Governors and the Progressive Movement - Hardcover

Berman, David R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1607329158 ISBN 13: 9781607329152

Publisher: University Press of Colorado, 2019

Synopsis

Governors and the Progressive Movement is the first comprehensive overview of the Progressive movement’s unfolding at the state level, covering every state in existence at the time through the words and actions of state governors. It explores the personalities, ideas, and activities of this period’s governors, including lesser-known but important ones who deserve far more attention than they have previously been given. During this time of greedy corporations, political bosses, corrupt legislators, and conflict along racial, class, labor/management, urban/rural, and state/local lines, debates raged over the role of government and issues involving corporate power, racism, voting rights, and gender equality―issues that still characterize American politics. Author David R. Berman describes the different roles each governor played in the unfolding of reform around these concerns in their states. He details their diverse leadership qualities, governing styles, and accomplishments, as well as the sharp regional differences in their outlooks and performance, and finds that while they were often disposed toward reform, governors held differing views on issues―and how to resolve them. Governors and the Progressive Movement examines a time of major changes in US history using relatively rare and unexplored collections of letters, newspaper articles, and government records written by and for minority group members, labor activists, and those on both the far right and far left. By analyzing the governors of the era, Berman presents an interesting perspective on the birth and implementation of controversial reforms that have acted as cornerstones for many current political issues. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of US history, political science, public policy, and administration.

About this title

About the Author

David R. Berman is a senior research fellow at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy and a professor emeritus of political science at Arizona State University. He is the author of ten books, including Reformers, Corporations, and the Electorate; Radicalism in the Mountain West, 1890–1920; Politics, Labor, and the War on Big Business; and over 100 published papers, book chapters, or refereed articles dealing with state and local government, politics, and public policy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Governors and the Progressive Movement

By DAVID R. BERMAN

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2019 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-915-2

Contents

Preface, 
1. Progressive Reform and the Governors, 
2. The Flow of Party Politics and Reform, 1890–1920, 
3. Midwesterners Paving the Way: Altgeld, Pingree, La Follette, with Follow-ups by Deneen, Dunne, Osborn, and McGovern, 
4. More from the Midwest: Cummins, Johnson, Folk, Harmon, Cox, and Marshall, 
5. Raising Hell on the Plains: Lewelling, Hoch, Stubbs, Sheldon, Burke, and Norbeck, 
6. Mixing Race and Reform in the South: The Deep South, with Tillman, Blease, Vardaman, Bilbo, Hoke Smith, and Comer, 
7. The Southern Periphery: Broward, Davis, Hogg, and Haskell, 
8. The Upper South: Not So Southern, a Succession of Progressive Governors, 
9. Going East: Roosevelt, Hughes, Al Smith, Governing and Dealing with the Bosses, 
10. Wilson of New Jersey, Scholar and Tactician, Confronting the Bosses, 
11. The Rest of the East: Republican and Conservative, Doing What Could Be Done with Boss and Corporate Control and Only Limited Power, 
12. Western "Radicalism": Hiram Johnson, Curtailing the Railroads, Getting beyond Politics as Usual, 
13. Agitation and Activity in the Northwest: Chamberlain, West, Rogers, and Carey, 
14. The Southwest: Shafroth, Bamberger, and Hunt, 
15. Governors and Reform: The Record and the Legacy, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Progressive Reform and the Governors

The Populist and Progressive movements in the United States, starting in the last decade of the nineteenth century and running through the first two of the twentieth century, though differing in their base of support, had some common themes. Among the most central of these were the need to purify and democratize the governmental system through political and structural reforms, the need to rein in the political and economic power of giant corporations, and, more broadly, the need to bring to power an energetic and positive government that would serve the interests of the many rather than a privileged few.

