Cincinnati: Machine Boss, Structural Reformers and Social Reform Mayor
Cincinnati in the Progressive Era offers a case study which includes three of our alternative policy systems. I refer to the famous Cox machine which supposedly dominated Cincinnati politics from 1885 to 1914. His machine last nearly three decades, overlapping Hazen Pingree and Tom Johnson’s administrations. The difficulty with the Cox machine is, at the time, it attracted considerable media attention in the post 1904 and Cox became the poster child for “the shame of our cities”. Described as “the biggest boss of them all”[1], the extent to which Cox was actually a “Boss”, however, is an open question. What’s more, the policy system(s) prevalent during the supposedly Cox machine years corresponded rather poorly with the dominant conception accorded to machine politics today. As we shall see, Cox for many years presided over a coalition of ward-based working class and business elites, including the brother of the President of the United States (Taft).
First, beginning in the late 1870’s Cincinnati witnessed the gradual development of a Republican Hamilton County and City of Cincinnati political machine led by George Cox. Cox, the son of British immigrants, former saloon owner and ward boss, was first elected to the city council in 1879; from then on he held a succession of positions (but never mayor). He held his machine together as Executive Chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party[2]. Despite his control over the Republican Party after 1885 “for almost a decade no party could put together a decisive ruling majority. The city’s political processes seemed frozen by a paralyzing factionalism … [resting upon] the division of the city which roughly coincided with socioeconomic lines … [A]s a result extreme factionalism developed which could, apparently, be surmounted only by appealing to a host of neighborhood leaders and by constructing alliances which crossed party lines”.[3] During these years Cox’s GOP won five successive elections by “uniting powerful Hilltops [a wealthy business residential area] support with enough strength in the [working class residential periphery] Zone to overcome the Democratic grip on the Circle [the middle class, non immigrant wards in the city’s center]. Until 1894, the margins of victory were perilously thin.”[4]
The two, supposedly polar opposite alternatives worked in tandem, forming what was an informal “fusion party”, in what Cox called “the New Order” During these years (and after), the Cox dominated policy system approved a series of structural reforms, including secret ballot, voter registration, strong mayor-council with ward voting, and a professional police force and fire department[5]. The Cox-Hilltop coalition closed saloons on Sunday, something the Tammany-Irish NYC machine, for some reason, left off its agenda; and Cox’s machine was more sympathetic to the Negro[6]. Cox’s electoral support was provided mostly by lower/working class voters, based on the neighborhoods and wards in which they resided. His machine did not have much influence in the middle class neighborhoods which developed their own network of organizations independent of the machine. “Each neighborhood had an improvement association, and between 1880 and 1905 five new businessmen’s organizations devoted to boosting the city’s lethargic economy had appeared … By 1913, moreover, there were twenty-two exclusive clubs and patriotic societies and innumerable women’s groups.”[7]
Cox, after 1894, informally and episodically incorporated elements of the competing Democratic Party into his machine, sharing patronage. In this magnified New Order, Cox was indeed dominant, but whether he was a boss is quite another matter. The “machine” was evidently composed of independent and autonomous elements held together mostly to cement elections so to achieve patronage and policy outputs as variously desired by its different elements. And as Zane reminds us “It would be a mistake to overestimate the strength of the ‘New Order’ Republican [Democratic] coalition” losing in 1896 an important referendum on the sale of a city-owned railroad and amazingly losing the election in 1897 to a fusion party of social reformers and council elections in 1897, 1898, and 1899 to the Democrats. “In all these reversals critical defections occurred in both the Hilltops [business] and the Zone [working class] … indignant over alleged corruption, outraged by inaction over the traction [street car] and gas [municipal utilities] questions”.[8] Between 1900 and 1904, however, Cox won three of the four elections and enjoyed the “golden years” of his New Order machine. Success proved to be his undoing.
Social reformers coalesced and with national media they hammered on Cox and his allies, peeling off support with each issue they raised. They launched by the end of the decade a series of grand juries, one of which alleged personal corruption by Cox. Up to this time, Cox had been an ally of Senator Taft, but in 1910, the latter urged Cox to retire—which he did. The coalition of the Hilltop business elites with the machine was effectively over and in the 1911 election the machine was toppled by Progressive social reform mayor, Henry Thomas Hunt, “the boy mayor” and member of the “holy trinity” (mayors Brand Whitlock of Toledo, Newton Baker of Cleveland) of social reform mayors. Hunt’s agenda included tenement reform, health and social services for school children, streetcar reforms, removal of Cox and his corrupt minions, and he closed the slot machines and chased loan sharks and gamblers out of the city. Because of Hunt, Cox retired from politics and the power of his machine dissipated. Hunt lost the next election and he quickly left town for New York City—a one term social reform mayor.
[1] Frank Parker Stockbridge newspaper writer, managing editor of several magazines and publications
[2] His chief lieutenants included Charles Taft editor of Cincinnati Times, brother of President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, and August Herrmann, President of the Cincinnati Reds sometimes known as the “father of the world series”. Cox also maintained close control over Board of the New Water Works.
[3] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914” in Kenneth T. Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz (Eds), Cities in American History (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 386.
[4] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914”, op. cit., p. 388.
[5] Richardson Dilworth (Ed), Cities in American Political History, op. cit. p. 334.
[6] The tolerance of liberal Germans for crackdown on moral and vice can also be found in the policies pursued by Milwaukee’s municipal socialist administrations.
[7] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914” in Kenneth T. Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz (Eds), Cities in American History (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 383.
[8] Zane L. Miller, “Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: a Study in Urbanization and Politics, 1880-1914”, op. cit., p. 389.
Ron W. Coan 