My Story (2 page)

Together, Johnson and the men of his administration reorganized the police, improved water supply, humanized penal conditions, began to cope with the tuberculosis threat, built parks and playgrounds, instituted regular street cleaning, expanded the paved streets of the city, and most critically, attempted to return government to the people. Johnson accomplished this latter task through a series of tent meetings held throughout the city, which acquainted him with the neighborhoods and, in turn, provided many of the city's immigrants with their first contact with the city's chief executive.

These changes were, however, not the major focus of Johnson's agenda. His principal hopes for his administration were
threefold: the municipal ownership of utilities, the institution of a standard three-cent streetcar fare, and the achievement of home rule for Cleveland. It was in these areas, particularly municipal ownership, that he ran afoul of the business community of Cleveland, for in advocating them he threatened the economic power of the city's private leadership.

Johnson did not fully achieve any of these three goals during his tenure in office. Although a series of debilitating legal confrontations produced a three-cent transit fare by Johnson's fourth term, even this cherished goal was lost by the time he was voted out of office in 1909. Indeed, it has been speculated that the four-term-long battle over the fare so enervated the electorate that they lost interest not only in this single-minded cause but also in Johnson, which is why they allowed him to be turned out of office.

Johnson's quest for municipal ownership focused on both the street railways and electric utilities. His plans for a municipally owned electric plant to counter the monopoly of the private Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company would not be achieved during either his term of office or his lifetime, but rather under the administration of his student and heir, Newton D. Baker. True municipal ownership of local transit would not come about until 1942 with the formation of the Cleveland Transit System, although the formation of the Cleveland Railway Company in 1910 did achieve partial public control of transit.

Again, it was Baker who would oversee the implementation of home rule for Cleveland in 1914. Home rule, which would allow the city to define its governmental structure independently of state guidelines, was necessary for efficiently managing
a growing metropolis as well as a goal that Johnson struggled to achieve during his mayoralty.
⁸

It is the struggle for these unachieved goals that forms the central focus of much of
My Story;
given the primacy of this personal document, it is quite easy to view Cleveland and the Johnson mayoralty solely in terms of the conflicts and controversies the volume depicts. As Johnson viewed his story as a battle with privilege, so have many historians subsequently focused on the divisions that existed in the city between the people who backed Johnson and the business community who felt him to be a class traitor. Yet, it is impossible to understand the extent to which division ran in Cleveland during this time. Certainly, the Republican party went out of its way to find candidates capable of unseating Johnson, and certainly, many of the traction plutocrats justly feared the municipalization of services they monopolized. Voting statistics show that the bulk of Johnson's support came from districts housing the working class.

Yet, the issue is not a simple case of right and wrong, of privilege and people. Many of Johnson's reform measures, including
expanded parks, playgrounds, and health facilities, as well as his intense interest in educating the public about civic duties, were part of the agenda shared by many Progressive reformers, including those who were active in the Chamber of Commerce. And Johnson, indeed, must have applauded the efforts of the chamber's Bath House Committee and Committee on the Housing Problem. We do know, for instance, that Johnson and the Chamber of Commerce worked together in developing what became the nationally significant Group Plan for Cleveland's public buildings. However, it is difficult to grasp how well Johnson's reform efforts did or did not mesh with those taking place all about him in Cleveland during the first decade of this century, as he left no other personal documents with the magnitude of
My Story
. Transcripts of his speeches in the
Congressional Record
provide some insight into his views on free trade and the single tax, and a small number of articles written by him during his mayoralty provide additional glimpses into his philosophy of governmental management. Unfortunately, his personal papers seem to have been lost, although small amounts of Johnson's correspondence can be found scattered in archives throughout the country. Only a small amount of the voluminous office correspondence one might expect from such an active and forceful municipal administration has survived.
⁹

Two biographies, one by Carl Lorenz, published shortly after Johnson's death, and an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation by Eugene Murdock, based largely on interviews with Johnson
associates, fill in some details about Johnson's administration and, particularly, his private life. These works, the scattered minor writings and the unfortunately small archival holdings are all, other than the volume in hand, that exist to document this critical aspect of American Progressive reform.
¹⁰

