Detroit
Hazen Pingree as Social Reform Mayor
The earliest, the path-breaker, and, in some ways the most successful was Detroit’s Hazen Pingree. Pingree, a wealthy Republican shoe and boot manufacturer, first won election (1889-1897) on an anti-municipal corruption platform which stressed its profound fear of corporate control of residents’ pocketbook in the form of streetcar, telephone, gas and electric utilities. 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.[1] His coalition, a combination of old style Republican Yankees, ethnic Canadians and Germans did not react in response to excesses of a boss or even a ward-based machine. Ethnic-based machines and political bosses did not play a major role in Detroit’s previous history. Instead Pingree sought to be an alternative to rule by conventional businessman mayors, who like Pingree himself business owners. Perhaps without truly realizing it, Pingree had stumbled on the formula to electing a social reform mayor: honesty, efficiency, tackling the municipal utility problem and rejection of temperance. A coalition of working class, middle class and Progressive businessmen provided sufficient votes for him to be elected three times as mayor and then to go onto the governorship.
Prompted by the 1893 Panic Pingree confronted high unemployment by expanding local welfare and public works programs (building schools, parks, and public baths). He developed his “potato patch plan” which turned vacant city-owned lots over to the poor for gardens. Pingree also presided over the entrepreneurial years of the early automobile industry[2]. Hazen conducted Detroit’s most aggressive annexation period ever. Pingree held a sincere concern for the working class. He fought hard and consistently to keep utility and streetcar fares down; he eventually achieved municipal ownership of the light plant, and heavily taxed wealthy corporations and railroads/utilities. 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] T
Pingree and the Citizens Railway
Pingree established his national reputation and spawned a host of future social reform mayors by his travails in trying to obtain the three cent street car fare for Detroit’s commuters. In 1894, during his third term and following the 93 Panic, Pingree, recognizing the Michigan state constitution prevented municipal ownership of street cars, turned to competition by trying to create a privately-owned street car line that charged only three cents per ride and achieved profitability thru the volume of passengers lured to climb on board for the ride. Attracting private investors (Henry Everett and upstate lumberman Pack Brothers) he proposed to construct a line to compete with the Citizens Street Railway Company. Facilitating a franchise to the investors, the Detroit Railway Company started construction, laying sixty miles of track and opening up limited service by July 1895. Pingree donned an engineer’s cap and drove the first train up the line.[4]
And then his problems began. With its stock depressed, new owners bought the Citizens Railway Company determined not to make the mistake the previous owners had made in not being “hard-boiled enough”. The new owner, a recently defeated two-term Congressman was determined to root out Pingree’s three cent fare. Going to the courts, the Citizens Railway was unsuccessful—but the owner kept on appealing saying “It’s for blood and somebody is going to get skinned and skinned thoroughly … This is a fight for gore, and it will be carried right along to the finish”. Pingree won the appeal in July 1896 when the Michigan Supreme Court upheld the three cent fare and the right of the Detroit Railway to operate its line. But that did not end the fight.
The Citizens Railway controlled the rail terminal and it denied use to the Detroit Railway. The battle in quick order was fought out in the state legislature where in some of the most desperate “lobbying” of the day. In the meantime, the owner of the Citizen’s Railway doubled down on his investment and retired the horses and electrified his line. To pay for this he pushed for a thirty year franchise with an initial five cent fare. Pingree vetoed the franchise after the Council had approved it. A simultaneous battle had been joined pitting the city council against Pingree the mayor. The fare was imposed without a franchise extension and Pingree called for a public boycott. The newspapers supported Pingree as did thousands of workers. Pingree thundered “This fight ain’t going to stop until [the Citizens Railway] gets right down on its knees”.
The Citizen’s Railway reeled losing riders and profits to Pingree’s boycott. The owner of the Citizen Railway finally capitulated offering Pingree that he would also charge three cents for his fare! The Citizens Railway offer was approved the city council. Allegations of bribery were alleged, behind the scenes deals made and Pingree’s opposition (because the ordinance granted a special tax abatement, eliminated the children’s fare, increased hours of work for its employees, and actually inhibited joint use of key track on the lines) in the end rejected the offer of the Citizen’s Railway. Pingree was again victorious and even more so when other Detroit street car lines reduced their fare to three cents. Victory in hand Pingree accepted the nomination for governor and prepared to leave for the state capital.
And then the Citizens Railway overturned its three cent fare, raised it to five cents and publicized that it had secretly bought Pingree’s Detroit Railway. Getting Pingree out of town had been part of the strategy. Pingree refused to leave, however. For more than a year he held both the governorship and the mayor’s office simultaneously—until the Michigan Supreme Court ousted him from the latter in July 1897.With the merger completed, the five cent street car fare, and with a virtual monopoly of key routes, the Citizens Railway had achieved total victory over Pingree. The owner of the Citizens Railway was Tom Johnson, the shortly to become social reform mayor of Cleveland[5].
Pingree’s Progressive Legacy
The sad “traction” affair, however, was not over—it continued while Pingree was governor. In 1899 a set of complex negotiations produced the closest thing to Pingree’s hope to establish a privately-owned equivalent to a municipally-owned street car system. It included a city-wide three cent fare, accompanied by a forty-eight year lease which neither city residents or the Michigan Supreme Court liked. The agreement was tossed out. Whatever the ultimate fate of Pingree’s street car battle, it may have been the headline urban issue across the nation’s industrial cities. Street car fares and municipal ownership of street cars and other utilities permeated in some way the politics of each and almost every large city in America. City after city, from Boston to Minneapolis had to deal with it and politicians advancing solutions for it—sort of a forerunner of today’s climate control. As for Detroit, for the remainder of the Progressive Era it alternately elected Democratic and Republican mayors until Republican Oscar Marx (no relation) broke the pattern and started a Republican dynasty, which with one exception captured the mayor’s office through 1930. Detroit, until the 1960’s, was surprisingly a competitive policy system, with both parties able to win the next election—the edge going to the Republicans, however.
[1] 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.
[2] 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.
[3] Pingree was quoted in Mohl, op. cit. p. 123.
[4] The fight between the Citizens Railway, the Detroit Railway and Pingree has been summarized from Melvin Holli, Reform in Detroit, op. cit. Chapter 6 “the Mayor Leads a Nationwide Fight for Low Fares”.
[5] It is not our job here to deal with the obvious questions arising from Johnson’s incredible and fierce resistance to Pingree—and two years later his election as a reform mayor of Cleveland who, if anything, followed the social reform, and an anti-street car/utility path bushwhacked by Pingree. Holli (Reform in Detroit) in Chapter 6, pp. 120-124) provides as good as an analysis as any arguing that even with sincere change of heart, Johnson was principally motivated by sheer competitiveness that compelled Johnson to fight Pingree unremittingly and implement social reforms unrelentingly.
Ron W. Coan 