Ohio History Journal

HENRY T. HUNT AND CIVIC REFORM

IN CINCINNATI, 1903-1913

 

by LANDON WARNER

Associate Professor of History, Kenyon College

 

One April day in 1903 two law students were watching with

interest and curiosity the voting processes during a municipal

election in their native city, Cincinnati.¹ Stationed near a polling

booth in one of the notorious precincts along the river front, they

witnessed a long line of Negro voters shuffle from the Silver Moon

"flophouse," through the polling place, and with quickened step

into a businesslike office across the street. Here each elector

exchanged a small metal disc, received from the party watcher

in the voting booth if his ballot had been marked as instructed,

for a two-dollar bill. The procedure was open and unabashed,

conducted with an amoral disregard of the corrupt-practice code,

its pains and penalties.²

"The spectacle produced a species of political fury in one of

the law students," Henry T. Hunt.³ He privately resolved to

challenge this shameless fraud and fight for clean government

for his city. Short and slender, with a jaunty carriage and a boyish,

infectious smile, his looks seemed to belie an aggressive character.

But when he was aroused, the tight set of his jaw, the thrust of

his chest gave testimony of his fighting determination. Hunt was

then twenty-five, about to graduate from the Cincinnati Law

School and enter the bar. He had been born April 29, 1878, into a

 

1 This article is largely drawn from the author's doctoral thesis, Ohio's Crusade

for Reform, 1897-1917. Since all references are fully documented in the above

manuscript, which is available upon request in the Harvard College Library, the

author has refrained from citing references for every factual statement in order to

conserve space. The principal primary sources are the files for the period of the

Cincinnati newspapers, the Enquirer, Post, and Times-Star, the Cleveland Plain

Dealer, and Ohio State Journal (Columbus); articles by such participants as Elliott

Pendleton, Henry T. Hunt, Herbert Bigelow, A. J. Freiberg, and S. Gale Lowrie;

interviews with Bigelow, Graham P. Hunt, and Edward Alexander. The most

significant secondary literature is cited in footnotes below.

2 This is paraphrased from Henry T. Hunt, "Obligations of Democracy," Yale

Review, New Series, VI (1916-17), 598.

3 Ibid., 598.

146

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati        147

 

respected, well-to-do family of Cincinnati, conservative Democrats

except for an eccentric uncle who was a Henry George disciple.

His father, as a trustee of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, had

helped to prevent the theft of that municipally owned line by

a New York syndicate. Harry was sent to Yale, and since his

graduation in 1900, he had been attending law school.⁴

The spectacle which Harry Hunt observed on that April day

was the political machine of George Barnsdale Cox in action.

This self-styled Republican "boss," who operated behind the

scenes, had gained a stranglehold on the Queen City. The hard

kernel of his political strength was a tight, disciplined gang of

5,000 petty jobholders, each of whom was required to deliver

four or five votes for the machine candidates on election day.

Still Cox's continued success rested on a broader base. He attracted

the votes of the prosperous German element of small tradesmen

and house owners by compelling a low-tax policy and lax enforce-

ment of the Sunday closing laws for saloons. Furthermore, he

favored their leaders in selecting nominees for mayor and con-

trolled the German-language press by liberal awards of city and

county advertising. He also benefited from the Republican tariff

policy, which could not be too strongly protectionist to please the

manufacturing interests of the city. This tie with the business

community, so vital to his continued power, he encouraged in other

ways. He catered to the utilities and other interests seeking favors

from the city, granted franchises written according to the cor-

poration's specifications, winked at illegal infringements of contracts

with the local government, prevented nuisance and reform legis-

lation, and protected them in low tax assessments.⁵

For the most part the Cox machine operated within the letter

of the law and was free from any major scandals. In 1903 the

boss had raised himself in the esteem of the better classes by

becoming president of the Cincinnati Trust Company. He was

 

4 Sources of biographical data on Hunt are: Brand Whitlock, "Henry T. Hunt,"

American Magazine, LXXIV (1912), 297; Thomas E. Powell, ed., The Democratic

Party of the State of Ohio (2 vols., n.p., 1913), II, 207-208.