My Story
, then, must be considered as the single most important surviving primary source concerning Tom L. Johnson's role in the American reform movement and Cleveland's reaction to his mayoral administration. However, the volume must be understood in the context in which it was produced in order to have any utility or validity as a source. Written during the five months preceding Johnson's death in 1911,
My Story
is not a simple autobiography or memoir, but an emotional review of the goals and aspirations of a man consumed by a yet-unfulfilled mission as well as a politician turned out of office by the very “democracy” he sought to educate and serve. The Tom L. Johnson who composed this document was, in the
words of his first biographer, Carl Lorenz, “[a] self-made man falling short of achievement of the results of his opportunities.” The volume is not bitter in tone, but its castigation of the opposition is possibly based more on frustration over goals unachieved than on actual fact. Lorenz notes that Johnson could easily skirt veracity to achieve his political ends: “Truth, half-truth, and untruth were sometimes matters of expediency with him, as with most politicians, and even with statesmen”; and that his political instincts overcame objectivity, causing him to “[make] of his enemies a pack of wolves, of his friends a herd of sheep. He himself was a good hater and a good friend.” Given this, it is not unreasonable to assume that some of the criticism of privilege in the volume was part of a political battle still in progress, a battle in which the book itself was to be considered a useful weapon.
¹¹

If understood in this context,
My Story
becomes less a diatribe against the powers of privilege or an exposé of a city hopelessly divided into people and plutocrats. Rather, it becomes a remarkable examination of the effects of changes taking place in a rapidly urbanizing nation upon a single, vastly talented individual who, like many of his peers in late-nineteenth-century America, began to question existing ideas of wealth and power and to seek the means to make modern urban life more equitable and meaningful for all citizens. That Johnson's brand of reform may have differed from or even antagonized some of his fellow Cleveland Progressives is not a matter of great significance. What is significant is that Johnson was a reformer in a city very concerned with reform, and his efforts, along with those of a broad spectrum of civic-minded individuals, helped move Cleveland into a position of national prominence.

It will remain an enigma as to whether Tom L. Johnson viewed himself as part of a broader spectrum of reform stretching away from his own single tax theories to more conservative programs. It is, however, certain that he died an unfulfilled man strongly at odds with many of his economic peers and, perhaps, with the city he had once served. However, those whom he had served and even contended with thought differently. That Cleveland viewed Tom L. Johnson as a central figure in its tradition of reform and as one of its most valued citizens is testified to by the statue on its Public Square.

J
OHN
J. G
RABOWSKI

¹
Lincoln Steffens,
The Struggle for Self-Government
(New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1906), 183.

²
James Beaumont Whipple, “Cleveland in Conflict: A Study in Urban Adolescence, 1876–1900” (Ph.D. diss., Western Reserve University, 1951). The Whipple dissertation is an extraordinarily detailed and valuable view of this critical twenty-five-year period in the city's history. All population, industrial production, and city-size statistics are derived from William Ganson Rose,
Cleveland: The Making of a City
(1950; reprint, (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990).

³
Public Bath House Committee minutes, Dec. 17, 1901, Greater Cleveland Growth Association Records, Container 5, Vol. 13, The Western Reserve Historical Society. See pp. 114–48 in John J. Grabowski, “A Social Settlement in a Neighborhood in Transition, Hiram House, Cleveland, Ohio, 1896–1926” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1977) for a detailed review of social conditions in Cleveland's center-city neighborhoods in the early 1900s.

⁴
Ronald Weiner, “The New Industrial Metropolis: 1860–1929” in
The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
, ed. David D. Van Tassel and John J. Grabowski (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), xxxiii.

⁵
For a brief review of the evolution of Progressive-era reform in Cleveland see David D. Van Tassel and John J. Grabowski,
Cleveland: A Tradition of Reform
(Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1986), 29–49.

⁶
Cleveland's “tradition of reform” was almost as old as the city. Although that tradition was applied to a wide variety of reforms, it was constant in one major respect: reform in Cleveland was always handled in a conservative manner by the community's leading citizens. Ibid., 1–11.

⁷
Johnson's friendship with George seemingly transcended death. Johnson is buried in his family plot, which adjoins that of Henry George in New York.

⁸
Tom Johnson was fortunate in that when he took office, the city was operating under a Federal system with a strong executive working with a representative council. This system was adopted in 1891, before which time the structure of local government consisted of an unwieldly system of boards and commissions dictated by state law and in which the mayor had little power to appoint officers and hence little ability to address, with force and conviction, the complex needs of the city. Unfortunately, the state still held power over the form of government, and Cleveland's Federal Plan was ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in 1902. This state intrusion upon what Johnson viewed as the city's right to determine its own form of government was one of the major factors underlying his determination to achieve home rule.

