Detroit
Pingree was first on the scene, a wealthy Republican shoe and boot manufacturer, first won election (1889) on an anti-municipal corruption platform that stressed opposition to streetcar, telephone, gas and electric utilities. In 1894 he said in a speech: “The most dangerous enemies to good government are not the saloons, the dives, the dens of iniquity and the criminals …[rather most of Detroit’ problems could be] traced to the temptations which are offered to city officials when franchises are sought by wealthy corporations, or contracts are to be let for public works.” (Mohl, 1985, p. 123)
The 1893 Panic allowed Pingree to assemble a coalition of working and middle class and Progressive businessmen that generated sufficient votes for him to be elected three times as mayor and then to go onto the governorship. Once in office, Pingree confronted high unemployment by expanding local welfare and public works programs (building schools, parks, and public baths). He developed his “potato patch plan” which turned vacant city-owned lots over to the poor for gardens and conducted Detroit’s most aggressive annexation period ever. Eventually he won approval for ownership of the municipal light plant. Pingree established his national reputation and spawned a host of future social reform mayors by trying to obtain the three cent street car fare for Detroit’s streetcar commuters.
In 1894, to compete with the dominant Citizens Street Railway Pingree formed a privately-owned streetcar (Detroit Railway Company, DRC) that charged three cents per ride (not the standard five cent). Laying sixty miles of track, the DRC opened July 1895. Pingree donned an engineer’s cap and drove the first train up the line. And then his problems began. A new absentee owner from Cleveland bought Citizens Railway determined to break Pingree’s three cent fare. The new absentee owner, ironically had amassed his millions from invention of, are you ready, the streetcar fare box. Going to the courts, new owner was unsuccessful, but kept on appealing saying “It’s for blood and somebody is going to get skinned and skinned thoroughly … This is a fight for gore, and it will be carried right along to the finish”. Pingree won the appeal in July 1896. (Holli, 1973)
The absentee owner controlled the only terminal and denied its use to Pingree’s Detroit Railway. The battle in quick order was fought out in the state legislature. Then the Citizen’s Railway owner retired the horses and electrified his line. To pay for this he pushed for a thirty year franchise with a five cent fare. Pingree vetoed the franchise after the Council approved it. A simultaneous battle had been joined pitting the city council against Pingree the mayor. The Council imposed the five cent fare without a franchise extension and Pingree called for a public boycott. The newspapers supported Pingree as did thousands of workers. Pingree thundered “This fight ain’t going to stop until [the Citizens Railway] gets right down on its knees”. (Holli, 1973)
The Citizen’s Railway reeled, losing riders and profits to Pingree’s boycott which captured national attention. The absentee owner of the Citizen Railway finally capitulated, offering Pingree and the Council a proposal for a three cents for his fare! The Citizens Railway offer was approved by the Council, but allegations of bribery and Pingree’s continued opposition forced to council to reject the Citizen’s Railway proposal. The other Detroit street car lines grudgingly reduced their fare to three cents and the Cleveland owner seemingly was forced to reduce his fare to three cents. With victory in hand Pingree accepted the nomination for governor, won the election and prepared to leave for the state capital–and then the Cleveland absentee owner secretly bought Pingree’s Detroit Railway and raised the three cent fare to five cents. Getting Pingree out of town into the Governor’s office had been part of a streetcar-owners secret strategy all along.
Pingree refused to leave, however. For more than a year he held both the governorship and the mayor’s office simultaneously—until the Michigan Supreme Court ousted him from the latter in July 1897.With the merger completed, the five cent street car fare solidly in place, and with a virtual monopoly of key routes, the Citizens Railway had achieved total victory over Pingree. The owner of the Citizens Railway was Tom Johnson who in two years was to become social reform mayor of Cleveland.
The sad “traction” affair, however, was not over—it continued while Pingree was governor. In 1899 a set of complex negotiations produced the closest thing to Pingree’s hope to establish a privately-owned equivalent to a municipally-owned street car system. It included a city-wide three cent fare and a forty-eight year lease which neither city residents or the Michigan Supreme Court liked. The agreement was tossed out. In the meantime Tom Johnson was elected mayor of Cleveland!
The obvious questions emerge from Johnson’s incredibly fierce resistance to Pingree—and two years later his election as a reform mayor of Cleveland who followed social reform, and an anti-streetcar/ utility path pioneered by Pingree. Holli (Holli, 1973, pp. 120-24), with whom we are indebted for this fascinating story, argues Johnson had a sincere change of heart, but was motivated by sheer competitiveness that compelled Johnson to fight Pingree unremittingly and implement social reforms unrelentingly. In any case, Tom Johnson (D) (1901) followed in Pingree’s footsteps.
