Kansas City
Kansas City By the turn of the century, however, with the Progressive Movement on the rise, new forces had entered the policy scene. In particular, the political machine was playing a larger role in the policy process—a role not entirely congruent with the conventional image of machine politics. No social reform mayor appeared on the stage; instead what showed up were several ward bosses who liked each other less than their business opponents disliked them. Divide and conquer and shifting coalitions of businessmen and ward bosses lasted for nearly two decades. Economic development initiatives were left to private actors who could navigate successfully through the fractured process.
James Pendergast, an Ohio-born Irish hotel owner-saloon-keeper had by the middle to late 1880’s became the First Ward’s Democratic Party boss. By 1892 he was elected to the City Council—remaining there until he retired in 1910. Pendergast shared power in the Council with a number of other ward bosses and the occasional businessman. By 1902, he controlled about half of the City’s Democratic vote, but over that decade he had his ups and downs—still Pendergast by the turn of the century was the single most powerful ward boss who exercised disproportionate power within the city and county Democratic Party. He was not, however the Boss. Patronage was the source of his power. He controlled hundreds of jobs on the police force, some private breweries, and the near-monopolistic Metropolitan Street Railway Company. His younger brother, Tom, was installed as Superintendent of Streets. Still, shifts in control of state government and the intense opposition of other ward bosses, notably Joseph Shannon seriously limited his influence over policy. In these years, James Pendergast was described as “the undisputed boss of Kansas City’s First Ward, the most important political leader of its north side, and always a power to be reckoned with in any important local decision”.[1]
Pendergast’s First War, “hell’s half acre”, whose residents were described by the Kansas City Star as “the human derelicts of the North end, the bums, the hoboes, and the vagrants” and “and lacking in schools and churches, but well-provided with saloons and brothels”[2] were unlikely to be supportive of the Parks and Boulevard version of the City Beautiful. Yet their votes were absolutely necessary for city council approvals, victorious bond referenda, and periodic charter reforms that were essential to the success of that early economic development strategy. And James Pendergast provided them at crucial points along the way. The wealthy one per cent Businessmen operated through their civic associations, charter reform associations, the chamber, and the Kansas City Evening Star owned by William Nelson, an intense Progressive who regularly sent reporters to cover Cleveland’s social reform mayor Tom Johnson and his illustrious goings on. Nelson’s favored initiatives reflected his view of how a city, the size of Kansas City should develop.
Nelson argued that Kansas City had reached a stage of development which demanded certain changes of emphasis in the making of community decisions. Economic growth, while its value was never denied, was, according to Nelson, no longer an adequate goal for a city which had after all achieved it. There were other ‘requirements for a great city’, for ‘every city aspiring to the size and characteristics of a metropolis. … Now comes the second act of the play … Now comes the era of permanency—the manhood as compared to the youth of the city’. … The new stage of growth brought with it the need for control; street-cleaning, building inspection, parks and boulevards, improved sanitation, and limitation of utility franchises.[3]
Nelson’s frequent ally for this agenda was James Pendergast. He supported honest garbage-collection system, the parks and boulevard initiatives, bond issues for infrastructure, funds for a municipal water plant—“Whenever it was felt that public credit could be used for expansion and modernization, its leading boss and its leading Progressive reformer were on the same side”. Pendergast’s support even extended to Progressive electoral initiatives such as the direct primary and for honest voting at the ballot box. Why? Pendergast did not depend on ballot box stuffing. His influence with First Ward voters was so strong, his actual power was exercised by “turnout”—he could just ask them to stay home and not vote. When they voted they voted with such high turnout they could swing elections. He delivered critical referendum vote majorities as high as 25-1.
The Pendergast ward machine represented lower and working class Kansas City—and it sucked the political life from any potential social reform mayor. Effective ward bosses and social reform mayors could not coexist in the same city! Secondly, Progressive reformers and ward bosses could work together in furtherance of a common agenda—or not, of course. They were not necessarily zero-sum policy actors. But they weren’t always friends either.
They differed radically regarding public franchises. In 1908 the bosses got together to kill the Progressive favorite the Public Utilities Commission and Pendergast held off Nelson’s attacks on his patronage-filled Street Railway franchise—in fact voting in 1909 to extend its franchise for forty-two years. Yet Pendergast and Nelson closed ranks to support municipal ownership of the water company and earlier in 1895, and again in 1906 he supported municipal takeover of the gas company. In 1909 Pendergast supported the relocation of the Kansas City Union (railroad) Terminal—from his First War—to a location four miles away. The greatest and most consistent gulf between reformer and ward machine was in social legislation—in particular, gambling, prostitution and later prohibition. In fact, control of the police was important to machines not just because of jobs, but importantly because it permitted loose regulation of these activities. Pendergast consistently opposed state takeover of the municipal police function, defeating a charter amendment to do so—he also, unsurprisingly joined forces with other ward bosses to stop civil service in its tracts.