5 The most detailed analysis of Cox's methods and organization is to be found

in Frank Parker Stockbridge, "The Biggest Boss of Them All," Hampton's Magazine,

XXVI (1911), 616-629.

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148     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

courted by Ohio's two United States Senators, Joseph B. Foraker

and Marcus A. Hanna, who needed his support.

There had been uprisings against Cox's rule in the 1890's; one

of them temporarily dethroned him in 1897, but the fusion ad-

ministration under the leadership of the affable, weak Gustav

Tafel was soon destroyed by defections stimulated by Cox. In the

spring of 1903 another abortive movement was staged against the

boss. A committee of twenty-six organized a nonpartisan ticket

under the label of the Citizens Municipal Party, headed by

Melville E. Ingalls, president of the Big Four Railroad. The

opponents of bossism, however, were split into warring factions.

There were the Vine Street Church "radicals," led by Herbert

Bigelow and Daniel Kiefer, single taxers and advocates of such

radical measures as municipal ownership of utilities and the

initiative and referendum.⁶ They were considered a lunatic fringe

by the Democratic aristocrats, Judson Harmon, Ingalls, Judge

Hiram Peck, and his son John Weld Peck, both corporation

attorneys. The only point these conservatives and radicals shared

in common was their opposition to Cox and his Democratic allies,

the John R. McLean-Lewis Bernard faction, who had a working

agreement with the boss to share municipal patronage. Although

the various Democratic groups had promised to support the

Citizens Municipal slate, they reneged on their pledges, and the

machine candidate, Julius Fleischman, wealthy, respected manu-

facturer, defeated Ingalls by a plurality of 15,500.

When Harry Hunt decided to join the fight against boss rule,

the reformers faced a prodigious labor. They had to break through

public apathy, demonstrate the true character of the Cox machine,

and develop their own organization. After the election the dis-

heartened Democratic politicians left the burden of continuing

the crusade against Coxism to a Committee of Nine, all college

graduates and political amateurs. As one of this group Harry Hunt

gained his first experience in politics.

 

6 Biographical source material on Bigelow and Kiefer is in: Frank Parker Stock-

bridge, "Ohio Wide Awake," Everybody's, XXVII (1912), 696-707; Brand Whitlock,

"Daniel Kiefer," American Magazine, LXXIV (1912), 549-553; Brand Whitlock,

"Herbert S. Bigelow," American Magazine, LXXV (1912), 30.

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati        149

Their guiding spirit was another Democrat, Elliott Pendleton,

nephew of Senator George B. Pendleton. Tall, aristocratic in mien,

graduate of Harvard, and a talented amateur actor, he lent an air

of unimpeachable respectability to the movement. But, more than

this, he contributed a contagious enthusiasm for reform and dis-

played a fearlessness that strengthened the timid in opposing

Cox. Pendleton financed and edited the Citizens Bulletin, a weekly

devoted to good citizenship and an expose of the Cox regime.

The gang sneered at this erudite sheet, with a quotation from

Seneca's Pilot at its masthead, and others from Virgil, Plato, and

John Fiske liberally sprinkled through its columns. Nevertheless,

it appealed to members in the upper bracket of the business

community and brought home to them the serious faults of the

existing administration. Pendleton stressed the need for improved

street paving, greater economy and efficiency in city departments,

and better schools.⁷

This last issue, especially, gave the cause publicity, because the

Cincinnati schools, the finest in the country in the 1870's, had

fallen into a deplorable state. In 1904 Hunt was appointed a

member of a committee organized to fight for the removal of the

schools from Cox control by taking their management out of

politics. The next year the young lawyer was one of the principal

lieutenants in the municipal election campaign to try once again

to stamp out bossism. He joined the Honest Election Committee,

organized by J. Chandler Harper, general counsel for the Scripps-

McRae League, "an old-fashioned scrupulously honest lawyer,"⁸ and

including Pendleton, John Weld Peck, Graham P. Hunt, and L. C.

