jan 1, 1901 - Democrats elect Tom Johnson in Cleveland

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To recapture support from working-class Clevelanders, Democrats made a dramatic change: in 1901 they nominated Tom Johnson for mayor. Johnson, a reform-minded businessman, advocated municipal ownership of utilities and a tax system in which “monopoly and privilege” bore the main burdens. (Johnson once thanked Cleveland’s city appraisers for raising taxes on his own mansion.) Johnson’s comfortable victory transformed the Democrats from an old-style machine into Cleveland’s leading reform party. While the new mayor did not fulfill the whole agenda of the Central Labor Union and its allies, he became an advocate of publicly owned utilities and one of the nation’s most famous and innovative reformers.

Like Johnson, other mayors began to transform or oust machines and launch ambitious urban services. Some modeled their municipal governments on those of Glasgow, Scotland; Düsseldorf, Germany; and other European cities on the cutting edge of innovation. In Boston, Mayor Josiah Quincy built public baths, gyms, swimming pools, and playgrounds and provided free public concerts. Like other mayors, he battled streetcar companies to bring down fares. The scope of such projects varied. In 1912, San Francisco managed to open one small municipally owned streetcar line to compete with private companies. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the other hand, elected socialists who experimented with a sweeping array of measures, including publicly subsidized medical care and housing.
Republican Hazen Pingree, mayor of Detroit from 1890 to 1897, worked for better streets and public transportation, and during the depression opened a network of vacant city-owned lots as community vegetable gardens. Though some people ridiculed “Pingree’s Potato Patches,” the gardens helped feed thousands of Detroit’s working people during the harsh depression years. By 1901, a coalition of reformers who campaigned against New York’s Tammany Hall began to borrow ideas from Pingree and other mayors. In the wealthier wards of New York, they promised to reduce crime and save taxpayer dollars. In working-class neighborhoods, they vowed to provide affordable housing and municipal ownership of gas and electricity. They defeated Tammany’s candidates, and though they did not fulfill all of their promises, they did provide more funding for overcrowded public schools.

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