Socialist Mayors
After 1910, a brand new phenomenon hit a few American cities—socialists were elected in numbers to the mayor and city councils. Milwaukee, in 1910, elected the “socialist boss” Victor Berger to the House of Representatives, the first of six terms, Emil Seidel as mayor, and 21 of 35 alderman to the city council. In 1911, George Lunn, a Protestant minister and Christian, non-Marxist socialist, was elected mayor of Schenectady. Minneapolis in 1916 elected Thomas van Lear as mayor and over the next decade won mayoralty elections in Haverhill (Massachusetts), Lackawanna (New York), Flint (Michigan), Granite City (Illinois), and Butte (Montana). Between 1910 and 1920 an estimated 174 socialists were elected mayor in cities ranging from Berkeley California and Eureka Utah[1].
American Progressive Era municipal socialists were seldom Marxist, and were mostly Christian social democrat to Henry George or Herbert Bellamy-style socialists. Nationally the Socialist Party received 6% of the vote in 1912 Presidential election. As one might expect things got more complicated by the end of the decade with America’s entry into the First World War and the establishment of a Communist system in Russia. Still, as Bernie Sanders’s, former mayor of Burlington Vermont, candidacy for President in 2016, testifies socialism has persisted. In practice over time, American urban socialist policy systems proved little different from structural reformers. Eventually, they acquired the pejorative label of “sewer socialists”. Sewer socialist or not, socialist mayors of this period “clearly focused on improving the lives of urban people [i.e. people-oriented] rather than reorganizing or restructuring urban government”[2].They eliminated graft and supported the development of administrative capacity and efficiency using accepted scientific management principles. They constructed well-built parks and sewers and paid for them with conventional bond issuance, rather than soak the rich taxation. Milwaukee socialists even established a Bureau of Economy and Efficiency.[3]
A good example of the general fate of most socialist mayors can be uncovered by examining Flint Michigan. Flint, an early automobile production center, was also a hotbed of unionism and suffered from a serious housing crisis, made incredibly worse because of significant population growth. A goodly number of voters were dissatisfied with both established parties, and actively sought out a third party alternative. In this brief introduction, the reader can see evident various factors associated with the rise of socialist mayors in this Era: intensive industrialization and a heavily manufacturing economic base; intensive unionization; significant and rapid population increase with accompanying social and economic disruption; and pervasive dissatisfaction with existing political party leadership/jurisdiction’s policy process.
So in 1911, union official John Merton ran for mayor in the socialist party. He called for “collective ownership of all means of production and distribution” [and examination of] all municipal questions … from the standpoint of the working class, and not for the standpoint of the Capitalist class”. Merton won the race and brought in three fellow socialists into the city council (a minority). It started out poorly. “The non socialist majority in the city council stymied the mayor’s initiatives, and refused to confirm his Socialist appointees”. Merton faced serious budget constraints, but he was able to improve safety and health inspections and institute an eight hour day for city workers. The policy system, on the whole, however, was frozen in deadlock.
The Democrats and Republicans fashioned a fusion political party (Independent Citizens Party), combined with the chamber and business class to form an opposition political organization. In the next election, its candidate, Charles Mott, a founder of General Motors and the owner of a very large factor in Flint, He ran on a platform of “not being radical” and making public improvements. Michigan’s non partisan elections further muted the partisan distinction. Mott won 2-1, with the Socialists not even victorious in their home, working class/union wards. Business and middle class turnout was huge. The local assessment of the socialist “intrusion” into the Flint body politics was described by the local newspaper (Flint Journal) as: “The people of Flint were suffering from the hookworm in their [pre-socialist] city affairs until the Socialists pricked them and awakened the electors [voters] to the fact that Flint ought to have a business administration and an efficient city government [structural reform]”. Flint’s municipal government, in the succeeding decades, was described as “an era of rule by General Motors”.[4]
[1] James Weinstein, Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925 (New York, Vintage Press, 1969), Table 2, pp. 116-118. Wikipedia also offers an amazing list of socialist mayors which seems at first glance to be interesting and maybe reasonably accurate: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_socialist_mayors_in_the_United_States/
[2] Raymond Mohl, The New City, op. cit., p. 127.
[3] Kenneth Finegold, Experts and Politicians, op. cit., p. 19.
[4] Jon C. Teaford, Cities of the Heartland: the Rise and Fall of the Industrial Midwest (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 127-128. Quote on p. 128.
Ron W. Coan 