Despite differences, then, machines and business could come together. Nothing better demonstrates this than an economic development-related event in 1900. Advocated as early as 1884 by Nelson and his Star as a ‘requirement for an aspiring metropolis’ was to construct a convention center. He continued his lobbying for more than a decade, until with Pendergast support, one was authorized. Finally funded, and its design chosen on the basis of an architectural competition, the Convention Hall, accommodating 20,000 visitors, opened for business in February 1899. . Within weeks, it signed the Democratic Party to hold its 1900 national convention. Then, in April 1900, three months before the Democratic Convention, the Center burned down—completely destroyed.
Within hours of the fire, the convention center commission telegraphed the Democratic Party informing them that nothing had changed. The Center would be rebuilt and ready to hold the Convention on time, and on budget. The Commercial Club, the corporate franchises, the largest firms in the city raised the private funds, hired a new architect to design the facility, and lent their engineers and workers (a hundred and fifty men cleared the site). Unions put aside their bitter resistance to private ownership and joined in the effort. One union leader commented: “The rich man wants to make Kansas City a good place to live in, but the poor man must. A man who has capital can go somewhere else … but we can’t afford to move to satisfy our tastes. Convention Hall has been, and is, a bigger thing to the poor man than to the man who has plenty of money”[4]). In ninety days the Hall was rebuilt and opened for the Democratic Convention that nominated William Jennings Bryan for President.
Pendergast consistently opposed state takeover of the municipal police function, defeating a charter amendment to do so—he also, unsurprisingly joined forces with other ward bosses to stop civil service in its tracts.
Kansas City and the City Efficient
Kansas City had lived with its 1889 charter (the one that authorized the Parks Commission) for nineteen years—not because it wanted to, but because it took that long to get another one. By 1901 a laundry list of changes and reforms, including civil service, prompted the formation of the Kansas City Civic League. Affiliated with the National Municipal League, it attracted over 700 members, mostly business and professionals. In 1904, Republican Mayor Neff created a Commission to draft a charter. He filled it with the leaders of the Commercial Club, Real Estate Board, Bar Association, the newspapers, and other key business leaders. The draft proposal that emerged provided for a stronger mayor, with veto, civil service, and seven boards/commissions appointed by the mayor to administer municipal affairs. The proposal split the business community—and an opposition business group, the Citizen’s Committee formed. Needless to say, the machine was sympathetic to the latter[5].
The resistance to charter reform was, always a concern with taxes, but most feared the loss of checks and balances that the existing, more Jeffersonian, policy system contained. A strong mayor was disconcerting—and the charter reform ignored a vital proposal to require franchises to be approved by voter referendum. In the charter referendum that followed (1906), the voters soundly turned it down—surprise. Turnout was spectacularly low, and the solid machine-dominated wards provided the votes for its defeat. So in 1907, another Republican Mayor set up a new commission, added some boards and commissions to the list, subtracted some controversial ones, and added a limited referendum for franchise approval, and in a separate ballot, a recall amendment. Most important, it included sections to build a key street car viaduct from the machine-controlled north end to the central business district and the industrial areas of the city. Workers could get to work and shop cheaper and faster, and a proposed brand new massive City Beautiful-style railroad terminal could go forward. In the 1908 referendum that followed, Pendergast sat on his hands, and his rival war boss, Shannon supported both the charter reform and recall. The former passed nearly 3-1 and the recall lost. Included in the approved 1908 charter reform was the creation of the first public welfare commission in the United States.
The 1908 charter, compromise that it was, quickly became old fashioned and quite inadequate to Progressive reformers, such as Nelson and the Chamber of Commerce elites. New forms of government, first the commission form, and then the city manager seemed to be what Kansas City needed. The older Civic League was replaced by a Nonpartisan Commission Government League and in 1914 it ran a slate for election as mayor and city council (with Republican Party endorsement). Its platform was to establish a commission form of government. Again, the business community fractured and the machine Democrats beat them soundly and took over city government.
By the time the 1916 election rolled into place, however, several significant changes in Kansas City politics and occurred. First, James Pendergast retired and then died. James was able to pass on his machine to his younger brother Thomas. Thomas and Shannon, the rival ward boss commenced an intense fight (both tried to create a city-wide machine, it appears). The leader of the Progressives, William Nelson died. The incumbent mayor was Shannon controlled and the fight between the ward bosses ensured a return of the Republicans to the control of the mayor and council. The Republican mayor (George Edwards) was determined more than ever to change Kansas City’s form of government. He set up yet a new group to draft a charter reform for a commission government. It fractured almost immediately as several of its members advocated a city manager form instead. The commission advocates eventually resigned en masse. The National Municipal League, now pushing the city manager plan, flooded Kansas City with speakers and resources. All the key business groups lined up in support (as did the local Socialist Party)—a local organization, the Model Charter and Good Government League was set up to coordinate the public appeal and ensure victory in referendum and state legislature.
