Preconditions For Milwaukee Socialism
Milwaukee is the city most associated with a municipal socialist policy system[1]. Milwaukee’s 1910 socialist surge was not a sudden fluke by any means; several factors salient to Milwaukee had started it down that road as early as the 1880’s. The usually cited reason is that it was chiefly settled by “Germans”, In 1910 first and second generation Germans[2] made up almost 54% of the city’s residents. But in the same year, city residents of “foreign stock” were almost 79%, down from 86% in 1890. Given the national average in 1910 was 33%, Milwaukee was the nation’s “most foreign city” in 1910[3].
The second factor was that by the Progressive Era, Milwaukee was the “machine shop of the world”. By that time the city had moved beyond its initial clusters (milling, tanning, meat-packing, iron production and beer brewing) into metal fabrication of durable and non durable goods. Metal-bending was the city’s chief cluster by the Progressive Era, turning out everything from pails to bicycles, especially electric motors, oil drilling, steam turbines and industrial equipment; Milwaukee’s home-spun firms included Allis-Chalmers, Falk, Harnischfeger, A. O. Smith, and who could ignore, the iconic Harley-Davidson. The “Walker’s Point District” was regarded in its day as a Silicon Valley of industrial equipment, innovation, venture capital and entrepreneurship[4]. In 1910, 57% of Milwaukee’s adult males were industrial workers—second only to Detroit. All these densely packed industrial factories, spawned an intense and durable union movement—characterized by strikes, lockouts, violence and Gilded/Progressive Age unionism. Milwaukee socialism evolved from that origin.
Working Class Politics Ain’t All That Its Cracked Up To Be
Milwaukee’s Gilded Age politics set the stage for its Progressive Age socialism. Milwaukee, while not without some ward-based politics, moved down its own particular path to political corruption. Between 1870 and 1910 Milwaukee voters elected eight Democrats and five Republicans, but the two parties served roughly equal time in office. Corruption was truly bipartisan. Usually it centered on transportation franchises and utility services. “Boodling” (taking bribes) was a way of life and the Party leaders and city council of both parties saw their opportunities and took them. Mayors and party leaders actually were shareholders or owners of several key franchises.
In the later 1880’s, however, things began to change. The first incident, and the one most durable in the memories of Progressive Age socialists, was the Bay View shooting of striking Polish workers by the city’s Irish/German local police/militia. Days after the famous Chicago Haymarket Square labor uprising, the killing of between five and nine workers, became a lingering and open sore in Milwaukee’s labor relations and, carried over to anti-Polish/Slav ethnic relations as well. “Never before in the community’s history had one group of [its] citizens leveled deadly fire at each other. The precedent was profoundly troubling. If the price of industrial growth was industrial conflict, if the social cost of immigration was social conflict, some residents wondered just how much their community had gained …. The Bay View shootings forced Milwaukeeans on all sides of the struggle to conclude that something was horribly, terribly wrong”[5].
The second incident, the 1889 state Republican legislature passed Bennett Law, which among other features required teaching of much of the school curriculum in English—and extended it to Catholic parochial schools. It was perceived by all ethnic groups as a frontal assault on their culture and religion. In the next election, all heck broke loose and the Democrats under George Peak (a journalist and the creator of the comic, “Peck’s Bad Boy” became Mayor, and then within months elected Governor. The law was overturned. The immigrant ethnics learned in this process that they could fight city hall. Or could they? In 1896 street car strikes, involving street car lines owned or manipulated by the political leadership of the city’s party leaders, tore the city apart again. Arising from the conflict emerged Democratic firebrand, David Rose as candidate for mayor in the 1898 election. On an agenda, with Hazen Pingree’s Detroit in the background, Rose vowed to crush the “street car ring”. He was elected in a landslide, driven by ethnic and immigrant votes. In office only a few months, Rose “made his deal” behind closed doors with the street car ring, set a four cent fare and extended the franchise through 1934.