Black, a Republican attorney.

When the Democratic city convention met on September 29,

1905, the reformers were in control, radicals and conservatives

suppressing their differences to unite against Cox. Judson Harmon

delivered the keynote address, and a slate of honest moderates was

 

7 A fine appraisal of Pendleton's contribution is contained in George Kibbe Turner,

"The Thing Above the Law, the Rise and Rule of George B. Cox and His Overthrow

by Young Hunt and the Fighting Idealists of Cincinnati," McClure's, XXXVIII

(1912), 586-587; Henry C. Wright, Bossism in Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1905),

139-140.

8 Negley D. Cochran, E. W. Scripps (New York, 1933), 63.

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150     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

nominated. To head the ticket Edward J. Dempsey was the unani-

mous choice. A lawyer, friend of Clarence Darrow, and judge of

the Cincinnati superior court, with a distinguished record in pro-

tecting the city against the grasping utilities, he was acceptable to

both camps. The nonpartisan Citizens Municipal Party gave the

Democratic nominee their backing, thereby assuring a combined

assault on Coxism by all the opposition elements in the city.

In their campaign the reformers were aided by a barrage of

anti-Cox publicity. The Cincinnati Post blazed at the boss with

every journalistic device: news articles, editorials, and cartoons from

the pen of Homer Davenport. A magazine article and a book

further publicized the Cincinnati situation. In July 1905 McClure's

published Lincoln Steffens' "Ohio: A Tale of Two Cities."⁹ Begun

in January 1904, then set aside after Mark Hanna's death, it was

revived when sentiment against bossism was riding high both

in Ohio and in the country. What Steffens did to expose the

methods and character of the Cox machine in his flamboyant,

dramatic style was done more thoroughly, if less excitingly, by

Henry C. Wright, a social worker and secretary of the Citizens

Municipal Party, in his book Bossism in Cincinnati.10

As the campaign drew near its end the reformers received

additional ammunition from an unexpected quarter. In 1905 the

state elections coincided with the municipal ones, and Democratic

orators were flaying the Republican candidate for governor,

Myron T. Herrick, because of his ties with the Cincinnati boss.

On October 21 in a speech at Akron, the purport of which was

to underscore Herrick's integrity and independence from Cox,

William Howard Taft, then secretary of war, made the startling

admission, "If I were able . . . to cast my vote in Cincinnati at

the coming election, I should vote against the municipal ticket

nominated by the Republican organization." He continued with a

picture of the strangling effect of Cox's control on party nominations

and elections, which drove young independent candidates out of

politics.11 This denunciation had the explosive force of a bomb-

9 McClure's, XXV, 293-311.

10 See footnote 7.

11 Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati Post, October 22, 1905. The Cincinnati

Times-Star refused to print the speech.

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati   151

 

shell. The Democrats in Cincinnati and throughout the state were

jubilant.

Even greater was the rejoicing of the Cincinnati reformers when

they read the election returns. Edward Dempsey and the entire

Democratic municipal, county, and legislative ticket were elected,

the mayor by a 7,000 vote majority. This "furious revolt" was

attributed to Taft's attack on Cox and the work of the Honest

Election Committee in uncovering fraudulent registrations and

policing the voting booths. On election night, when the trend at

the polls was obvious, although the tabulations were far from

complete, George Cox hoisted the white flag and announced his

retirement from active political life.

As the reformers prepared to clean house at home, Henry Hunt,

who had been swept into the state house of representatives in the

Democratic tidal wave, turned his attention to promoting their

legislative program for stripping the Cox machine of some of its

legal advantages. Because of a constitutional amendment shifting

state elections from the odd to even years, this assembly met in

regular session twice, once in 1906 and again in 1908. Hunt

played the modest role of a freshman legislator. On one occasion

he showed his stubborn and somewhat quixotic nature, to the

dismay of his friends, by casting the only vote against a two-

cent-per-mile passenger fare bill, which reformers had been

urgently advocating. He objected because he thought the rate

arbitrary, not related to service, and because no debate was allowed.

