Structural Reformers
Policy Systems and the Municipal Policy System
Last to be discussed, but undoubtedly the most impactful, structural reformers during the Progressive Era set the foundations for our modern municipal policy systems. Other policy systems (machine-boss, the social reform mayor, and the strong/weak mayor) integrated structural reforms into their policy systems. Structural reformers, supported by chambers and the National Municipal League, dramatically restructured nineteenth century urban governance, launched the City Efficient, “grew” the urban Policy World, and, for many cities, led to a governance paradigm that lasted into the 190’s and 1960’s. Moreover, structural reformer impact was most pronounced in second and third tier policy systems; structural reformer impact on Big Cities, however, was somewhat uneven.
In any case, structural reformers are the last Progressive Era policy system to be discussed in this chapter (Yea!). So it’s time to complete and summarize the meaning and substance underlying these policy systems before we tackle in detail the course of our structural reformers. What is going on with all these new-fangled policy systems? First the obvious. The principal policy systems of the Gilded Age were the businessman as mayor and the early machine systems (state-level machine, centralized boss machine, and the ward-level neighborhood/council-based machine).
So far Progressive Era policy systems reveal both a brand new, strong mayor social reformer system, and more mature machine policy systems evolving under pressure from changing demographics, economic/transportation/communication innovation and nationalization/oligopoly of corporate elites, and a evolving and volatile competitive urban hierarchy. The structural reformers draw from the inner core of the Gilded Age businessman-moderately strong mayor encased within a Jeffersonian/Jacksonian structural policy system no longer adequate to the demands of the Era. That Gilded Age business-led policy system was the latest variation of a American municipal governance paradigm that ran backward to colonial days. The Progressive structural reformer essentially “turns the page” by establishing the foundation of a modern, municipal government with sufficient “capacity” to be autonomous from its supportive business class—or any socio-economic class or electoral majority for that matter.
Sub-state governments endowed with Progressive Era structural capacity could be captured or overturned by a electoral majority which would set up its characteristic policy system that corresponding to its policy cycle would produce its own distinctive outputs/policy from its agenda. In these early years municipal government electoral majorities seem to have flowed from a segments of the industrial age class structure. So working class included “native” American, WASP, mostly skilled workers, and first and second generation “foreign stock”. The middle class, as always, included small, local market businessmen, professionals, and middle management. Upper class included old money, the corporate managers/professionals, and the owners of large firms, and our infamous one percenters. Up to this point in time, the latter class had dominated municipal and state level policy systems. That is what changed in the Progressive Era. During this Era electoral coalitions comprised of different combinations of these segments got elected to office and set up new and distinctive policy systems that served the agenda of its coalition.
The social reform mayor reflected a policy system elected by a working class, chiefly foreign stock base in alliance with both one corporate managers and owners and significant elements of the middle class—it was very much a “fusion” coalition that was very difficult to hold in place for any sustained period of time (that’s where our three issues come into play). Machines had their own problems in that they based themselves fairly solidly on working class and foreign stock neighborhoods that in the Progressive Era became more complex due to residential and income mobility, and the arrival of new culturally and ethnically varied foreign stock. In the Progressive Era, one can see these machines attempting to reach some level of agreement with elements of the business classes, and redefining their role more as a significant policy actor in somebody else’s policy system. The structural reformers, as we shall shortly see, are the 800lb gorilla of Progressive Era policy systems—the only one that was sufficiently powerful to sustain its electoral coalition for several generations to follow. The structural reform policy system, dominated as it will be with local business elites, resting on the chamber, but able to accommodate or at least coexist with machines and social reformers if need be, would be the “default” policy system of most municipalities, especially non-Big Cities, until the Great Society Era.