Despite the obvious betrayal, the charismatic Rose was elected, with loss of only one term through 1910. He appealed to the average voter, appeared “princely in manner, handsome, dashing and courageous”, his eloquence as a public speaker he cultivated the Catholic and Polish vote within evident success. Easy on crime, gambling, bars, prostitutes, he kept intact a red light district, where, in his words, “lust can be subdued”. His economic development platform highlighted conventions (“Conventions, Celebrations, and a Live Town”), he claimed an average of over 340 conventions annually. He did embrace the Parks and Boulevards movement, and because building public buildings lined his pockets, a dispersed, unplanned City Beautiful-style downtown redevelopment sputtered off and on during his various administrations. His public works program, however, came under considerable and sustained attack—for graft and corruption. Reformers protested. Grand jury investigations followed, almost continuously between 1901 and 1909, exposed corruption at all levels, and political parties—and in each subsequent election, Rose was reelected, by smaller and smaller majorities—until in the multiparty 1908 election he won the mayor’s office yet again, but with only 37% of the vote. The stage was set for the 1910 revolution.
The Socialists on the White Horse
By 1910, half the Milwaukee Republican Party was in jail sharing a cell with half of the Democratic Party—the other half, led by La Follette was focused on the national scene . The half of the Democratic Party not in jail was about ready to be booted out with Mayor David Rose. As crazy as it seems, economically the city’s economic base was never better, population was still growing robustly, immigration was flourishing—but growth was creating its own dilemmas that needed to be fixed. In essence the time was ripe for someone to ride in on a white horse, but why did it turn out to be the Socialist Party?
While things are always more complicated, the simplest answer to that question was the head of Milwaukee’s Socialist Party, Victor Berger. Berger, a German public school teacher turned activist and owner of the socialist newspaper Vorwarts (Forward), tactically and strategically guided the Milwaukee Social Democrats over the course of a decade (1900’s) to capturing city hall. First, Berger Americanized Milwaukee socialism—eschewing any talk of revolution or dictatorship of the proletariat, he stressed gradualism and participation in local democracy and elections. He avoided the arcane squabbles which almost always fragmented left politics, striving, always focused on winning the next local election. He competed, with a party slate of candidates, in every election during the decade—steadily increasing strength, experience, and votes. By 1904, in an environment of wall-to-wall grand juries, Mayor Rose saw his majority fall to only 39%, with the Socialist Party capturing 25%–socialists taking 9 of the 46 seats on the city council.
And the Milwaukee Social Democratic Party, while not exactly Leninist in its centralization and structure, was highly controlled—it ran a slate of candidates, each submitting their unsigned letter of resignation—and totally adhering to its platform. The Party County Central Committee was the center of its decision-making, but considerable autonomy was enjoyed by its neighborhood/ward units or branches. These branches centered about ethnic groups, gender, and wards. The Milwaukee Social Democratic Party was a political machine without the corruption.
If the Social Democratic Party had a notable weakness, it was fairly intellectual in tone, and it touched very few voters directly. To provide the muscle, the voters, Berger cemented an alliance with the trade unions composed of the immigrants and ethnics in the industrial labor force. He called this alliance “the Milwaukee idea”. The idea was that the Party was the political arm and the labor union the economic arm. “This is the Milwaukee idea. In the personal union of the workers … we find the same men, with the same thoughts, aims and ideals working in the economic and political field, thus forming a grand army moving on two roads for the abolition of the capitalist system.” The Milwaukee Federated Trades Council responded saying (in 1908) “The Social Democratic Party is the political expression of the working class and is fighting our battles on the political field”. [6]
So by 1910, the Milwaukee Social Democratic Party was ready to step into the vacuum created by the implosion of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Their candidate for mayor was Emil Seidel, an owner of a small pattern shop. Berger was trying to go to Washington—the House of Representatives that is. Seidel, a good campaigner, was effective in attracting working class voters—he ran as the candidate in the 1908 election and had come within 2,200 votes of beating Rose. The outcome of the 1910 election produce a smashing victory for the socialists, Seidel and his slate for the independently elected offices swept into victory, carrying with them 21 of 35 city council candidates. Eighteen of these successful candidates “worked with their hands”—this was not only a socialist victory; it was a working class victory as well.
Seidel’s administration “launched a barrage of initiatives, designed to make Milwaukee a model city [on a hill?] for the working man and his family. The minimum wage for city laborers was raised to $2.00 a day. An eight hour day became the standard … city officials took municipal business to union shops”. As illogical as it might seem, Seidel embraced many of the efficiencies and scientific management principles so popular in its day. He said that “The governing of our city must become a scientific function”. He brought in experts, such as John R. Commons a professor from the University of Wisconsin. Commons headed up the newly-formed Bureau of Economy and Efficiency which was, in fact a municipally operated Municipal Research Bureau (see below)—their goal was “Efficiency coupled with Service to the Poor and the working classes of the city”.