⁹
Johnson's surviving mayoral papers are preserved at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Only slightly over four linear feet of routine correspondence dating from 1901 to 1909 have survived to document his vibrant administration. A search by the historical society for Johnson papers held within collections at other archives revealed only small, scattered holdings.

¹⁰
In addition to
My Story
, only one other published work is devoted solely to Tom L. Johnson: Carl Lorenz's
Tom L. Johnson, Mayor of Cleveland
(New York: A. S. Barnes, 1911). Most published histories of Progressivism touch upon Johnson. Perhaps the best single treatment of his administration in a general volume is to be found in Hoyt Landon Warner,
Progressivism in Ohio, 1897–1917
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964). Two of the major unpublished studies relating to Johnson are Eugene Murdock, “Life of Tom L. Johnson” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1951) and Robert L. Briggs, “The Progressive Era in Cleveland, Ohio: Tom L. Johnson's Administration, 1901–1909” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1962). Portions of the Murdock dissertation were published as articles in the
Ohio State Archeological and Historical Quarterly
and the
American Journal of Economics and Sociology
between 1953–1958. One other unpublished study deserves mention, particularly as it focuses on an aspect of Johnson's life that has been overshadowed by his political career. Michael Massouh, “Tom Loftin Johnson, Engineer-Entrepreneur (1869–1900)” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1970), is an interesting work dealing with Johnson as an inventor and businessman.

¹¹
Lorenz, iii–vi.

“M
Y
S
TORY
” was written by Mr. Johnson during the last five months of his life. He did not want to write it. It was undertaken at the instance of some magazine publishers and at the earnest solicitation of a few friends who felt that his own account of his nine years' struggle for a free city ought not to be lost to the world.

All earlier attempts to have Mr. Johnson set down in writing any of his experiences failed. He dismissed such suggestions always with the characteristic comment, “There are so many more important things to do.” He was essentially a man of action and he was not willing to give a day or an hour to anything less vital than his work. He was not introspective, seldom reminiscent. Few men, probably, have lived so little in the past as did he. Anything that was unpleasant he resolutely refused to recall; he wiped it off the slate once for all. For him the game always was, “What will happen next?” When a political worker, believed by many if not by Mr. Johnson himself to have been instrumental in Mr. Johnson's last defeat, asked the ex-mayor for an opportunity to talk things over with him, the answer was, “I am willing to talk with you about to-morrow, but I won't talk about yesterday!”

It was therefore not until he knew that fighting was henceforth out of the question for him, that Mr. Johnson consented to write. Then he was willing to do it, not because
he might expect to derive any pleasure from it, but because it was the only kind of action left him, and he had been persuaded that his story of the Cleveland fight might be of some use to other cities in their struggles to be free. By sheer force of will he dictated “My Story” after he became so ill that the slightest physical or mental effort was a severe strain. He had been wont to say that he wanted to “die in harness,” “just stub his toe and stumble into his grave!” And he did “die in harness.” The narrative breathes throughout all the strength, the good cheer, the hope, which animated his working and fighting days.

Big, brave, dauntless, resourceful soul! He
made
his wish come true.

Had Mr. Johnson lived longer he probably would have added nothing of a personal nature to his story. It was with extreme difficulty that he was induced to include the few delightful personal anecdotes which lend such charm to the early chapters. “Those, things have nothing to do with the fight against Privilege,” he would protest, and he could not be made to understand that anything which appertained solely to himself was of any interest or value.

One is disposed to respect this lack of self-consciousness almost to the point of adding nothing to the narrative. It is because the readers of this book are entitled to an account of the year and three months of Mr. Johnson's life after he left the mayor's office in Cleveland that the last chapter of the volume has been written.

Aside from the preparation of this last chapter the editing of “My Story” has consisted only in dividing the book into chapters and supplying their headings, and, here and there, where some principle or policy seemed to
demand emphasis or explanation, in elaborating a little the original statement. When this has been done the elaboration is given in Mr. Johnson's words. Although he was not a writer, it happens that a public address made by him upon the question of Privilege — an address which treats so comprehensively of the cause, the results, and the cure of Privilege, that little or nothing seems to be left to be said on the subject — was taken down and preserved. This address has served as a reference from which to draw such elucidation as has seemed necessary.