Together with others in the Hamilton County delegation he

succeeded in winning approval for most of the electoral changes

demanded at home: direct-primary elections for the nomination

Mf all candidates except for state office and congress, strengthening

of the corrupt-practice code, a nonpartisan ballot for school-board

candidates, and repeal of the Dana law, which had prohibited a

nominee from appearing in more than one place on the ballot.

Two other measures were strongly favored by the Hamilton

County men because they knew they would be offensive to Cox.

One amended the school code to make a small board mandatory

Instead of optional, thus forcing a cut in the number of members

n Cincinnati. The other was the Paine act, directed at the municipal

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152     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

code which had been drafted in 1902 in a form so favorable to the

wishes of the Cincinnati boss that it was derisively labeled by its

critics the "Cox Code." The Paine amendment replaced the

cumbersome boards of public works and public safety with single

directors appointed by the mayor, and extended the merit system

to all municipal departments.

Not only did the Hamilton County members try to curb the

boss's power by legislation but they also sought to expose his

practices by investigation. Such a legislative inquiry had been

demanded by Mayor Dempsey following his election. After con-

siderable parliamentary jockeying the probe was begun on February

23, 1906. The Drake Committee, so-called after its chairman,

John C. Drake, an Erie County Democrat, uncovered evidence that

one of Cox's lieutenants, Rud Hynicka, when county treasurer,

had pocketed $30,000 in interest on public funds from banks

favored as depositories. Graft and bribery were discovered in the

sale of private turnpikes to the county and in the construction of

bridges. The committee unearthed evidence that George Cox had

tampered with justice in attempting to persuade certain judges to

reverse a judgment in a lower court against the Lane and Bodley

engineering firm, a suit in which the city was the plaintiff.¹²

Late in March County Prosecutor Hiram Rulison, a Cox appointee,

yielding to popular clamor, called together a grand jury to in-

vestigate the misappropriation of funds by the county treasurers

revealed by the Drake Committee. Leading bankers and Boss Cox

himself were arraigned before the jurors, but no bills of indictment

were drawn. The jury argued that the wrongdoing was "technical,"

a custom followed in every county in the state by Democrats as

well as Republicans, and considered it sufficient that three former

county treasurers had returned over $200,000 of their illegal

funds.¹³ Although some applauded this action, others spoke con-

temptuously of the "whitewash"in Cincinnati.14

Meanwhile foes of the investigation had not been idle. A suit

 

12 A digest of the report of the Drake Committee as printed in the Ohio State

Journal and Cincinnati Enquirer, January 15, 1908.

13 Cincinnati Enquirer, March 22, April 1, 1906.

14 Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 1, 1906.

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati     153

 

was instituted to test the constitutionality of the Drake Committee

and tried before the Hamilton County circuit court, which held

that the body was illegal because its functions involved a usurpation

of judicial power. Although the committee tried to continue its

hearings for a few days in defiance of the court, it was forced to

adjourn on April 26. This initial investigation was important in

unveiling the seamy side of Cox's methods. Yet it failed in its

major objective of impelling Cincinnatians to drive from office the

remaining Cox Republicans untouched by the Democratic land-

slide of the preceding November. When the state supreme court

confirmed the opinion of the circuit judges, Senator Thomas P.

Schmidt of Cleveland, a member of the Drake Committee,

prophetically remarked that "the decision really means the re-

juvenation of the Cox gang."¹⁵ The accuracy of his prophecy was

borne out in the fall returns of 1906: the Republican machine in

Hamilton County elected its entire ticket of state and county

officers, congressmen, and judges.

