JAMES F. RICHARDSON
Urban Political Change
in the Progressive Era
The nature and sources of political
change in the early twentieth
century are among the favorite topics
for assessment and reassessment
among American historians. The degree of
concern is understandable,
for the Progressive period witnessed
considerable expansion in govern-
mental functions and major changes in
governmental structure. This
transformation in form and function was
perhaps more pronounced in
the nation's cities than in any other
segment of the society, and urban
historicans have joined enthusiastically
in the debate over the char-
acter and definition of progressivism.
In the 1940s Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
set the terms for much of
this debate by arguing that the history
of American liberalism, of
which progressivism represented one
chapter, consisted of efforts by
Books reviewed in this essay:
The Age of Urban Reform: New
Perspectives on the Progressive Era.
Edited by Michael H. Ebner and Eugene M.
Tobin. (Port Washing-
ton, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977, viii +
213p.; tables, maps, biblio-
graphic guide, notes, index. $12.95
cloth; $7.95 paper.)
Progressive Cities: The Commission
Government Movement in Amer-
ica, 1901-1920. By Bradley Robert Rice. (Austin: The University of
Texas Press, 1977. xix + 160p.; tables,
appendix, notes, selected
bibliography, index. $10.95.)
Better City Government: Innovation in
American Urban Politics, 1850-
1937. By Kenneth Fox. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1977. xxi + 222p.; notes, bibliographic
essay, index. $15.00.)
The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal
Administration and Reform in
America, 1880-1920. By Martin J. Schiesl. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977. ix + 259p.;
notes, bibliography, index. $11.75.)
James F. Richardson is Professor of
History and Urban Studies at The University of
Akron.
Urban Political Change 311
other segments of the politically active
society to limit the power of
the business community, usually through
an increase in the level of
state regulation and control.1 Writing
within this framework, histor-
ians like Russel Blaine Nye and Hoyt
Landon Warner emphasized
the successful struggles of reform
mayors such as Tom Johnson of
Cleveland, Samuel "Golden
Rule" Jones of Toledo and Hazen Pin-
gree of Detroit against the alliance of
utilities, traction companies
and corrupt political bosses that
dominated late nineteenth-century
urban politics.2
However, this sanguine liberalism faded
rapidly. Reflecting the
more skeptical attitude toward reform
movements prevalent at the
height of the Cold War in the 1950s,
George Mowry and especially
Richard Hofstadter painted a portrait of
the progressives as more
self-serving. These historians posited a
late-nineteenth-century "status
revolution" which saw urban
Protestants-ministers, some lawyers,
small businessmen-decline in social
prestige and political power.
Threatened by the emergence of a
plutocracy above and a polygot,
largely immigrant proletariat below,
these men and women entered
politics to defend, and if possible
advance, their social standing in the
community. In their opposition to graft,
corruption and boss rule,
they claimed to speak for the larger
community; in fact, said Hof-
stadter, they often equated their own
parochial middle-class interest
with the public interest itself. For
example, by ending patronage appoint-
ments to the public service they could
limit lower-class access to city
jobs and enhance the career
opportunities of the well educated.3
In the 1960s the "status
revolution" thesis of Hofstadter and the
lingering liberalism of Schlesinger came
under fire from a new gener-
ation of historians. Gabriel Kolko and
James Weinstein virtually
denied that there was any such thing as
a progressive movement.4
Writing from within the context of an
emerging New Left milieu,
Kolko argued that on the national level,
legislation regulating business
was the work of the business community
itself in its struggle to ra-
tionalize its operations, eliminate
unwanted competition and create
orderly and predictable markets.
Weinstein and Samuel Hays found
the same processes at work on the urban
scene where successful busi-
ness and professional men provided the
chief impetus for the wide-
1. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age
of Jackson (Boston, 1945).
2. Russel Blaine Nye, Midwestern
Progressive Politics (East Lansing, 1951); Hoyt
Landon Warner, Progressivism in Ohio (Columbus,
1964).
3. George Mowry, The Era of Theodore
Roosevelt, 1900-1912 (New York, 1958);
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform
(New York, 1955).
4. Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of
Conservatism (New York, 1964); James Wein-
stein, The Corporate Ideal in the
Liberal State (Boston, 1968).