For readers who did not know Mr. Johnson, and who cannot read between the lines of “My Story” much which the author has not told, a note of introduction is offered. He has said so little of the overwhelming odds against which he fought and conquered, of the fierceness of the storm which raged about him during the whole of the Cleveland conflict, of the daring and original methods in political work by which he forced achievements possible to every large city! There is humor and sweetness and poise and power to be found in “My Story,” but it is the story of a man who never knew what a momentous figure he was. Not the least of his greatness is his unconsciousness of it.

Tom L. Johnson was a pioneer in politics in the doing of things because they were right rather than because they were expedient. He believed in the people, and he addressed himself to them with a sincerity, vigor, and freshness of method as unusual as they are effective. Sometimes he reached them in mass as through his “picture show” of taxation injustices, a device which antedated by many years the present use of picture illustration in all kinds of social problems. Sometimes he made his appeal
personally, as when, after sitting in the gallery of the State House and listening to the most violent attacks upon himself and his measures, he would hunt up the author of these attacks, never to say a word in his own defense, but always to try to convince his antagonist of the justice of the legislation in question. An anecdote illustrating his success in this direct method of argument is the following:

A few years ago when the Ohio legislature was providing for one of its periodic investigations of the city government of Cincinnati, a hostile member introduced a bill calling for a similar investigation of Cleveland. On the very heels of this action Mayor Johnson sent a message to Representative (now Senator) John N. Stockwell of the Cleveland delegation telling him that he would arrive in Columbus late that night and asking him to arrange for an immediate interview with the member who had introduced the Cleveland investigation bill.

“I wondered what in the world Mr. Johnson could want of G——,” says Senator Stockwell in relating this incident, “but I hunted him up and arranged for the interview. G—— supposed, of course, the mayor was coming to take him to task for his bill. The mayor came, saw G——, told him that what he wanted was his support of some important street railway legislation, explained the measure, convinced G—— of the justice of it, and infused him with so much of his own enthusiasm that that man hustled around the whole of the night seeing other members in the interests of Mr. Johnson's bill, and supported it upon the floor of the house the next day. Mr. Johnson went back to Cleveland without ever referring to G——'s bill to have Cleveland investigated. When I asked him later why he chose G—— of all men to push
his measure and lead in the fight for it, he replied that he thought G—— was a strong man and as he seemed to be our most determined enemy he was clearly the most necessary convert to our measure. He said it would have been foolish to waste precious time in seeing those who would be friendly anyway.”

Mr. Johnson's fights with Republican legislators were mild in comparison with his fights with members of his own party. He was the first political leader in the United States to ask his supporters to vote against candidates of his own party and for those of the opposition. In his campaign for governor he violated all political precedent when he refused to permit many of the customary expenditures. A rich man, or at least reputed to be rich, he not only refused to spend money extravagantly, but he insisted that county committees of the Democratic party should defray the legitimate expenses of their campaigns. Seventy-five dollars he demanded from each county in which he pitched his tent as part of the expense of transporting it. He alienated all the spoilsmen, all the old line machine politicians, and every State convention found them in a struggle with him for supremacy. Sometimes he carried the day and was able to control both platform utterances and choice of candidates. Between these two he preferred always to formulate the platform, for, in his political programme, principles were ever of more importance than persons. And sometimes he lost out, leaving a defeat famous because of the fine spirit in which it was taken. One of Mr. Johnson's epigrams connects itself with such a defeat:

At the State convention in 1908, when he was successful in forcing the adoption of a radical platform, his candidate
for governor, Atlee Pomerene, was beaten by Judson Harmon. It was a crushing blow. Mr. Johnson had put up a tremendous fight.

“What will Johnson do?” was the query that buzzed over that great audience in the convention hall. Feeling was still at white heat, yet, before there was time for reflection or consideration, before the tumult had subsided, with his friends crestfallen and disappointed at his back, his enemies exultant, and yet already apprehensive, turning, as by a common impulse to look at him, Mr. Johnson spoke, and this is what he said, “I make my fights before nominations, not afterwards.”

The soundness of Mr. Johnson's forecast of popular will is seen in many directions to-day. Hardly a progressive measure in evidence in the political thought of the hour but was anticipated and championed by him. Year after year he spent a large part of his time at the State capital urging the passage of measures freeing cities from the grip of franchise corporations. One session he took rooms with members of the Cleveland delegation and spent months about the State House endeavoring to secure juster laws on taxation, laws for municipal ownership and home rule for cities. He was one of the first to agitate for the initiative and referendum and recall, and was an enthusiastic advocate of the short ballot. After he became convinced of the justice of woman suffrage he made several speeches for it, the most notable one in the midst of his mayoralty contest with Mr. Burton. There may be politicians who would do for the woman's cause now what Mr. Johnson did then, but there wasn't another equally prominent public man in the United States who would have done it at that time.

