Social Reformers: a real alternative to the Privatist approach
After the late 1880’s through the first decade of the twentieth century, several large cities elected mayors who proceeded to enact a series of Progressive social and economic reforms. Some were one-termers (Seth Low, 1903, New York City, former President of Columbia University) others, more popular and successful, stayed around awhile and even got elected to higher office (Hazen Pingree, Detroit, 1889). Tagged with the label, Social Reformers, this selected group of mayors represents a Progressive big city alternative to either the City Efficient or the boss-political party machine. The first issue we confront with social reform mayors is the question of why are they included in a history of the economic development profession?
Several reasons led to our including social reform mayors in the history. First, the Progressive economic development stream is evolving through these transition years and social reform mayors are a significant aspect in that evolution. To understand social reform mayors is to better understand the core principles and values of the Progressive approach. Also, understanding which constituencies were attracted to social reformers may suggest segments of society and business from upon which the Progressive approach is drawn. Finally, and importantly, in reviewing the social reform mayors, we can see how, and to what extent, economic development was a vital element in their policy agenda and better appreciate the legacy of these mayors to the economic development profession?
Hazen Pingree and Detroit is an excellent starting point for understanding social reformer mayors and economic development. Pingree, a wealthy Republican shoe and boot manufacturer CEO, first won election (1889-1897) on the platform of anti-government corruption, and fear of corporate control (in the form of streetcar, telephone, gas and electric utilities). His coalition was a combination of old style Republican Yankees and ethnic Canadians and Germans.. This is not to say, however, that he replaced a long line of ethnic-based immigrant political machines. He didn’t; ethnic-based machines and political bosses did not have a major role in Detroit’s previous history and a large number of previous mayors were also business owners. It is also noteworthy that Pingree will preside over the early entrepreneurial development of the automobile industry[1]. He also engaged in what may have been Detroit’s most aggressive annexation period. He was reelected three times and then elected to Governor.
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.[2]
As early as his first administration, Pingree exhibited a sincere concern for the working class. He fought hard and consistently to keep utility and streetcar fares down and eventually he became a strong advocate of municipal ownership of both industries. The Panic of 1893, however, prompted Pingree to confront directly high unemployment and working class distress by expanding welfare and public works programs (schools, parks, and public baths). He developed his “potato patch plan” which turned vacant city-owned lots over to the poor for gardens. He secured municipal ownership of the light plant, heavily taxed wealthy corporations and railroads/utilities in particular. 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]
Pingree’s voting constituency shifted from middle class and business support to working class and poor and, if anything, he was able to forge the closest thing Detroit had seen to an ethnic political machine.
To the Curmudgeon, the most interesting economic development-related policy initiative of many Progressive-style social reformers is the establishment of the municipally-owned, later publicly (usually state monitored) owned utility. In this period, electric power was coming on line and to the early Progressives municipal ownership prevented corporate abuses and mispriorites and ensured the protection of the average man in a key and necessary service. Over the years, municipal and public utilities will develop in communities across the nation. Connecticut, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Kansas, California, Oregon and even Texas and Florida[4], for instance, as well as the Great Lakes social reform cities of the 1880’s will establish numerous municipally-owned utilities in the next half-century. The Curmudgeon suggests that the municipally-owned utility presents the almost perfect expression of the key Progressive belief that services as well as economic development ought to benefit the community at large and not be driven by private profit. This concern for the overall community, the community as a whole, especially its disadvantaged, and its fundamental distrust of the effects of the pursuit of private profit on the community as a whole, as hallmarks of the Progressive “ship” and Progressive-style economic development.
Social reform mayors were also elected in Toledo (Samuel ‘Golden Rule’ Jones, wealthy oil drilling manufacturer, 1897-1903) who was followed by a second social reformer, Brand Whitlock (5 terms as mayor), and Cleveland (Thomas Johnson, wealthy businessman, 1901-1909). Each of these social reform mayors followed an essentially similar agenda over a twenty year period. The geographical proximity of these three cities, we suspect, may be a clue to their political uniformity.
Another variant of social reform mayor can be identified in Milwaukee. Beginning in 1910, a socialist machine, based on a heavily German immigrant populations with an obviously strong working-class consciousness complete with its own socialist boss. A succession of socialist mayors held power until 1940. Obviously, these socialist mayors came into power without an instruction manual on how to be socialist. In many ways they mirrored much of the city efficient agenda–including honest government, administrative efficiency, use of experts, formation of a Bureau of Economy and Efficiency, but they did oppose commission and city manager forms as well as the various electoral reforms (nonpartisan, at large, short ballot). The lack of home rule authority prevented them from municipal ownership of the streetcar and utility firms which they did advocate. However, they aggressively pursued housing reform, factory safety, park development, a city-run employment office, paid union wages, eight hour day, compulsory strike arbitration, and free concerts. These socialist mayors were attacked from the left as “mere sewer socialists” for their pursuit of municipal ownership of utilities and better services rather than the overthrow of the capitalist system.[5]
Other social reform mayors were also elected in New York City (Seth Low, 1901-03), Jersey City, Philadelphia and Cincinnati but they were unable to establish dynasties or forge a durable electoral machine. For the most part in most northeast large cities, the home base of the ethnic political machine, social reformers were much less evident or successful. There is a noticeable geographic (Lake Erie and Great Lakes) and probably cultural (immigrant German-Scandinavian) propensity related to establishing a sustained social reform machine.