312 OHIO HISTORY
spread adoption of the commission and
city manager forms of mu-
nicipal governance. Using Pittsburgh as
his case study, Hays held
that it was successful businessmen with
metropolitan or even nation-
wide interests and the best educated
professionals who led the way in
changing the city's charter and the
organization of its school system.
These structural innovations had the
effect of reducing local and lower-
class influence in the new centralized
systems dominated by an upper-
middle-class administrative elite.5
Hays' interpretation meshed well with
that offered by Robert Weibe
in his Search for Order, 1877-1920, a
major statement of the thesis
that American life underwent a
fundamental transformation in the
Progressive era as people revamped their
institutions to make them
compatible with an economy increasingly
dominated by large orga-
nizations. Wiebe and Hays thus placed
the political changes of the
first two decades of the twentieth
century in the context of a modern-
izing society marked by an increasing
scale of organization and cen-
tralization of decision making.6
Perhaps reflecting the more relaxed
political atmosphere of the
1970s, the books under review offer a
more positive and less conspira-
torial portrait of urban progressivism.
Even where the authors stress
the major role played by businessmen,
they also emphasize the often
beneficial results of the changes
introduced. Kenneth Fox takes the
most revisionist view. He does not think
that businessmen as leaders
or the business corporation as a model
had much influence on urban
political change. In his Better City
Government: Innovation in Ameri-
can Urban Politics, 1850-1937, Fox attempts to conceptualize broad
areas of American political history. His
technique is to delineate one
ideological perspective per period as if
all politically active people
shared a common system of values and
approaches. For example, he
argues that the years from about 1850 to
1890 were characterized by
"pragmatic innovation." He
includes under this heading both the
urban political machines and state
interference in municipal affairs.
He recognizes that the local
organizations and state intervention had
different and often strongly
antagonistic constituencies, yet his desire
to find a single phrase for a forty-year
period leads him to lump them
together. What one misses in Fox's
treatment is a sense of the debate
between adherents of different
governmental philosophies as to how
cities should respond to the problems
generated internally and to
national economic and social change.
5. Samuel Hays, "The Politics of
Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era," Paci-
fic Northwest Quarterly, LV (October 1964), 157-69; "The Shame of the
Cities Revis-
ited: The Case of Pittsburgh,"
unpublished paper.
6. Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for
Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967).
Urban Political Change 313
The heart of the book lies in Fox's
treatment of the origins and
development, but not the implementation,
of the next phase of mu-
nicipal political philosophy, which he
calls "functional innovation"
and sees as dominant from the 1890s to
the late 1920s. According to
Fox, the intellectual bases of
"functional innovation" rested on three
groups: jurists who developed the theory
of the municipal corporation,
especially John Dillon; scholars
specializing in public administration
who urged that states grant cities
sufficient legal power for them to
deal effectively with their own
problems; and a new generation of na-
tional reformers for whom improved city
government took the place of
the previous generation's concern for
national civil service reform.
Thus Fox concludes that "functional
innovation" replaced prag-
matic innovation by the 1890s, as the
law, political science, and good
government advocates nationally came to
focus on the cities' govern-
mental problems. The movement received
organizational focus with the
establishment in 1894 of the National
Municipal League supported
by social scientists out to build a
rationale for municipal public
administration as a problem-solving
activity and by reformers with
national interests and aspirations. Fox
is more interested in these na-
tional networks than he is in the
distribution of power and the nature
of political activity within cities.
Unfortunately, he does not link his
national groups with specific changes
within cities to enable the reader
to see the relationships between ideas
and advocacy and action. De-
spite his use of the term
"functional innovation," Fox does not say
anything about the people who performed
the functions, the bureau-
crats and professional administrators
who came to play such key roles
in urban government.
In his most original chapters, Fox deals
with the work of the pro-
fessionals of the Bureau of the Census
in promoting the expansion
of city governmental activities. The
Bureau advocated uniform mu-
nicipal accounting systems and gave per
capita estimates of cities'
spending patterns in its Statistics
of Cities. In the first decade of the
twentieth century, major cities did not
spend as much per capita as
they had in 1880. Health services were
especially impoverished.
