In Cleveland, Thomas Johnson, a wealthy businessman who acquired his wealth through an innovative streetcar technology/ownership[1], ruled for four terms (1901-1909)[2]. He was followed by Nelson Baker (1911-1915) who further enhanced and refined the Progressive social mayor model. In 1910 Cleveland’s population was about 28% native American (that’s what they called English/Scottish back then), mostly Yankee Diaspora background, with 18% German being the largest foreign stock, with Slavs, Irish and Jews in descending order. Other than the Ohio state political machine, ward machines did not play a significant role in Cleveland politics—in fact the attempt to create a Republican municipal machine by Johnson’s predecessor, Robert McKisson. Cleveland’s first truly “strong mayor”[3] aroused opposition from the Chamber and the formation of the Municipal Association (today’s Citizens League). Frederick Howe was appointed its secretary, but tension developed between his Progressive social reform agenda and the structural reformers that financed the Association.
Mayor 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 Johnson, with Chamber support, hired Daniel Burnham thereby initiating a path-breaking Cleveland city beautiful initiative that flirted closely with early urban planning[4]. His regime was honest, efficient, supporter of the merit system.
He also followed the policy adopted by Toledo’s Golden Rule Jones relaxing police intrusion into lower and working class crimes (misdemeanors, drunkenness, truancy, and vice-related behavior)—“replacing an inflexible policy based on moralism with a discretionary policy based on realism”.[5] Johnson’s subsequent elections reduced dramatically his reliance on white native and business vote and increased his support from working and lower class wards. After 1903, the Chamber opposed him; indeed in that year the President of the Chamber ran against him as the Republican nominee. The Socialist Party also opposed Johnson. In both instances, Johnson’s three cent municipal ownership of street cars divided the traditional business community. They were also highly critical of his failure to crack down on immoral behaviors and lower class crime. Many businessmen believed Johnson’s true mission was to, like McKisson before him, create a political machine—filled with experts loyal to him.
Johnson obsessively pursued a three cent streetcar fare, and did all he could to seize control of Cleveland’s private electric plants. Like Hazen 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 was frustrated, especially in regards to his two signature projects. Four years later, his city lawyer, Newton Baker, Johnson’s corporation counsel, was elected (1913) mayor. Baker ran on the Progressive agenda developed by Johnson and his support was principally from the working class foreign stock. Considerably more disposed to consensus decision-making, Baker was able to forge relationships with structural reform/business elite organizations (like the Municipal Association and the newly formed Cleveland Association) and diffuse fears of establishing a machine. Baker, seizing upon a successful passage of Cleveland’s Home Rule charter (which rejected city manager form of government), was able to take over the electric utility and convert it into municipal ownership. Subsequent Progressive mayoral candidates, however, were unable to maintain the coalition between the middle class and working class that Johnson had forged, and Baker had enhanced.
Tom Johnson has come to be regarded as the poster child for social reform mayors. Hazen Pingree, whose case study in Detroit is presented below, is the pioneer of this policy system, however, and the mayor who popularized it—and its electoral coalition and policy agenda. For more than a decade, these social reform mayors were the buzz in the media and Policy World. Their attraction to “experts” frequently provided employment for Policy World figures—in fact, this period may be the one in which Policy Worlders crossed over into the Practitioner World the most. Social reform mayors are widely regarded as characteristic of the Progressive Era, so this section does not include an individual I regard as the most important social reform mayor of all time, Fiorello LaGuardia, three term mayor of New York (1933-1945). Our history will, of course, discuss Mayor LaGuardia in a future chapter, but keep in mind the Progressive social reform mayor did not die out after World War I.
[1] The irony of Johnson’s inability to obtain the three cent fare on Cleveland’s streetcar system was that the streetcar innovation from which he made his fortune was the streetcar fare box.
[2] Cleveland’s social reform politics exposes an important weakness of Ohio’s (and Pennsylvania’s) state-level Republican Party machine. From 1895 to Johnson’s victory in 1901, three insurgents challenged Hanna’s control over Cleveland-two successfully. State-level machines focused chiefly on control of federal offices and national politics; they were surprisingly inconsistent in controlling their Big City municipal governments. While Mark Hanna (head of Ohio’s state political machine) was electing Presidents, he lost control over both Cleveland and Cincinnati.
[3] The result of 1891 charter reform, the so-called Federal Plan, which provided the mayor control over department heads and created the potential to form an “administration” or, absent civil service, a political machine.
[4] Thomas S. Hines, “The Paradox of Progressive Architecture: Urban Planning and Public Building in Tom Johnson’s Cleveland”, American Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Oct, 1973), pp. 426-448.
[5] Kenneth Finegold, Experts and Politicians, op. cit., p. 87.
Ron W. Coan 