A more or less rogue Democrat and a devotee of Henry George (he was buried next to him in New York City). Johnson’s 1901 election was owed to the city’s native Protestant business vote. The Chamber was a significant power in that first administration, particularly in educational policy, pollution control, and building public neighborhood baths. Forming a cabinet of experts as department heads (Bemis, Cooley and Howe, for example), Johnson cleaned up Cleveland’s police and criminal justice system, developed a strong parks and recreation program, and with Chamber support, hired Daniel Burnham thereby initiating a path-breaking Cleveland city beautiful initiative that flirted closely with early urban planning (Hines, 1973). His regime was honest, efficient, supporter of the merit system. Johnson obsessively pursued a three cent streetcar fare for Cleveland, and did all he could to seize control of Cleveland’s private electric plants. Like Pingree in Detroit, he was stymied in his efforts to control streetcar fares and acquiring control of the electric facility—in his case by forces led by the Ohio Republican state machine.
While called by Lincoln Steffens as the “best mayor of the best city”, Johnson left office frustrated as did most social reform mayors. But both socialist mayors and social reform mayors, however, demonstrated community development could operate, with reasonable success, at the city-wide level. They did so by constructing a “unity” coalition—whose critical member was the working class. The critical issues that brought the working class into the coalition in these years were streetcar and anti-business/utility (lower rates) “reforms and what today might be labeled “cultural” initiatives to relax anti-liquor regulation and police activity in their neighborhoods. CD at the city level is necessarily vastly more political and electoral than its neighborhood counterpart. City-wide CD’s true precursor, I believe, was the machine whose votes were stolen by the social reform/socialist mayors.
When CD moved to the city-wide level a new set of “players” became active—and a different (hostile) relationship with the HEDOs of ED (franchise utilities and streetcars) took over and vice versa. While city-wide CD certainly stressed its people-focused and anti-business approach, a city-wide CD Administration assumes some responsibility to the jurisdictional economic base—and its coalition partners. Both almost inevitably require some policy dilution from a pure CD neighborhood-level approach. This is more evident in Johnson than Pingree, but both pursued business-led structural reforms discussed in the last chapter. Pingree’s massive annexation was further evidence that some urban problems transcend different policy systems. In his first administration Johnson was supported by the chamber, admittedly quite Progressive, but still more pro-business than any neighborhood-level CD approach. It seems inescapable that a city-wide CD Administration would overlap into Privatist agenda and programs—but at a potential cost of disrupting a fragile electoral coalition. The potential for conflict with non-CD institutions and levels of government is high (Pingree’s and Johnson’s struggle with the state legislature and judicial rulings) among others is high.
Pingree pursued a purer CD people-oriented initiatives than Johnson who in practice was as much structural reformer as social reformer. Johnson’s successor Norman Baker was better at the latter. Social reform mayors are widely regarded as characteristic of the Progressive Era, but the most important social reform mayor of all time, Fiorello LaGuardia, three term mayor of New York (1933-1945) will be discussed in a future chapter. A more modern version, Boston’s Kevin White, will also be considered.
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Hazen Pingree as Social Reform Mayor
The earliest, the path-breaker, and, in some ways the most successful was Detroit’s Hazen Pingree. Pingree, a wealthy Republican shoe and boot manufacturer, first won election (1889-1897) on an anti-municipal corruption platform which stressed its profound fear of corporate control of residents’ pocketbook in the form of streetcar, telephone, gas and electric utilities. Pingree rooted out dishonesty and inefficiency in a fashion that excited civic up lifters … He brought the power of his administration against crooked contractors, bad workmanship, and the lax policies of municipal departments.[1] His coalition, a combination of old style Republican Yankees, ethnic Canadians and Germans did not react in response to excesses of a boss or even a ward-based machine. Ethnic-based machines and political bosses did not play a major role in Detroit’s previous history. Instead Pingree sought to be an alternative to rule by conventional businessman mayors, who like Pingree himself business owners. Perhaps without truly realizing it, Pingree had stumbled on the formula to electing a social reform mayor: honesty, efficiency, tackling the municipal utility problem and rejection of temperance. A coalition of working class, middle class and Progressive businessmen provided sufficient votes for him to be elected three times as mayor and then to go onto the governorship.
Prompted by the 1893 Panic Pingree confronted high unemployment by expanding local welfare and public works programs (building schools, parks, and public baths). He developed his “potato patch plan” which turned vacant city-owned lots over to the poor for gardens. Pingree also presided over the entrepreneurial years of the early automobile industry[2]. Hazen conducted Detroit’s most aggressive annexation period ever. Pingree held a sincere concern for the working class. He fought hard and consistently to keep utility and streetcar fares down; he eventually achieved municipal ownership of the light plant, and heavily taxed wealthy corporations and railroads/utilities. In 1894 he said in a speech: “The most dangerous enemies to good government are not the saloons, the dives, the dens of iniquity and the criminals …[rather most of Detroit’ problems could be] traced to the temptations which are offered to city officials when franchises are sought by wealthy corporations, or contracts are to be let for public works.”[3] T
Pingree and the Citizens Railway
Pingree established his national reputation and spawned a host of future social reform mayors by his travails in trying to obtain the three cent street car fare for Detroit’s commuters. In 1894, during his third term and following the 93 Panic, Pingree, recognizing the Michigan state constitution prevented municipal ownership of street cars, turned to competition by trying to create a privately-owned street car line that charged only three cents per ride and achieved profitability thru the volume of passengers lured to climb on board for the ride. Attracting private investors (Henry Everett and upstate lumberman Pack Brothers) he proposed to construct a line to compete with the Citizens Street Railway Company. Facilitating a franchise to the investors, the Detroit Railway Company started construction, laying sixty miles of track and opening up limited service by July 1895. Pingree donned an engineer’s cap and drove the first train up the line.[4]
And then his problems began. With its stock depressed, new owners bought the Citizens Railway Company determined not to make the mistake the previous owners had made in not being “hard-boiled enough”. The new owner, a recently defeated two-term Congressman was determined to root out Pingree’s three cent fare. Going to the courts, the Citizens Railway was unsuccessful—but the owner kept on appealing saying “It’s for blood and somebody is going to get skinned and skinned thoroughly … This is a fight for gore, and it will be carried right along to the finish”. Pingree won the appeal in July 1896 when the Michigan Supreme Court upheld the three cent fare and the right of the Detroit Railway to operate its line. But that did not end the fight.