Big City municipal policy systems were the most volatile, robust, and complex. Smaller second tier and third tier cities were more pure structural reform policy systems—although they too had to deal with their own version of machines and the occasional social reformer. Mostly, however, in the South and West in particular, these less populated and more homogenous urban centers, had to deal with the “old courthouse gang”, the residues from the earlier Jeffersonian/Jacksonian days that lingered on in key places within the policy system. In the Northeast and Midwest, the chambers played a larger political role as the main pillar of third tier municipal government especially. Big Cities, the topic of this chapter, however, were, as already discovered in our discussion of social reform and machine policy systems, capable of shifting electoral coalitions; unstable is another way to describe Big City policy systems. While structural reformers were able to vastly alter the structures of Big City municipal governance (chiefly through expert/professional administration and bureaucratic capacity), they could be vulnerable to coalition/electoral change.
Turning the Page: Mugwumps to Progressive Structural Reformers
When we discussed the Gilded Age, I neglected to discuss nineteenth century Mugwump political reform. Forgive me. The Gilded Age Mugwumps were early structural reformers. At that time, the upper business class, the one percenters were still lined to chambers. Because, as we noted, chambers were always uncomfortable to actually field political candidates, another organization-type, the Civic League was generally created to handle the outright partisan initiatives which almost always meant putting the political machines (like Tweed) in their place. The anti-Tweed Committee of 70 is an example; it accomplished the specific task of putting Tweed in jail, then morphed into the New York City Reform Club (from which Teddy Roosevelt based his early political career). Similar organizations sprouted elsewhere between 1870 and 1890[1]; these were the famous “goo goos”
Mugwumps were wealthy businessmen, almost always white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, frequently of Yankee heritage, and were entirely focused on the early ethnic political machines—“focused” being a euphemism for kicking them out of city hall. Clean up government meant lots of things, besides putting Tweed in jail. It meant reducing corruption, fraud, governmental waste, reducing taxes, and running city hall more efficiently (cheaply); it also meant attacking the immorality found in the ethnics, drinking, brawling, prostitution and gambling—which, for their moral reasons, the Mugwumps found distasteful, if not repulsive. Associated with almost all these evils was the patronage with which machines and bosses filled city bureaucracies (police, fire and street departments). The struggle against patronage received a fortuitous stimulus with the 1881 assassination of President Garfield by an aggrieved job-seeker. From this inspiration, the civil service movement arose.
Mugwumps, accordingly, became associated with civil service reform (and charters). Allegedly, the movement formally began in 1877 with the formation of the New York City Civil Service Reform Association. The driving force of that fine group was, Mugwump editor of Harper’s Weekly, the always-famous George William Curtis. Between 1877 and 1881, thirty or so civil reform associations were launched in other cities. The assassination prompted the 1881 formation of the National Civil Service Reform League, and in short order, the 1883 approval of the federal Pendleton Act (federal civil service) followed. Several states quickly copied the initiative, New York (1883) and Massachusetts (1884), and several municipalities (for example, Milwaukee (1880’s) and Chicago, Toledo, New Orleans and Seattle during the early-mid 1890’s. By the 1890’s civil service (and the Mugwumps) ran out of steam, failing in twelve states[2]. It would not return to favor for nearly a generation.
Mugwumps achieved their objectives almost exclusively by winning elections, taking over city hall, and using the increasingly strong mayor as their principal instrument of policy-making. This is the classic coalition of Gilded Age business and the middle class which, in its own version of the Last Hurrah, was able to garner sufficient votes to overwhelm these early machines. In office, Mugwumps were wonders to behold—a forerunner of the twenty-first century Tea Partiers. Cutting budgets, reducing governments, lowering taxes, cutting all sorts of services and capital budgets—and instituting civil service or other means to end patronage jobs. Implicitly and explicitly, Mugwumps were elitist and believed the “best men” should govern—and that the working class influence in policy should be reduced. They weakened the city legislatures—limiting the power of neighborhood (ward) residents over policy. Mugwump agenda’s did little to help the working class/ethnics. The dominant pattern was that a Mugwump would serve one term, alienate the working/ethnic class voters who in the next election voted in the machine. This is where George Washington Plunkitt’s reference to reformers as “morning glories” came from. Examples of Mugwump mayors were Buffalo’s Grover Cleveland and Seth Low in Brooklyn.