This remarkable reversal within a year's time was in large

measure the result of dissension among those who had supported

Dempsey in 1905. There were many jarring elements to crack his

administration apart. Reform Republicans whose votes had brought

the mayor victory wanted all partisanship eliminated from govern-

ment, while Democrats besieged him to turn the Republicans out

and install loyal party men. He was hounded, on the one hand,

by people who had fought Cox on the saloon issue alone and wanted

the "lid" clamped down tight; on the other, by people who believed

Cincinnati was entitled to a continental Sunday. To get along he

had to compromise, incurring the disfavor of extremists on both

sides. He made partisan appointments but did his best to select

good men. He enforced the midnight closing law, destroyed public

gambling places and slot machines, and refused to renew the

licenses of notorious dancing halls.16

His administration did succeed in breathing fresh vigor into

municipal government, in reminding the people that the city was

 

15 Interview in Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 18, 1906.

16 For an appraisal of Dempsey's difficulties, see the special article by a very able

political reporter, W. S. Couch, in the Plain Dealer, April 1, 1906.

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154     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

concerned with their lives, not merely property and taxes. It com-

pleted the waterworks begun under Tafel and installed a filtration

plant, practically eliminating typhoid fever; crusaded against impure

milk; investigated foul and disease-ridden tenements and inaugurated

new ordinances on crowding, air space, and sanitation; instituted

a comprehensive park program; began a new hospital; paved and

cleaned the streets; introduced natural gas; wrung transfer con-

cessions from the street-railway company; established a bureau of

municipal research; and revolutionized the policy toward the

schools.17

Impressive as these physical improvements were, the Dempsey

administration still failed to clean its own house and instill in the

people a civic consciousness. One of the newly elected officials

excited derision by appealing to the notorious councilman, Mike

Mullen, to fix up legislation to increase the emoluments of his

office. The taint of corruption besmirched the waterworks project.

The police force, often the citizen's only contact with his govern-

ment, remained hostile to the new administration. Dempsey himself

lacked the aggressiveness, the intellectual compulsion, to be the type

of crusader the situation demanded.

By the fall of 1907 he was under attack from former partisans.

Conservatives criticized his political confidants, the Vine Street

radicals, as a "clique of half socialists, half reformers."¹⁸ Another

group expressed their distress at the mayor's nepotism. On October

1, 1907, the Democrats held their city convention, renominating

Dempsey for mayor and Frank L. Pfaff for vice mayor, as well as a

number of other incumbents. Nine of the nominees, among them

Pfaff, sent in their resignations. An effort was made by independent

Republicans and Democrats to induce Dempsey to withdraw. When

this failed, a committee of fifty of them, including E. H. Pendleton

and other former Dempsey supporters, met to name a City Party

ticket, which Pfaff was persuaded to head. Dominated by business-

men, the new party adopted the slogan, "A dollar's worth of

 

17 Elliott H. Pendleton, "Address," Proceedings of the National Municipal League

(1909), 4-5; Charles P. Taft, City Management, The Cincinnati Experiment (New

York, 1933), 12-13.

18 Remark of M. E. Ingalls, quoted in the Cincinnati Enquirer, November 7, 1906.

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati     155

 

government for every dollar's worth of taxes," and condemned the

bosses of both parties. The Cincinnati Post swung its editorial

batteries behind the new party.

The Republican machine nominated the respectable Leopold

Markbreit, editor of the Volksblatt and water commissioner. They

had the advantage of any party out of power, namely, to attack

the mistakes of those in office. Still the split among the opposition

was their strongest asset. When the votes were counted, the

Republican candidates had won by majorities between 9,000 and

12,000 over the combined vote of the Democratic and City Party

opponents. Cox greeted the returns as the "greatest victory for

Republicanism ever known in Cincinnati."¹⁹ The collar of the boss

was once again around the city's neck.

In 1908 the reformers attempted to regain their lost momentum

by renewing the legislative probe of Cincinnati and Hamilton

County. A satisfactory committee was named and an appropriation

of $35,000 approved, but the state auditor, after an appeal from

Cox, questioned the legality of the committee, refusing to pay any

vouchers until the doubt was cleared. "To use a mining phrase,"

explained the Ohio State Journal, "the contention is the legislature

cannot grub-stake a muck-raking expedition."²⁰ The courts sus-

tained the auditor's objections, declaring the committee uncon-

stitutional. As a result no investigation was made.

One of the Cincinnati reformers refused to bow to this defeat.