The Citizens Railway controlled the rail terminal and it denied use to the Detroit Railway. The battle in quick order was fought out in the state legislature where in some of the most desperate “lobbying” of the day. In the meantime, the owner of the Citizen’s Railway doubled down on his investment and retired the horses and electrified his line. To pay for this he pushed for a thirty year franchise with an initial five cent fare. Pingree vetoed the franchise after the Council had approved it. A simultaneous battle had been joined pitting the city council against Pingree the mayor. The fare was imposed without a franchise extension and Pingree called for a public boycott. The newspapers supported Pingree as did thousands of workers. Pingree thundered “This fight ain’t going to stop until [the Citizens Railway] gets right down on its knees”.
The Citizen’s Railway reeled losing riders and profits to Pingree’s boycott. The owner of the Citizen Railway finally capitulated offering Pingree that he would also charge three cents for his fare! The Citizens Railway offer was approved the city council. Allegations of bribery were alleged, behind the scenes deals made and Pingree’s opposition (because the ordinance granted a special tax abatement, eliminated the children’s fare, increased hours of work for its employees, and actually inhibited joint use of key track on the lines) in the end rejected the offer of the Citizen’s Railway. Pingree was again victorious and even more so when other Detroit street car lines reduced their fare to three cents. Victory in hand Pingree accepted the nomination for governor and prepared to leave for the state capital.
And then the Citizens Railway overturned its three cent fare, raised it to five cents and publicized that it had secretly bought Pingree’s Detroit Railway. Getting Pingree out of town had been part of the strategy. Pingree refused to leave, however. For more than a year he held both the governorship and the mayor’s office simultaneously—until the Michigan Supreme Court ousted him from the latter in July 1897.With the merger completed, the five cent street car fare, and with a virtual monopoly of key routes, the Citizens Railway had achieved total victory over Pingree. The owner of the Citizens Railway was Tom Johnson, the shortly to become social reform mayor of Cleveland[5].
Pingree’s Progressive Legacy
The sad “traction” affair, however, was not over—it continued while Pingree was governor. In 1899 a set of complex negotiations produced the closest thing to Pingree’s hope to establish a privately-owned equivalent to a municipally-owned street car system. It included a city-wide three cent fare, accompanied by a forty-eight year lease which neither city residents or the Michigan Supreme Court liked. The agreement was tossed out. Whatever the ultimate fate of Pingree’s street car battle, it may have been the headline urban issue across the nation’s industrial cities. Street car fares and municipal ownership of street cars and other utilities permeated in some way the politics of each and almost every large city in America. City after city, from Boston to Minneapolis had to deal with it and politicians advancing solutions for it—sort of a forerunner of today’s climate control. As for Detroit, for the remainder of the Progressive Era it alternately elected Democratic and Republican mayors until Republican Oscar Marx (no relation) broke the pattern and started a Republican dynasty, which with one exception captured the mayor’s office through 1930. Detroit, until the 1960’s, was surprisingly a competitive policy system, with both parties able to win the next election—the edge going to the Republicans, however.
Boston:
[1] Melvin G. Holli, Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York, 1969) quoted in Mohl, op. cit. p.123. Dennis R. Judd, The Politics of American Cities, op. cit. pp. 74-79 offer an excellent description of Pingree and social reformers as well.
[2] By 1903 (Pingree served as Governor until 1901) Ford, Packard, Chrysler, Dodge, William Durant and others developed in the Detroit metro area during the nineties.
[3] Pingree was quoted in Mohl, op. cit. p. 123.
[4] The fight between the Citizens Railway, the Detroit Railway and Pingree has been summarized from Melvin Holli, Reform in Detroit, op. cit. Chapter 6 “the Mayor Leads a Nationwide Fight for Low Fares”.
[5] It is not our job here to deal with the obvious questions arising from Johnson’s incredible and fierce resistance to Pingree—and two years later his election as a reform mayor of Cleveland who, if anything, followed the social reform, and an anti-street car/utility path bushwhacked by Pingree. Holli (Reform in Detroit) in Chapter 6, pp. 120-124) provides as good as an analysis as any arguing that even with sincere change of heart, Johnson was principally motivated by sheer competitiveness that compelled Johnson to fight Pingree unremittingly and implement social reforms unrelentingly.
Ron W. Coan 