Though reform activity first took root on the local level in many states, much of the critical action from 1890 to 1920 took place at the state level. The states had the authority — they could act in a variety of areas, and their willingness to do so was of extreme importance to a flood of reformers, organizations, and interest groups. The initial problem was getting the states to respond. Throughout the country reformers on the state level strove to democratize and purify state political systems. Once the choke hold of the corrupting special interests on government was broken and power was turned over to the people, reformers felt they could move on to address matters of basic economic and social justice.

In a time of rapid industrialization and urbanization, reform meant more spending on such matters as public education, roads, health protection, and to help out those who needed help, even though this meant departing from the norm of individualism, increasing the functions of government, and raising taxes. Reform also meant not only harnessing the power of large corporations but distributing economic benefits more widely and shifting more of the tax burden to the wealthy through personal income, inheritance, and corporate taxes. On the labor front it involved hour and wage regulations, factory and mine inspection, worker's compensation, and ending injunctions against organizing unions. Reformers too thought in terms of improving morality by curbing or banning drinking and gambling, and many went off in the direction of perfecting the population through eugenics legislation. Many focused on prison reform and the abolition of the death penalty, protecting the rights of workers on industrial battlegrounds, and coping with violent vigilante actions and riots in minority areas.

Interests, Machines, Legislators, Divisions among Reformers

Much of the initial and continuing focus of reformers was on destroying the network of special interest politics and corruption formed by leading business interests, political machines associated with the major parties, and officeholders, especially state legislators. They saw corrupt governing systems throughout the country.

Reformers targeted a variety of large businesses, including those engaged in railroading, telephone and telegraph services, the provision of gas and electricity, transit, insurance, banking, mining, and timber. Railroads were an early and special target just about everywhere. Charges against them included not paying their fair share of the taxes, setting excessive and discriminatory passenger and freight rates, being partial to particular shippers, hording land allocated to them by the federal or state governments needed for development, mistreatment of their employees, and through means ranging from giving free railroad passes to direct cash bribes to politicians and lavishly entertaining them, corrupting the political system. Meanwhile, on the local level public utilities, especially local street railway (aka traction) companies got unlimited franchises and everything else they wanted through the bribery of city officials.

During the 1890s and early 1900s reformers put a great deal of emphasis on the corrupting effects of the railroad pass. A leading Populist, for example, argued that "the power for evil of the Free Pass Bribery System is far greater than bribery with money. Few men can be bribed with money, but many men can be bribed with a free railroad pass." All this led to a situation in which "Instead of public officials compelling railroads to obey the law, the railroads compel the public officials to serve them and betray the people." Railroad officials and other spokespeople for large corporations saw the problem differently. To many a business person, paying off legislators was simply a routine cost of doing business and businesspeople were not the only ones to be blamed. As mining entrepreneur William A. Clark, who routinely bribed state legislators, said in his own defense: "I never bought a man who wasn't for sale." Often legislators took the initiative and "sandbagged" businesspeople by threatening to push for laws detrimental to them if no bribe was forthcoming. In 1904 an observer in Missouri compared the sandbagger to the "corrupt and unscrupulous" highwayman who "places not a revolver" but a "legislative bill to the head of his victim and demands money."

In the period 1890–1920, as now, people used the term "political machine" as a pejorative to put a bad label on a political organization they did not like. Still, in many parts of the country those who used the term had a clear vision of a particular type of political organization associated with either the Republican or Democratic Party headed by a boss who was able to deliver enough votes to heavily influence, if not control, the actions of elected state and local officials. As boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City, Missouri, put it: "The delivery of the votes is what counts ... Politics is a business, just like anything else." Bosses were in the business of controlling party nominations and winning elections. They thrived by rewarding those who worked for them with governmental jobs and by selling their ability to control legislation and administrative decisions to those willing to pay for their services.

Party bosses did not always oppose Progressive reform — some were "easy bosses" willing to go along, especially when championing change looked like it would facilitate getting their candidates elected, but they could be expected to draw the line when it came to proposals directly affecting the welfare of their organization, such as ending patronage, or those deemed harmful to clients they represented.