Henry Hunt, at the urging of his friend Graham Hunt, was

persuaded to run for prosecuting attorney to carry on the probe

through the only channel which the courts had left open, inquest

by grand jury. Young Harry was elected in November 1908, at

the same time as a Democratic judge, Frank M. Gorman. George

Cox, who had treated their nominations as a joke, was greatly

disturbed by their election and sought to protect himself against

these intruders. The calendar of the court of common pleas was

so arranged that Gorman could not serve on the criminal bench

for two years. Hunt was hampered at every turn. He was shadowed

 

19 Cincinnati Enquirer, November 6, 1907.

20 Ohio State Journal, May 10, 1908.

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156     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

by detectives; corrupt and docile clerks turned over his corre-

spondence and data to the Cox gang; and attorneys were hired to

harass him. Nevertheless, he showed he had the nerve and

tenacity for the job, shutting down gambling rooms and driving

out the slot machines and bucket shops from the county.21

Reelected in 1910 by double the plurality of the previous election,

he took office on the day Gorman occupied the chair of the pre-

siding judge of the criminal branch of the common pleas court,

the very contingency Cox and his gang had feared. Under a little-

used law Judge Gorman issued a special venire for a grand jury

panel, selecting prominent businessmen, many of whom were

members of the City Club, the principal good-government or-

ganization of Cincinnati.

The jury indicted Joseph Baschang, henchman of Cox and deputy

collector of liquor licenses, for taking bribes from disorderly houses

and saloons to keep them off the tax list; the director of public

service and chief engineer for accepting inferior cement for a

contract paving job; and, finally, George B. Cox for perjury on

the charge that he had lied when he told the grand jury in 1906

that he had never received any money paid by the banks to the

county treasurer as interest on the deposit of public funds. Hurt

and angered, Cox fought back, first obtaining an injunction from

two circuit court judges to prevent Gorman from trying the case

because of bias and prejudice, then having it quashed by a friendly

Republican judge.²²

Though Cox avoided trial, he felt obliged on May 21, 1911,

to announce his retirement for the good of the party. His opponents,

however, remained highly skeptical of the genuineness of his de-

cision, since twice before he had announced his withdrawal and

then returned. Nevertheless, this time ill health and extensive

business affairs did make his choice a final one.

Their hopes buoyed by the boss's action, the reformers saw

 

21 The best account of Hunt's career as prosecuting attorney and the indictment of

Cox and members of his gang is Stockbridge, "The Biggest Boss of Them All,"

627-629.

22 In addition to Stockbridge, see the Cincinnati Enquirer, March 18, 1911;

Ohio State Journal, March 21, April 4, 19, May 21, 1911.

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati   157

victory within their grasp in the approaching municipal elections of

1911 if they could regroup around a strong candidate. They made

the one logical choice, nominating for mayor the fighting prosecuting

attorney. Because of the Cox indictment the campaign was one of

unprecedented bitterness. The machine was grimly determined to

defeat the man who had traduced the leader. Although his youth-

fulness and quiet manner scarcely made him appear a match for

his grisly opponents, Hunt loved a fight. He proved a dashing,

forceful campaigner, fearless in facing hostile audiences in the

gang's bailiwicks. In a strong, resonant voice, speaking without

notes, he rang the changes on the theme of Coxism. The Republican

candidate, Louis Schwab, seeking reelection, was ignored as a mere

frontispiece. Again the chief journalistic support came from the

Post, which exposed the machinations and maladministration of

the Cox machine in front-page articles and editorials.

Such propaganda plus the dynamic character of Hunt's cam-

paign were effective in bringing a number of Republican business-

men to the Democratic side, although the most prominent Cincinnati

Republican refused to join these protestants as he had in 1905.

On the Saturday night before the election President William

Howard Taft arrived in his native city and announced that he

would vote the straight Republican ticket, for conditions, he

said, had changed since his Akron speech.²³ With the presidential

campaign only a few months away it was apparent to most that

his move was one of political expediency. Perhaps for that reason

the president's pronouncement had little effect in stemming the tide

swinging in Hunt's favor. He was elected by a margin of 4,000

votes and carried the rest of the Democratic slate.