By the 1900’s, however Mugwumps were out of fashion and a Progressive alternative had developed. Overcoming Mugwump localism, they organized a national organization, the National Municipal League (NML) in 1894. Within two years approximately 260 local civic and municipal leagues were set up in the nation’s cities—all formally members of the NML.”The NML reformers believed that the chief problems of the city could be rectified through changes in the structural framework of municipal government. In 1889, the NML publicized its “model” or benchmark city charter that outlined the various structural improvements endorsed by their membership. … The NML called for extensive home rule from the state legislature, strong mayor, civil service, a unicameral city council, secret ballot elections, separation of municipal from state and national elections and at large elections. Urban fiscal control should be entrusted to an elected and administratively independent city controller, and street car franchises should be for limited periods of time.[3] By 1900, a new-style structural reformer was roaming about on our Big City streets.
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The NML inspired the 1902 Bureau of the Census’s initial compilation of key fiscal data for municipalities, and the Bureau’s commitment to “a major program of comparative statistical reporting and research designed to advance structural reform initiatives, and to make structural and administrative innovations accessible to city governments.”[4] The Census Bureau instituted a uniform accounting system for cities, making corruption and fiscal waste easier to identify. The Chamber, generally not prominent included in the literature concerning structural reforms, was, in fact, its behind-the-scenes leader and chief advocate. The chambers possessed the political muscle that attracted strong business involvement.
Pre-1910 (or so) Progressive structural reformers stressed the NML catechism of individual initiatives, and placed a great deal of focus on charters and home rule. Their most profound change lie in reform of election and the enhancement of municipal bureaucracies through the application of scientific management principles and merit, professional specialization/expert leadership, and removal of waste and corruption and cost/tax reduction by reducing machine influence of the machine. By the end of the twentieth century’s first, decade, however, structural reforms seized on change in form of government (commission or city manager) as an reform “package” which, once properly installed, constituted an entirely new municipal policy system. In this latter period, one can see the separate paths of Big Cities and second/third tier municipalities much more clearly. The latter were more readily able to change the form of government, establish a new policy system, and sustain it. Big Cities experimented with form of government, but sustaining a commission or city manager form of government in a Big City proved very difficult indeed.
Big City structural reformers, then, stressed the bureaucratic and professional elements of structural reform. Planning, budgeting, accounting and audit, implementing programs, civil service and job definition and personnel management/evaluation, and program evaluation. Honesty, efficiency, cost and tax reduction—and professional administration and management were its hallmarks. To provide support, logistics and expertise in these endeavors, structural reformers enjoyed the assistance of a new bureaucratic organization, with serious economic development overtones, that was financed and directed by the highest corporate elites of their jurisdiction. That new organization, the municipal research bureau, became the almost-perfect expression of Big City structural reform.
Municipal Research Bureaus
Despite the consistent muscle and support lent by the chambers to structural reformers, the municipal research bureau personified the post 1900 approach to structural reform. It was the Municipal Research Bureau that formally, and scientifically applied scientific management to Big City policy-making, management and administration. Research Bureaus asserted, as did scientific management, that ”the technical side of running a government could be analyzed and developed on a factual basis in the same way as a business.”.[5] The first municipal research bureau, established in 1906-07 New York City was funded by Carnegie, Rockefeller and Mellon.[6] In Big City after Big City the corporate elite from the very largest of that city’s private sector stepped up to the plate to ensure their jurisdiction’s place in the Big City hierarchy—in this case competing to prove they too could professionalize, modernize and make more efficient and honest their urban governance.
