New York City: Apparently You Can’t Do it There!
Nothing like a good case study to demonstrate the distinctions among Progressive policy systems while emphasizing the importance of structural reformers. New York City and Progressive policy systems, however, are a lot similar to New England weather—it you don’t like what you see, wait until the next mayor—he’ll be different than the one you got. The 1901 NYC mayoralty election is a good place to start. After all, it is the second election since the five boroughs were consolidated to produce the current incomparable city, New York, New York. The first mayor after the 1898 consolidation was Democratic Robert Van Wyck, a former NYC Chief Justice, was selected by Tammany as their candidate for mayor. Not without his strengths as an administrator (he did integrate reasonably well the separate borough governments into a consolidated one, and he oversaw the development of New York City’s first subway), van Wyck was politically wrecked by the ice trust scandal. In an earlier chapter’s discussion on Dillon’s Law, we discussed “ice” and economic development—here is yet another example of how the public/private relationship regarding ice toppled yet another administration.
NYC’s corporate elite (J. Pierpont Morgan and Elihu Root) founded the Citizens Union to combat the resurgent Tammany in 1897 (it still exists today); in 1901, the Union approached Seth Low, former Mayor of Brooklyn and President of Columbia University to run for mayor in that election. Low proved to be an excellent hybrid of an old-style Mugwump with the new Progressive structural reformer. He ran on a platform stressing NML home rule reforms, emphasized honesty, efficiency, non-partisanship (a euphemism for merit and professional management as well as an election initiative)—and he was closely associated with the consolidation of the city three years earlier. He carefully avoided, however, the various social reform agendas, such as housing and social welfare. His was the Last Hurrah of a coalition based on Gilded Age business elites, new Progressive businessmen and middle class constituencies. The excess of Tammany provided both cohesion and inspiration to throw the old rascals out.
So Low was the last of a “government of good men” who also advocated a mixture of NML structural reforms and efficient, cheap and honest program implementation. Budgetary and fiscal reforms were top on his list, allowing him to reduce taxes and eliminate wasteful patronage and contracts. Low did not rely extensively on experts or professionals in his administration, using instead Social Registry type individuals to fill his bureaucracy. Melvin Holli, however, correctly observed Low’s version of structural reform offered little to the working class, in fact it often hurt the lower classes by reducing services and ignoring social reform they needed desperately: to Holli Low was a structural reformer who “never seemed to realize that his municipal reform had nothing to off the [working class] voters but sterile mechanical changes”.[1] Worse, Low became associated with morality politics as his police commissioner worked hard to suppress Sunday drinking, saloons, and prostitution. It should be no surprise that in the next election, 1903, George McClellan Jr., the new Tammany Boss Murphy’s first “clean and balanced” slate crushed Low.
McClellan Jr., was far from being a Tammany hack and by the end of his first administration (1905) McClellan wanted out-but was convinced to run once again by Tammany because his principal opponent was the “radical” newspaper publisher Williams Randolph Heart. Hearst was running as the candidate of the Municipal Ownership League in a three way race against Democrat McClellan and Republican Ivins. Hearst enjoyed the support of every able-bodied Progressive and left of center voter in the City, and he campaigned on the platform of a potential social reform mayor, including municipal ownership of gas and light utilities and street car line. Hearst defended unions and thought strikes to be a legitimate tool for unions to negotiate better wages. Anti corruption/Tammany were also cornerstones; he labeled his approach as “urban Jeffersonian”.[2] Unlike Tom Johnson who ran on a fairly similar platform in Cleveland, New York City voters gave McClellan a 2,800 vote lead (over 600,000 votes were cast). Fraud and ballot stuffing were alleged, and somewhat supported by subsequent court decisions—and Hearst lost to McClellan Jr. New York City’s Tammany stymied a social reform mayor.