Despite all this support, all heck broke loose. In retrospect, it seemed that change was too much and too fast—and nearly every grouping in the city split in half, including the rank and file business community. The small council seemed to many as being too powerful—and many feared the bosses would take it over more easily—the bosses feared the opposite. The Republican mayor who wanted the commission form opposed it also. The newspapers split. The charter reform lost in a fifty/fifty vote. In the months that followed, nearly every group formulated its own version of a proposed charter—none was able to secure consensus. The Republicans and the business community divided into bitterly opposed factions and the machine ward bosses each tried to crush the other. As one Pendergast official observed “Every sixty days, the nuts in this town want a new charter”. And so began what turned out to be a seven year struggle to pass City Efficient charter reforms.
The bitterness might have lasted for a very long time, except that the population continued to increase dramatically in these years to 324,000 by 1920. Access to clean water became a first order crisis as the existing water distribution system neither pumped or distributed enough to meet demand. The water crisis, with its embedded need to both fund and install new infrastructure on a massive scale, triggered its own need for charter reform. In the political anarchy which consumed the city, a new political/economic leadership began to form and attempted to figure out how to bridge the gaps. That leadership gathered around Henry M. Beardsley, a lawyer and the first president of the defunct Civic League, a former Republican city council member as well. But if Beardsley was to take leadership, he needed an organization’s resources to do so. That organization was the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
In 1917, in the midst of this anarchy, the chamber, led by its secretary, John Guild, created a “civic department”. Guild had just been hired away from Dayton, Ohio which had just recently approved and installed a city manger—in fact, at the time, the city manager plan was known as the “Dayton Plan”. Guild brought in another Dayton chamber official, Walter Matscheck, to head up the civic department. The department was to function as a clearinghouse for information about community affairs, improvement of government services (a sort of activist municipal research league). The first step was to focus on amending the state constitution to permit Kansas City to implement its charter reforms. In early 1919 the Chamber launched a campaign to secure such a home rule amendment. Enter Henry Beardsley who assumed the job as Chair of this campaign. The eventual state home rule amendment lost (1918) in the required state-wide referendum—rural voters sent it down the river. A second, two years later, was approved—with the machine’s support and the personal financial participation of Thomas Pendergast.
Even though the state approved home rule allowed Kansas City more than enough latitude for its charter reform, and also provided a fair and reasonable process for its subsequent local and state approvals, the Chamber could not get its hands around the variety of groups and factions that developed their own versions of charter reform. All sorts of proposals floated through the city processes over the next several years; a variety of organizations were formed, campaigns launched—even the newly-formed International City Managers Association got involved. A weakly drafted amendment was placed on the ballot, but it failed to call for a city manager and actually diluted the existing civil service powers of the City. Even the Chamber opposed it—and it failed (1922). The problem, however, was the referendum’s defeat brought down the authorization to issue $11 million in water infrastructure funds. At this point, the water crisis again flared up and took center stage.
Forty organizations eventually got together to set up the “Citizen’s Water and Charter Committee”. Eventually over two hundred community organizations and groups joined with it. This time the public campaign to secure the necessary approvals actually was well-led and organized and in February 1924, the charter reform was approved, Pendergast in support, Shannon against, and intense turnout from the middle and upper class wards. The Charter itself had been written by the Chamber’s Matscheck. It contained the standard scientific management, city efficient structures: unicameral legislature, department heads responsible to the city manager, civil service, budgetary and fiscal powers, nonpartisan ballot, a hybrid (four at large, four wards) elections, and reasonably strong mayoral powers.
After nearly a quarter century, Kansas City had finally approved a city efficient form of government. It remains today one of the few Big Cities with a city manager form of government.
Olmsted Jr. in1914, with funds from the Russell Sage Foundation, published Carrying Out the City Plan advocated planning commissions and long-range comprehensive plans and so planning spread and planning commissions were established throughout the nation, in cities of all sizes. In 1926, Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co provided the Supreme Court’s imprimatur to zone without compensation to private owners. Zoning, definitely a planning tool, did include an economic development motif in these Progressive years. The Plan (and zoning as well) was a means to a larger end; it did not exist for its own sake. Many, by no means all, of the ends served by a Plan, and by zoning, were conventionally economic development-related. In these instances planning tools were a means to achieve economic development goals.
[1] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, Boulder Colorado, Pruett Publishing Company, 1978), pp. 108-114. Quote taken from p. 110.
[2] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, p. 114.
[3] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, pp. 115-116.
[4] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, pp. 128.
[5] Solidifying machine opposition was restrictions on gambling and saloons, as well as setting up an independent police commission
Ron W. Coan 