What may be more surprising to the reader is that large cities ethnic machines/bosses have considerable staying power–persisting at least to the 1920’s and in several instances to World War II. Whatever challenge manifested itself to the ethnic-base machine and boss politics were usually led by business coalitions which supported reform along the city efficient lines, rooting out corruption, emphasizing structural reforms, and attempting to transform government administration into a more or less mirror image of a corporation. These business coalitions were firmly rooted in the previously described Chamber of Commerce Privatist approach and their core constituency was the urban middle class and professionals. Progressive social reformers and traditional Privatist business-middle class reformers not only differed in their approach to economic development, but reflected somewhat different constituencies.
Because much academic research has viewed social reformer mayors as drawn from the 1880-1910 period, it does not include an individual we regard as the most important social reform mayor of all time, Fiorello LaGuardia, the three term mayor of New York (1933-1945). LaGuardia fits the social reform Progressive mould to the tee. Incorruptible, working-class and people-oriented, anti large business, the Republican harkened back to the Teddy Roosevelt era–and his intermittently close political ally FDR. LaGuardia unified the transit system under municipal direction, broke the city’s dependence on bankers, built parks, low-cost public housing, re-installed a merit-based civil service, reorganized the police force, built airports and highways and fought tirelessly against the remnants of Tammany Hall.
La Guardia’s parks commissioner was Robert Moses and it was during La Guardia’s tenure that much of Moses-initiated bridge, highway, and tunnel construction occurred. In fairness, during La Guardia’s tenure, Moses had acquired such administrative, fiscal and political independence, based on his quasi-authority bureaucratic empire that Moses was for the most part beyond the control of even an aggressive and dominant mayor as La Guardia. Indeed, Moses regularly took on, and not infrequently won, serious battles against the President of the United States who was unwillingly partially financing a great deal of Moses’s most famous projects. Most members of our contemporary economic development profession would be reluctant to claim, or include, Moses as an economic developer–we do, however.
Inclusion of “the Little Flower” as he was then nick-named, allows us to better link the phenomena of social reform mayors to more contemporary politics and economic development. La Guardia is easily regarded as one of the very most respected and important mayors of the twentieth century. His politics and personality, however, (he reminds the Curmudgeon more of LBJ in personality) and his perceived association with Robert Moses, his Parks Commissioner (who was a frequent political rival and whom La Guardia seriously did not like), has complicated his historical reputation among modern Progressives. Nevertheless, La Guardia is clearly associated with the great infrastructure solution to the urban-Depression era crisis of his day. While not directly linked to urban renewal which was a post-World War II development (LaGuardia died in 1947), La Guardia came as close to it as possible with many housing projects, airport, highway, bridge and tunnel constructions (the Cross-Bronx) and his leadership and use of federal dollars and programs flowing from the pre-war New Deal. He retired in 1945 with New York City on the brink of fiscal collapse resulting from, it is alleged, bloated union wage public bureaucracies and debt to pay for outsized infrastructure installation.[6]
A couple of observations related to economic development seem warranted. First, social reform mayors, where successful, could forge a machine-like alliance with immigrant and working class voters. These social reform coalitions, probably because of their honest and Progressive political agenda, are seldom considered as machines and social reform mayors are never thought of as bosses. The agendas of the two varieties of social reform mayors are distinct, but can, especially in their anti-corruption focus, overlap.
There is a discernible policy distance between social reformers and the more structural city efficient reforms. Indeed Progressive anti-business platforms are a turn-off for strong business support. Its use of government (municipal utility ownership) is a marked departure from the policy tone of the period. The social reform economic development agenda, to the extent it has modern day applicability, is certainly more “people” than “place”-based. Indeed, it is our observation that the Progressive preference for people-based agendas is a clear departure from the transition era dominance of place-based tools and strategies. The latter are quite possibly of secondary or tertiary priority in a Progressive public policy agenda. This is an early formative period to be sure, but the two streams are different as early as the 1890’s. To the extent, we are correct in our inclusion of LaGuardia; social reform mayors are, in fact, to be a prototype image of the contemporary Progressive mayor.
[1] 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.
[2] 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.
[3] Pingree was quoted in Mohl, op. cit. p. 123.
[4] As of 2013 there are an estimated 2000 municipally-owned utilities remaining in the United States. See Five Star Consultants, “Municipal Electric Utilities: Analysis and Case Studies” www.fivestarconsultants.com
[5] Mohl, op. cit. pp. 124-127. Schenectady, New York also elected George Lunn as a socialist mayor in 1911. Minneapolis did also in 1916. Other cities with socialist mayors included Haverhill Massachusetts, Lackawanna New York, Flint Michigan, Granite City, Illinois and Butte, Montana all between 1910 and 1920.
[6] See Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York, (New York McGraw-Hill, 1989); Alyn Brodsky, the Great Mayor: Fiorello LaGuardia and the Making of the City of New York (New York, Truman Talley, 2003); and Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013). Apparently his biographers agree that LaGuardia was responsible for the “making of New York City”.
Ron W. Coan 