…the organizers of the New York Bureau viewed the corporation as a model for reorganizing municipal administration. They believed … ‘that the technical side of running a government could be analyzed and developed on a factual basis in the same way as a business’. They advocated centralized decision-making along the lines of the corporate pattern and hoped to apply Frederick W. Taylor’s idea of scientific management to city government.[7]
So, Philadelphia, for example, set up a pilot in 1908 and permanently founded, the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia in 1912. The Economy League at its formal announcement was described as:
a local agency of a few private citizens who employ experts in what may be called municipal knowledge to examine municipal affairs, with a view to getting rid of antiquated, clumsy, slipshod or extravagant ways of doing things and substituting as far as possible, modern ones — system, precision, competency, and economy — not the economy which merely saves by reducing expenses, but which, rather accomplishes a desired result along the simplest and best lines.[8]
Chicago set up an Efficiency Division within its Civil Service Commission (1910-1916) and its corporate elite founded the Chicago Bureau of Public Efficiency (1910-1932), the state of Massachusetts established its Commission on Economy and Efficiency in 1912.
The typical municipal research bureau supported more than NML model structural reforms. Bureaus pursued a robust agenda including research/analysis of the region’s resources and challenges “with a goal of promoting sound public policy and increasing the region’s prosperity“. Research bureaus established formal linkages with universities and the larger Policy World. Also, Municipal Research Bureaus applied efficiency and scientific management principles to policy implementation. In 1912, the first director of the New York City Bureau of Municipal Research (Henry Bruere) published a book applying efficiency principles to municipal management. In 1913 after reform mayor John Purroy Mitchell was elected, he appointed Bruere as his “chief of staff” and tasked him with creating a municipal civil service system. Bruere using the Municipal Research Bureau as his staff, assigned the task to a promising young staff member, Robert Moses. Moses thereafter crafted a civil service system for New York City following careful scientific management principles with each position’s elements precisely defined and assigned a mathematical grade.[9]
Another area of municipal research bureau concern was budgetary practices. Again, the New York Bureau of Municipal Research wrote a municipal budgeting handbook and sent it to 300 municipalities. Additional research generated by the bureau’s experts also diffused across the nation. Newly elected President Taft created the first presidential commission on municipal budgets and appointed the President of the New York Municipal Research Bureau as its chair.[10] In short, the New York City Municipal Research Bureau was the cutting edge of Progressive structural reform—so, let’s take a gander at how it played Progressive politics in the Big Apple. After all, if you can do it in New York, you can do it anywhere?
[1] Citizen’s Reform Association in Philadelphia (1871, Chicago (1874), the Baltimore Reform League (1885), the New Orleans Committee of One Hundred (1885), the Citizens Association of Boston (1887), the Milwaukee Municipal League (1893, the Civic Federation of Detroit (1894) and [by the mid-1890’s] more than 80 such good government associations existed. See, Raymond A. Mohl, the New City, op. cit., pp. 111-112.
[2] Raymond A. Mohl, the New City, op. cit., pp. 113-114.
[3] Raymond A. Mohl, the New City, op. cit., pp. 116.
[4] Raymond Mohl, the New City, op. cit. p. 117.
[5] Martin J. Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1800-1920 (University of California Press, 1977)
[6] Bruce D. McDonald III, “The Bureau of Municipal Research and the Development of Professional Public Service“, Administration and Society, November 2010; see also, Norman N. Gill, Municipal Research Bureaus (Washington D.C., 1944); Jane Dahlberg, New York Bureau of Municipal Research, Pioneer
[7] Mohl, the New City, op. cit. p. 118.
[8] Philadelphia Evening Bulletin (1912), Philadelphia Economy League (www.economyleague.org)
[9] Dennis R. Judd, The Politics of American Cities (2nd Ed) (Boston, Little, Brown & Co, 1984) , pp. 99-100. Moses, by the way, was a recent graduate of the NYC Municipal Research Bureau’s Training Institute.
[10] Handbooks of Management Accounting Research, Volume 3, Edited by Christopher S. Chapman, Anthony Hopwood, and Michael D. Shields, p. 1079.
Ron W. Coan 