On the same day the voters of Toledo reelected Brand Whitlock

for a fourth term, and those in Cleveland elected Newton Baker,

Tom Johnson's heir. Civic reformers were jubilant over this three-

fold triumph of progress and decency. Furthermore, the people of

the state chose a majority of progressives as delegates to Ohio's

constitutional convention.

"The Holy Trinity," as these three mayors were popularly known,

23 Cincinnati Enquirer, November 4, 1911.

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158     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

worked closely together for legislation to benefit the state's

municipalities. When the constitutional assembly convened in

January 1912, they appeared in Columbus to organize the Ohio

Municipal League to press for a home-rule amendment before the

convention and later to campaign for its adoption. Their leadership

won for Ohio cities the right to frame their charters, to exercise

all powers not specifically denied them, and to own and operate all

public utilities serving the municipality.

Hunt was not the only Cincinnati reformer to fight for pro-

gressive changes in Ohio's fundamental law. Herbert Bigelow, at

the crest of his popularity, was both the able president of the

constitutional assembly and also the father of the initiative and

referendum amendment. Judge Hiram Peck, another delegate, took

charge of reconstructing the state's courts. William P. Halenkamp,

the youngest member of the convention, successfully backed a

modification of the equity rules to prevent the abuse of the in-

junction in labor disputes. An amendment permitting compulsory

workmen's compensation passed without a dissenting vote, in large

part because of the persuasive lobbying among the delegates of

J. Chandler Harper and Scripps-McRae reporters.

At home the new mayor was giving Cincinnati its best adminis-

tration in three decades. In the selection of department heads he

chose men regardless of party. Otto D. Geier, a Republican, was

appointed director of charities; Henry M. Waite, later Dayton's

city manager, city engineer. Government efficiency was raised to a

high level, the most offensive aspects of gambling and prostitution

were stamped out, and a humanitarian spirit was introduced in the

handling of the city's wards, defectives, and delinquents.²⁴

Despite this able administrative record Hunt was unable to hold

together the reform groups which had elected him. By 1913 they

were split over street-railway problems and the drafting of a new

municipal charter. The mayor aroused the enmity of two groups in

handling a strike of the traction company employees. He caught the

ire of labor for threatening to call in the national guard to quell

 

24 The praises of the Hunt administration are sung by A. J. Freiberg, "Mayor

Hunt's Administration in Cincinnati," National Municipal Review, III (1914),

519-521; Taft, City Management, 15; Cincinnati Post, October 13, 1913.

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati          159

the violence and disorder; he angered conservatives because City

Solicitor Alfred Bettman had threatened during the strike to demand

a receiver for the company for failing to render the service it

owed the public.

But even more divisive was the question whether the street-

railway system should be owned and operated by the city or

whether a revised franchise should be written with the private

owners. Knowing that most Cincinnatians were not ready for the

radical step of municipal ownership, Hunt had proceeded to open

negotiations with representatives of the traction company at his

home. The two sides reached a tentative agreement to replace the

existing fifty-year franchise with an indeterminate one and to give

the city the option to buy the property at the end of each five-year

period. Even this disturbed some of Hunt's conservative supporters,

who were stockholders of the company.

Still this was nothing to the alarm they felt when Herbert Bigelow,

then a representative in the Ohio legislature, introduced a bill to

revoke the company's franchise with the intention of forcing the

municipal-ownership issue. This precipitate action, taken without

consulting the mayor, was a costly error, because it drove a wedge

into the reform forces in Cincinnati. Hunt rushed to Columbus to

check the impetuous preacher, arguing that the revocation bill

was an unjust and confiscatory act which would injure the state's

reputation and destroy the traction program of his administration.²⁵

He did succeed in thwarting Bigelow and writing his own tentative

agreement with the company into law; yet, as he laconically wrote

Governor James M. Cox, "This action of mine certainly did not

add to my popularity as a public officer, but on the contrary

exposed me to suspicion and misconstruction."²⁶

Nor was this the end of the traction problem; it became inter-

twined in the campaign to write a home-rule charter for Cincinnati.

