provider of patronage.

By the 1880s, Tammany was building local clubs that appealed to social activists from the ethnic middle class. At its peak the machine had the advantage of a core of solid supporters, and usually exercised control of politics and policymaking in Manhattan; it also played a major role in the state legislature in Albany.

Charles Murphy acted as boss from 1902 to 192^] "Big Tim" Sullivan was the Tammany leader in the Bowery, and the machine's spokesman in the state legislature. In the early 20th century, the two men promoted Tammany as a reformed agency dedicated to the interests of the working class. The new image deflected attacks and secured a following among the emerging ethnic middle class. In the process Robert F. Wagner became a powerful United States Senator, and Smith served four terms as governor and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928.

Tammany's influence waned during the 1930s and early 1940s, when it engaged in a losing battle with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the state's governor (1929–1932) and later U.S. President (1933–1945). In 1932, after Mayor Jimmy Walker was forced from office when his bribery was exposed, Roosevelt stripped Tammany of federal patronage. Republican Fiorello La Guardia was elected mayor on a Fusion ticket and became the first anti-Tammany mayor to be re-elected. A brief resurgence in Tammany power in the 1950s, under the leadership of Carmine DeSapio, was met with Democratic opposition, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, and the New York Committee for Democratic Voters. By the mid-1960s, Tammany Hall ceased to exist.

Although not common in modern interpretations and evaluations of the effects of the organisation, Tammany was frequently criticised in the 19th century for being directly responsible for the nativism, anti-Catholic sentiment, and the rise of the Know Nothing Party in the preceding century due to fears about Tammany's influence and tactics.