While power in some states rested in highly organized political organizations controlled by a party boss or a few bosses, in others one found less formal networks of party officeholders and workers aligned with prominent officeholders. Often considerable control was in the hands of a clique headed by a US senator who led the dominant faction within one of the major parties. Conflict in these cases took the form of a struggle between two factions of the same party, one side trying to bring change, while the other, being tied to the status quo and being close to the dominant economic interests, opposed change. The story in much of the western part of the country, a region where party organizations were relatively weak, was not so much one of reformers attacking party bosses or highly structured and disciplined political party machines as it was one of reformers directly attacking the corporate interests, often the railroads and the mines, and their allies or stooges in office.

Throughout the country reformers of the late 1890s and early 1900s strove to clean up corruption and combat special interest influence through direct primaries, which gave ordinary party members or registered voters at large an opportunity to choose the nominees of political parties for various offices, including state legislative seats, taking that power away from party bosses meeting with corporate representatives in the proverbial "smoke-filled rooms" at party conventions. They also sought an end to patronage appointments through civil service laws and corrupt-practices acts that put limitations on campaign contributions and required disclosure of where the money came from and how it was spent.

Many saw malfunctioning state legislators to be at the heart of the problem of governance. In addition to the safeguards regarding campaigns and elections, reformers called for laws putting limits on lobbying and requiring disclosure of who was lobbying for what. Some reformers also proposed to improve the legislative process by increasing research and bill drafting services, reducing the number of legislators, or creating smaller, more efficient, and transparent one-house legislative bodies. Another and broader thrust of the reform effort was to shift more of the responsibility for governing from state legislatures to the people directly, the governor, or neutral, nonpolitical, competent experts in administrative agencies, though there was little agreement on which of the three directions was most preferable. As a consequence, the movement was filled with contradictory ideas. For example, while promoting the idea of popular control of government, some Progressives also wanted to do away with several elective offices and also called for a greater shift of responsibility to nonelected expert administrators under civil service protection.

As far as the legislators were concerned, high among the most objectionable proposed reforms were those allowing citizens to completely bypass the legislature and make their own laws through the initiative process, challenge what the legislature had done through a referendum procedure that subjected these decisions to a vote of the people, and, if necessary, to recall legislators, as well as other elected officials, from office prior to the expirations of their terms if they were not meeting citizen expectations as to performance and conduct.

Progressives drew upon widespread feelings that government responded to the interests of a privileged few rather than to those of ordinary people and that there was a need for an activist government at the state level that would protect the many from the few and the weak from the strong. They saw a need for a crusade against injustice, corruption, the special influence of big business, and the invisible government of special interests that ran things.

They faced the opposition of reactionary stand-pat politicians, defenders of the party machines and the corporate interests, and others who benefited from the status quo or believed in only limited reform. Within the Republican Party the conflict was commonly defined as between the Progressive "insurgents" who were out to wrest control of the party from the leading corporate interests in their states and the conservative "Standpatters" who liked things the way they were. Opponents of reform on the Republican side were also commonly called "Stalwart Republicans."

One group of limited reformers — known by a variety of titles, including Cleveland or Bourbon Democrats, Mugwump Republicans, Independents, good government people (goo-goos), and structural reformers — believed in honesty and efficiency in government but did not seek far-ranging political, economic, or social change and, indeed, often opposed those who did. Populists and Progressives also favored honesty and efficiency but had a far broader focus. They believed in fundamental reform and considered the honesty and efficiency types to be narrow-minded conservatives and as much of an enemy to meaningful reform as the reactionaries in both parties. For their part, the honesty and efficiency types, as defenders of individualism and laissez-faire, were frightened by what they saw as the extreme radicalism of the Populists and the Progressive reformers who followed in their footsteps. Many of these underlying issues were found in the division between Bryan and Cleveland Democrats (see chapter 2).