The Bigelow radicals, defeated in the legislature, organized the

 

25 A running account of the fight over the revocation bill is contained in the

Ohio State Journal, March 12, April 11, 19, 25, and 30, 1913. Elliott Pendleton

reviews the street-railway question from the conservative viewpoint in "Cincinnati's

Traction Problem," National Municipal Review, II (1913), 617-628.

26 Henry T. Hunt to James M. Cox, November 21, 1913. Official Governors'

Papers, Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society Library, Columbus.

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160     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

People's Municipal Ownership League to continue their fight

at home. Convinced that the simplest way to introduce this par-

ticular reform was by the adoption of a home-rule charter with

provision for municipal ownership, they collected enough signatures

to make mandatory the submission of the question to the city's

electorate and nominated a slate of candidates to serve on the

fifteen-man charter commission. The other reform groups countered

by organizing the Citizens Charter Committee to campaign for a

separate list, committed to the principle of municipal ownership

but not to immediate appropriation. Opponents, succinctly de-

fining their position in their title, formed the No Charter Committee

to attack Bigelow and destroy his influence. In a special election on

July 30, 1913, the decision to draft a charter carried by a bare 90

ballots, the voters entrusting this labor to the Citizens' slate.

The bitterness engendered by the charter campaign carried over

to the fall mayoralty elections. In spite of a very favorable press

and endorsement by the leaders of the Progressive party, Hunt

lost by 3,000 votes to the complacent Frederick Spiegel, candidate

of the Republican machine now under the leadership of Rudolph

Hynicka. The mayor attributed his defeat to the aloofness of the

Bigelow partisans, the public's failure to understand his attitude

on the traction issue, and the defection of Democrats opposed to

civil-service reform.²⁷ On the other hand, the radicals claimed the

vote was a rebuke to Hunt for trying to satisfy the people with

palliatives instead of fundamental changes.²⁸

This breach had not been healed by the time the charter com-

mission submitted its draft to the voters on July 14, 1914. The

document was a good one in clarity and arrangement, provided for

a reduced council elected at large, a centralized executive, the

merit system, popular control through the initiative, referendum,

and recall, and ample powers to regulate utilities. It accepted

municipal ownership in principle but hedged its introduction with

heavy restrictions. Although endorsed by business, service, and

church organizations as well as the Democrats, it was unacceptable

 

27 Cincinnati Enquirer, November 5, 1913.

28 Ibid.

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Henry T. Hunt and Civic Reform in Cincinnati          161

 

to the Bigelow faction and the Socialists, and was effectively

opposed by the Republican organization. It was defeated at the

polls by over 6,000 votes.²⁹ Later, in 1917, a home-rule charter

was adopted, but this bore the imprint of the Republican regulars,

not the reformers, by introducing as few changes as possible

in the city's government.³⁰

To break off the chronicle of Cincinnati's civic revival at this

point in time truncates the story. Yet there are certain justifications

for focusing on this part of the movement. The later reform wave

which culminated in the final defeat of gang rule and the adoption

of the city-manager plan is so well known that it scarcely needs

repeating, while this early phase has been almost forgotten.

Secondly, the continuity between the two successive stages is a

tenuous one. By the 1920's a new group of young men had re-

placed these older reformers. Henry Hunt, disillusioned by defeat,

enlisted in the army during the first World War, and when

mustered out, shifted his residence from Cincinnati to New York.

Bigelow had been shamefully treated during the war and was

unjustly discredited. A number of the others were dead. Finally,

these early reformers merit respect and praise because they made

worthy contributions to the welfare of their city and state, pointed

to some of the pitfalls along the rocky road to reform, and kept

alive the spirit of revolt against the corrosive influence of boss rule.

 

29 The best account of this first charter movement is S. Gale Lowrie, "Cincinnati's

Charter Campaign," National Municipal Review, III (1914), 730-733.

30 "Cincinnati Adopts a Home Rule Charter," ibid., VII (1918), 90.

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