His moral courage, coupled with an intense desire to have social wrongs corrected, caused him often to challenge the authority of those in high places. He had an hour's interview with President Roosevelt during the latter days of the Colonel's administration, and as he was taking his leave, Mr. Johnson said, “The difference between you and me, Mr. President, is this: you are after law-breakers, I am after the law-makers. You would put a man in jail for stealing; I would prevent the theft.”

When the trust question was a paramount issue in American politics Mr. Johnson asked William Jennings Bryan, who was a guest in his house, what he would do to solve that problem if he were in a position of real power as President of the United States with a friendly Congress and all the machinery of government to aid him. As Mr. Bryan suggested remedy after remedy, Mr. Johnson showed him how he, a monopolist, a beneficiary of special privilege, could evade, ignore or safely violate such laws as Mr. Bryan was proposing. By practical illustrations he demonstrated the futility of all legislation which does not strike Privilege at its root which is land monopoly.

Mr. Johnson did not hesitate, upon occasion, to go to leading Democratic office-holders in his own State and give them the benefit of his experience with and observation of dishonest party workers. For their own protection and the good of the state he warned these officials against the traitors in their political camps. Such service was not always graciously received, but time usually justified Mr. Johnson's predictions.

To his administration of Cleveland's affairs Mr. Johnson brought, besides his native resourcefulness, all his
training as a big business man. Himself efficient to the last degree he insisted upon efficiency in others, and every department of the city government showed results because of this.

He applied the merit system to the water works and health departments, though not required by law to do so. Flat rates were abolished for water service, meters installed and the cost of water reduced for ninety per cent. of the consumers. Waste was stopped and in the four years ending in 1909 over one million dollars had been saved to water users.

When Mr. Johnson became mayor the city was disposing of its garbage under the contract plan at an annual cost of $69,000. When the contract expired the city bought the plant, and the very first year under municipal ownership and operation reduced ten thousand more tons of garbage than under the contract method, and at a cost of $10,000 less; and this, notwithstanding a reduction in the hours of employés and an increase of their wages. Later the collection of ashes, waste paper and refuse was also undertaken by the city.

In 1900 the electric light monopoly was charging the city $87.60 a year for each light. By the time Mr. Johnson went out of office, competition of the municipal lighting plant had reduced this cost to $54.96 per light.

Mr. Johnson instituted a building code that was a model for other cities, established meat and dairy inspection, barred milk from tubercular cows, saved householders a million dollars a year by compelling the use of honest weights and measures, created a forestry department for the protection of the city's trees, paved several hundred miles of street, and substituted for the old practice of
sweeping the superior method of cleaning the streets by washing them. He built public bath-houses, comfort stations, and shelter sheds, laid out baseball diamonds, cricket fields and golf links, encouraged band concerts in the parks in summer and skating carnivals in winter, established May Day and Arbor Day festivities.

People were just people to Mr. Johnson and when, soon after his first election as mayor, he deprived the poor of a means of gambling with pennies and nickels by sweeping six thousand slot machines out of the city, he did not neglect to deal a blow to rich gamblers by following this action with a prohibition of pool selling at the Cleveland Driving Park when the time for the fall races arrived.

These many and varied public benefits have been accepted so much as a matter of course that one is disposed to wonder whether the citizens of Cleveland think they have been produced by some automatic agency and without human power.

All of these activities cost money, but Mr. Johnson instituted a purchasing department for the city which saved money by getting a two per cent. discount for the prompt payment of all bills, and established many business economies. The city's assets have increased more than twice as much as her bonded indebtedness. And all of this work was carried on honestly. Cleveland, under Mayor Johnson, was free from graft. No scandal ever attached to the administration. The proof of this assertion was brought out by those who were his enemies. Year after year a hostile State administration sent expert accountants to investigate the city's accounts; unfriendly newspapers did the same thing; franchise corporations employed detectives to hunt for something wrong; all with the same
result! There was no graft. Mr. Steffens was justified in his estimate of Mr. Johnson, as “the best mayor,” and of Cleveland as “the best governed city in the United States.”