Rise of the Governors

This office of governor had been a strong one in the colonial period. Usually appointed by the Crown, the governor had virtually complete control over legislative matters, enjoyed full appointive powers when filling governmental positions, and in some places even headed the highest court in the colony. Over time, however, governors became the central target of the colonists' hostility toward the Crown. This history contributed to the willingness of the framers of most of the first state constitutions to limit the power of the office. As a result, governors were usually appointed by the legislature, served only one-year terms, and lacked the power to veto legislation. New York and Massachusetts were exceptions when it came to the strength of the office. In these states governors were elected by the voters and had the veto power.

During the first half of the nineteenth century poor performance on the part of state legislatures prompted state constitutional changes improving the legal status of the governor: the office became popularly elective everywhere, and governors were given longer terms, veto authority, and more power to appoint. With the liberalization of suffrage restrictions for white males, governors also gained the opportunity to strengthen their status as political leaders by developing a large statewide constituency.

At the same time, however, the movement toward greater democracy stimulated by Andrew Jackson also reduced the ability of the governor to act as chief administrator. Jacksonian democracy brought the election not only of the governor but a large number of other state administrators. Proponents argued that democracy depended not only on how many could vote but on how many officials they could vote for, even though the people who were elected, such as the state treasurer, had little discretionary authority. The result was to seriously fragment executive authority, making it virtually impossible for the governor or any other single executive to control the executive branch as a whole. The problem of control worsened as the states responded to each problem they had to address with the creation of a new administrative agency headed by a board whose members had terms that put them beyond the control of any single governor serving one or two short terms.

While more independent of the legislature, the office of governor continued throughout the nineteenth century to be a weak and relatively unattractive one. Writing in the late 1880s, the best thing British observer James Bryce felt could be said was that the state governor was "not yet a nonentity" but close to it because of the dominance of the state legislature. Many of those who served as governor during the nineteenth century did so in the Whig tradition of a dignified but generally passive, low-key chief executive who was willing to let the legislature do most of the governing. To some, the governor was, at best, "a great office manager."

In 1891, John Altgeld, a future governor of Illinois, expressed his skepticism over the value of the office of governor as a position to lead the cause of reform. He claimed no governor in the last decade had done anything "of an enduring character for their country or for the progress of civilization ... anything that can be regarded as raising the standard of public morals, creating a healthy public sentiment, or solving in a proper manner any of the great questions, both economic and social, that are calling for solution." Altgeld suggested that the problem was largely due to a lack of leadership — the simple failure of the people who held the office to stand up and do the right thing — rather than the weakness of the office itself. They could and should do more. Other critics around this time supplied a different reason for the failure of governors to do much of anything worthwhile: they were simply the stooges of political bosses and the special interests that were ripping off the public.

To some, matters had not improved by the turn of the century. Writing in 1904, muckraker Lincoln Steffens concluded that Robert La Follette of Wisconsin was one of the few governors who actually qualified as "head of the State." To Steffens "most governors are simply 'safe men' set up as figureheads by the System, which is the actual government that is growing up in the United States in place of the 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'" Steffens viewed the "System" as one in which "the leading politicians of both parties conduct the government in the interest of those leading businesses which seek special privileges and pay for them with bribes and the 'moral' support of graft."

Scholars were to add their own negative assessments of the office during the Progressive period. While noting that some governors like Robert La Follette, Hiram Johnson, and Woodrow Wilson had succeeded as legislative leaders, political scientist Austin Macdonald saw these few leaders as exceptions who "were endowed with unusual powers of leadership that captivated the public." "Most governors," Macdonald concluded in 1927, "have not possessed to such a high degree the rare quality of leadership, and so have been rewarded with nothing but popular disapproval. The governorship may sometimes be a stepping-stone to fame; usually it is a toboggan to political oblivion." He saw the

office as essentially a weak one that offered little in terms of compensation or an opportunity for accomplishment. It fell far short of offering anything "to make the job sufficiently attractive to draw the type of men we need."

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607329158
• ISBN 13: 9781607329152
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 344