Big City Progressive Era Policy Systems
The ultimate purpose of this chapter is to describe municipal policy systems that typified the Progressive Era. Despite the over one hundred years that has since passed, the forms of government inaugurated in this period still persist and serve as the foundation for our current jurisdictional policy systems. Strong mayors, city managers, the occasional commission, and political machines along with bureaucracies filled with professional experts recast Gilded Age policy systems. Economic development policy evolved with, and within, these forms of government. Form of government sets in place who decides policy and a good deal of the process flow in a jurisdictional policy cycle.
Moreover, there is a “motif”, a bias reflecting (1) the values each type of policy system maximizes; (2) the standing and effectiveness of various participants in the policy process; and, (3) the constituency and goals of its electoral coalition that affect the definition of policy goals in each policy area. Forms of government do not necessarily produce different policy outputs, strategies or programs, but they do affect who they serve, the intensity that they are implemented or used, and the goals they seek. For example, all forms of government may embrace attraction and recruitment as an economic development strategy; but the programs and intensity of use are likely to vary considerably with the goal pursued ant the electoral coalition underlying the form of government.
For these reasons, our discussion of structural reformers will be more developed and extensive. Of special interest to me is the variation among regions, states and cities, and even within the same city over time. In this chapter we limit attention to Midwest and Northern Big Cities. But even in these regions considerable variation is evident. In chapters that follow (describing the South and West) additional variation will be presented. Pervasive state and sub-state variation is its own story and a constant theme in this history.
As the progressive era unfolded, three distinct reform orientations (structural reformers, social reform mayors, and social/moral policy-based reformers) emerged from late-19th century mugwumpery. These three reform traditions overlapped and blurred, as progressive coalitions formed, broke up, and reorganized with each new reform issue.[1] Structural reformers, social reformers and social/moral policy-based reformers advocates competed/allied with one another, as well as with Gilded Age standbys: the machine, businessmen mayors [Jeffersonian privatists] and weak/strong mayors. In some cases structural reforms were grafted onto previous forms of government; in many others jurisdictions new forms of government were put in place. To remind the reader, the Progressive Age witnessed the establishment of the foundation of today’s jurisdictional policy system.
At this point “issues” become salient to understanding the formation of these policy systems. These policy actors assembled coalitions sufficient in electoral strength to dominated jurisdictional decision-making, referenda, and affect state legislative support to establish a policy system congruent to their ideology. Office-seekers and political parties necessarily adopted positions on key issues relevant to voters in their municipality. Issues, personality and leadership dynamics, flowed from demographics, past history and were often idiosyncratic to the jurisdiction. Three issues, however, were common to most northern Big Cities in this Era; they played a disproportionate role in affecting politics and elections. Coalitions among elements of the working and business classes could be forged by adopting positions regarding some combination of these issues. The policy systems constructed in the Progressive Era rested upon these coalitions and the issue-positions/constituencies they served. Their coalition durability, at minimum, rested upon, competence of its leadership and consistency in dealing with the three issues. What are the three issues? They are (1) municipal relationship/ownership of key community utilities and infrastructure; (2) individual/neighborhood level initiatives including moral and temperance programs affecting alcohol, saloons, prostitution, and gambling—indirectly crime associated with these activities; (3) governmental honesty, economy, and efficiency/competence/capacity.
Each of these issues tended to appeal in varying intensities to elements of three classes that constituted the Big City urban electorate: lower and working class, the middle class, and the businesses elites. The first and third issues, especially, overlapped to some degree all classes—they were the issues of the day and what disagreement existed among the classes was not “if”, but rather how. The second issue-nexus, however, did often separate lower and working class from the middle and business class. The first issue more than touches on economic development; the two contentious infrastructures were street car and energy/sometimes lighting. Utility regulation and the structural organizations associated with it will continue into the future as the definition of “utility” evolves and government relationship to business changes. Street cars regulation, however, lost much of its salience by the end of this period—thanks to Henry Ford, the Model T, and busses.
The third issue was, at root, anti-machine, anti-legislature, and government capacity—all of which were fundamental to any policy system that emerged. In this chapter, discussion surrounding the third issue is emphasized for that reason. The second issue, however, figured prominently not only in this Era, but in succeeding decades as well. This was especially true of saloon politics/police enforcement in an age when Prohibition was a vibrant national issue, and a constitutional amendment was approved that took effect in1920. Alcohol, police, neighborhood programs were so powerful that in some jurisdictions they overwhelmed the reforms associated with the third issue—structural reforms—and created their own form of policy system. Nobody, I am sure, ever expected to read that saloon politics exerted a significant effect on the evolution of American economic development. But it did; so pour yourself a drink, bourbon preferably, and read on.
The plan of attack is to discuss the principal policy systems that emerged in the Progressive Age and that were important to the evolution of our jurisdiction policy system and the economic development policy area. These policy systems are in order of appearance: the social reform may, the socialist policy system, the Progressive Age variants of the political machine, and—the most important to our history—the structural reformers. This was an Age of (Structural) Reform[2] and structural reform is critical to our history and to subsequent urban politics. Hopefully, not surprisingly to the reader, there are a lot of twists and turns to structural reformers and that will consume our attention for many pages—including a wrap up and segue way as well. Finally, the masochists in the crowd, three case studies, Boston, Kansas City, and first of all, Detroit will hopefully convey the policy atmosphere of the Age.