Indeed, Milwaukee’s socialists mirrored much of the city efficient agenda–including honest government, administrative efficiency, and use of experts. But they did oppose commission and city manager forms of government, as well as the various electoral reforms (nonpartisan, at large, short ballot). A lack of home rule authority prevented them from municipal ownership of the streetcar and utility firms for which they did advocate. Their independently elected city attorney, Daniel Hoan conducted a two year battle with the street car railways. The socialist administration aggressively pursued housing reform, factory safety, park development, a city-run employment office, increased minimum wage and paid union-scale wages to city employees, eight hour day, compulsory strike arbitration, and free concerts. Despite being confronted with having to go to Madison to secure authorization and empowerment for their initiatives, detailed line item budgets were created, the health department stepped up inspections, and a municipally-owned street lighting system was started. Perhaps their signature initiative, Seidel in 1912 launched the municipally operated Milwaukee Vocation School, later known the Milwaukee Area Technical College. More than anything, the honesty and the earnestness of the administration (Carl Sandburg was Seidel’s private secretary) was about as far opposite from David Rose as possible. 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.[7]
All of which explains why the socialists lost the next election??? Not exactly—but they did lose soundly. Why? The Democrat and Republican Parties united to field a combined “Fusion Ticket”. Their ticket was perfectly balanced ethnically, German Lutherans, Polish Catholics, an Irish Catholic, headed by a well-respected former city health commissioner, Dr. Gerhard Bading. Bading attacked blaming the socialists for the city’s typhoid problem. Also, the state legislature cooperated by passing a nonpartisan election law in 1912 which removed the party labels from the ballot (they still are nonpartisan today). Bading took office in 1912 and won again, beating Seidel, in 1914. The Socialist Party did, however, get Dan Hoan reelected in these years and he continued his fight with the street car lines—establishing by 1916 an image of being the Social Democrats most visible and electable candidate.
Hoan, whose background, personality and career closely corresponded to that of Lincoln, was selected as the mayoral candidate –against Bading—in 1916. Hoan won by about 1,600 votes. Socialists, however, only controlled 11 of the 37 non partisan city council members. It seemed to work ok. Hoan was reelected as mayor for the next twenty-four years—ousted finally in 1940 by a socialist party rival, Carl Zeidler, son of a barber held onto the mayor’s office for two years before resigning to enlist in the World War II Navy. His merchant marine ship, the SS La Salle was sunk in December 1942 with all hands lost. John Bohn, President of the city council filled the unexpired term of Zeidler and was elected on his own in 1944. Zeidler’s brother, Frank, a confirmed member of the Social Democrat Party was elected to mayor in 1948 and served until 1960. Between 1916 and 1960, socialists served 38 of 44 years as the city’s mayor.
[1] That is certainly true for the Progressive Era, but Bridgeport CT elected its socialist mayor, Jasper McLevy in 1933 (after twenty unsuccessful campaigns, the first in 1902). McLevy was mayor thru 1957. Burlington Vermont elected a series of Vermont Progressive Mayors starting in the 1990’s.
[2]The “German” element was a catchall term in this era, however. It included large numbers of Poles (no census category then existed since the nation itself did not yet exist) and it also consisted of large numbers of Catholic “Austrians” from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (i.e. southern and Catholic Germans); Berger himself was born in Austria-Hungary[2]. Still, however, defined, the “German” majority were familiar and allegedly predisposed, if not receptive, to socialism and socialist programs.
[3] John Gurda, the Making of Milwaukee (Milwaukee County Historical Society, Burton & Mayer Publishing, 1999), p. 170ff . Figures cited are from U.S. Census.
[4] John Gurda, the Making of Milwaukee, op. cit., pp. 160-169.
[5] John Gurda, the Making of Milwaukee, op. cit., p. 156
[6] John Gurda, the Making of Milwaukee, op. cit., pp. 205-206.
[7] Mohl, The New City, 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.
Ron W. Coan 