Hearst ran again in 1909 against another Tammany candidate, Judge William Gaynor in yet another three way race—finishing third. Tammany’s Gaynor garnered most of the City’s foreign stock and working class vote. So the NYC social reform mayor had to wait for another day. In any event, the reader may have realized the first decade of the twentieth century has passed, and still no evidence of a Progressive structural reformer? Well … not exactly. The following tale exposes the weakness in Boss Murphy’s new concept of a “respectable” clean machine and how structural reformers could make strange bedfellows. The answer to my earlier question is neither McClellan (second term) nor Gaynor, Tammany nominees as they were, took policy direction from Tammany. They both governed as structural reformers. In his effort to preserve Tammany’s hold on the lower and working classes against Heart’s social reform movement, Boss Murphy had traded “an elegant veneer [a respectable independent candidate] at the cost of loss of control”.[3] Accordingly, Finegold[4] correctly asserts that McClellan’s second administration can “be considered the ‘take-off period’ for New York City’s structural reformers.
If the reader remembers, the NYC Municipal Research Bureau came into existence in 1906 as the Citizen’s Union Bureau of City Betterment—in May 1907 it split off as the Bureau (with funding from Carnegie and Rockefeller). McClellan in 1906 had turned to City Betterment for an analysis of the City’s Health Department. From that study, the City introduced “the concept of a budget” into its municipal finance system. The Bureau and McClellan later joined together to expand the budget to all departments in 1907. Then the Bureau conducted a investigation of the Manhattan and Bronx Borough Presidents, the findings of which were used by a special counsel[5] appointed by McClellan. These two Tammany officials were subsequently removed by Governor Hughes.
Gaynor was even more hostile to Tammany—even after being endorsed and supported by Boss Murphy during the election. Gaynor’s cabinet included a series of “experts” and professionals—more than any previous mayoral administration. Gaynor defended the Research Bureau from Tammany attacks (Tammany called it the Bureau of Besmirch) and his administration, despite Gaynor’s personal dislike of many of its funders, worked closely with the Bureau’s staff/leadership to inject “efficiency of personnel” and more enhanced budgeting, accounting and purchasing reforms, it reorganized the Manhattan’s Department of Public Works. To train municipal officials on public administration, new administrative practices and skills, the Bureau set up a training school (funded by Mary Harriman). One of its first graduates was Robert Moses who later devised the City’s personnel system. The Bureau, after appropriate research, rejected the commission form of government as unsuitable for the City. The Bureau successfully recommended a new Division of Child Hygiene, mapped tuberculosis cases, and studied tenement reform.
By 1913, two Tammany mayors had successfully modernized and professionalized New York City municipal government, in alliance with the Bureau of Municipal Research and the one percenters that funded it. Tammany put up with these disruptions because the greater evil in its eyes was a potential victory of William Randolph Hearst and the installation of a social reformer in the mayor’s office. By threatening Tammany’s hold on the working class and foreign stock, Hearst had forced Tammany into an unwilling alliance with upper class business structural reformers[6]. By 1913, however, Tammany was in for yet another scare. Another potential social reformer, our John Purroy Mitchel, Irish Catholic President of the Board of Alderman, running as a Republican Fusion candidate, relying heavily on the Bureau of Municipal Research for his policy initiatives and political agenda had declared his candidacy for mayor.
[1] Melvin Holli, “Social and Structural Reform: Mayors and Municipal Government” in Kenneth T. Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz (Eds) Cities in American History (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp. 396-397. Robert Finegold, Experts and Politicians, op. cit., p. 41, observes this is not entirely fair as Low did build ten neighborhood bath houses, which in its day was a serious initiative.
[2] A persistent small tremor underneath Jefferson’s tombstone is reported to have lasted through the campaign.
[3] Robert Finegold, Expert and Politicians, op. cit., p. 49.
[4] Robert Finegold, Expert and Politicians, op. cit., p. 50.
[5] The special counsel, later McClellan’s Commissioner of Accounts, was John Purroy Mitchel. Mitchel in 1909 became President of the Board of Alderman and in 1913 was elected Mayor.
[6] Robert Finegold, Expert and Politicians, op. cit., p. 53.
Ron W. Coan 