[1] Mohl, the New City, op. cit. p. 115.
[2] Richard Hofstadter, the Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1989); originally published in 1955.
Putting It All Together:
So wrapping it up, a lot of micro case studies, a lot of variation as promised, and a lot of “reform” or at least change. At the end of the Progressive Era (give or take a few years) in 1920, urban government and politics did not follow Gilded Age scripts. The political landscape screamed out that much had changed (women could vote in 1920); continued immigration, innovation and economic growth, not to mention a World War, however, suggested volatility and perhaps too much change. The politics of the twenties called for a “Return to Normal”, Prohibition, and the Red Scare and an ever-more violent unionism seemed unsettling to many. In this environment, the immigrations spigot was finally turned down, and by 1924, off. I inject this turmoil so the reader may take a step back and remember reform is change, and change may be exhilarating, but it also is unsettling. As far as urban governance goes, there had been much change, but one could wonder at the end how much had, in fact, changed.
First, the social reform mayors had pretty much left the urban stage—but machines had not. It seemed the buggers were pretty resilient and had found ways to overcome the commission form, and in Kansas City the Pendergast machine prospered alongside the city manager government. Tammany was back in New York, and Philadelphia was still machine controlled. New machines were popping up all the time–in Jersey City and Memphis for example. The commission form of government was clearly not working out, yet the occasional city would still adopt it. Cities were constantly trying to change governments and would continue to do so, at a reduced rate, over the next thirty years.
The city manager form of government did find a home in cities of 25,000 up to 250,000[1]. The secret for this success was not a mystery. Sufficient size to require professional management but a limited somewhat homogenous middle class population which valued professional management and could sustain a consensus within which professional management and political leaders could make policy. Instability was most evident in the Big Cities, however. If the city grew too large, heterogeneity entered into political life. The lower and working class, it was evident, did not share in the business and professional ethos underlying the council-manager form of government. So, one feature of contemporary policy systems, the difference in policy systems between first/second tier cities and the other tiers had developed from the Progressive Era structural reform movement. Economic developers working in a Big City would face a different policy process and policy system than the compatriots in the other tiers. Suburban policy systems would be different than central city policy systems.
Urban reform was a two-pronged reform. First, it was a bundle of electoral reforms (non partisan elections, referendums and initiatives, off-year municipal elections, and at large legislatures). These reforms were meant to, if this makes sense, take politics out of politics, and, more precisely, damage the ability of machines to control political parties. The underlying philosophy, seen best in at large elections, is a notion that the public’s best interest is achieved by viewing the “city as a whole”—the community, the city tax payer. Special interests or agendas, such as neighborhoods and any ethnic or demographic grouping that may live in them are disadvantaged. This sense of the public interest also would seem to distinguish the public interest from private interests or a firm’s self-interest as well.
When the day came that cities would remove slum and blighted neighborhoods, I suspect non partisan and at large elections made it somewhat easier. In the Progressive Age, structural reforms such as unicameral legislature and the at large election put a pretty serious crimp in the power of urban legislatures and correspondingly strengthen that of the mayor, and the chief officials of his/her “administration”. When one combines this with the augmented bureaucratic capacity discussed in the below paragraphs, the most important result of these power-centralizing structural reforms was to create a much stronger mayor, making that office the single most powerful institution in the urban policy process. Of course, a stronger office occupied by an incompetent leaves an even greater vacuum. It is equally true, of course, is the mayor continues to be directly elected and elections would seem to be the place political parties would be paramount. That too, however, was challenged by another Progressive electoral reform—the non partisan election.
The non partisan election now dominates municipal politics. Banfield and Wilson report that in 1960 98% of cities greater than 25,000 in the Plains region used non-partisan elections. California and Wisconsin mandated them. Yet, in 1960 less than 24% of Middle Atlantic cities had non partisan elections. New England cities more than doubled that rate—even though they were half the rate of Plains and Western states. Regional location exerted a noticeable effect on the adoption of form of government in the first half of the twentieth century. Still by 1929 about half of American cities had at least some non partisan elections.
The effect of non partisan elections never much failed to stirred researchers in this era; so we are left with anecdotal evidence. In the Milwaukee and Dayton case studies, non partisan elections seem to have devastating effects on socialist parties. One hazards a guess that whatever else, non partisan elections reduced the role and impact of political parties in local elections. Whether we are the better for this, is left up to the reader. But it is certain that in a non partisan system strong mayor system, the mayor must be cast about for her own political coalition and financing as are the city council. In such a context, everybody is independently elected.
The second prong was managerial and bureaucratic in nature. This was the age of professions and experts—and the introduction of sizeable municipal bureaucracies into the municipal policy process. Budget, audit, purchasing and finance departments, planning departments, consolidation of small bureaus, divisions and independent agencies into large conglomerate-like cabinet departments appear in the Progressive years. But there were no formal economic development departments. There was agriculture and some commerce bureaus, the tourist bureau, but not economic development departments. Chamber of commerce and chamber-style economic development, assisted by newly founded port authorities, still dominated the Progressive Era and Roaring Twenties economic development landscape.
[1] By 1960 Banfield and Wilson reported 50 % of cities in that population range had council-manager systems. Cities greater than 500,000 (four cities) were 19% council-manager. The reformed city had certainly jelled by that point; Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson, City Politics (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 169, Table 10.
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Ron W. Coan 