Between 1912 and 1930, however, cities
spent considerably more for
health and education; also cities became
more alike in their allocation
of resources, thus reducing the
previously wide variations in what dif-
ferent cities would spend on particular
services. In Fox's view, func-
tional innovation reached its peak by
the late 1920s. Thus he would
deny that World War I formed the
dividing line between a period of
reform and a period of reaction. If
anything, cities devoted more
money to public welfare activities in
the 1920s than they had pre-
viously. Supporters of the notion of an
urban progressive movement
314 OHIO HISTORY
before the war, such as Martin Schiesl,
could counter that it was in
these years that cities first modernized
their governmental machinery
and expanded their activities. In this
view the key innovation was the
acceptance of a particular task as a
public responsibility. Cities in the
1920s merely provided more money for
previously established depart-
ments and bureaus.
Chronologically, the fullest development
of functional innovation
coincided with national trends leading
to a weakening position of
central cities as the outward movement
of people and business out-
stripped the cities' ability to annex
these newly settled areas. In the
late 1920s some observers proposed the
creation of metropolitan gov-
ernments as the answer to the service
needs of metropolitan areas.
Fox asserts that political scientist
Paul Studenski destroyed the case
for metro government at that time, but
he does not demonstrate how,
except to say that Studenski proved that
urban governments were not
going to collapse in the absence of
metropolitan consolidation. Per-
haps Studenski and later Roderick
McKenzie did show that central
cities and independent suburbs could
both survive, but many schol-
ars believed throughout the 1950s and
into the 1960s that metropoli-
tan government would help balance needs
and resources and provide
better services. Even where the voters rejected
metropolitan govern-
ment, as they did in Cleveland in 1959,
appointed authorities were
subsequently created to administer
particular services on a metropoli-
tan-area-wide basis, thus bypassing the
established city and suburban
governmental entities. If I understand
what Fox means by functional
innovation, such bodies as the Regional
Transit Authority, the Cleve-
land-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, and
the Cleveland Regional
Sewer District could be considered as
examples.
Fox believes that the great depression
of the 1930s introduced a
new cycle of urban political development
and thought, whose intellec-
tual base can be found in Our Cities,
the 1937 report of the National
Urbanism Committee. Our Cities emphasized
the inability of cities to
cope with the demands generated by
national economic trends and
argued that henceforth the federal
government would have to play
a much more active role in urban
affairs. For the next few decades
urban theorists combined Keynesian
economics and pluralist poli-
tics in their analyses of and
prescriptions for urban government. He
cites the work of such scholars as
Robert Dahl, Wallace Sayre and
Herbert Kaufman, and Robert Wood in
support of this position.
This section seems tacked on, as if Fox
felt constrained to offer an
overarching conceptualization for the
decades after his title terminal
date of 1937. There is no question that
some scholars did offer the kind
of analyses and prescriptions he
describes, but the same could be
Urban Political Change 315
said for earlier advocates of functional
innovation. They coincided
chronologically with the supporters of
the commission and city man-
ager forms and a vigorous municipal
socialist movement. Fox men-
tions these movements only in connection
with the functionalists'
attitude toward them and so overlooks an
opportunity to place advo-
cates of functional innovation in the
context of the ideological debate
of their time.
Perhaps it is unfair to criticize an
author for not writing the book
the reviewer wishes he had written
rather than the one he did write;
still, Fox would have made a more useful
contribution if he had con-
centrated on the relationships between
the activities of the Bureau
of the Census and the processes of
innovation in particular cities.
Then his readers would have a better
sense of the interaction between
the advocates of change on the national
level and local decision mak-
ers.
In the most impressive of the books
under review, The Politics of
Efficiency, Martin J. Schiesl does provide a convincing study of
the
impact of political theory upon
innovations in government. He has
examined both the advocates of municipal
efficiency and the imple-
mentation of their ideas in a number of
cities. Schiesl's concept of
municipal efficiency is a more accurate
description of what people
were saying and doing during these years
than is Fox's term func-
tional innovation. The advocates of efficiency
saw government by
party organizations as the great evil
because the latter were more in-
terested in organizational survival and
aggrandizement than they
were in providing good services at low
cost. Party government re-
quired patronage for party workers and
the extraction of campaign
funds and other organizational expenses
from civil servants, legiti-
mate businessmen and vice entrepreneurs
who needed governmental
support or protection. Party government
could not be efficient govern-
ment because its priorities put a low
premium on administrative com-
petence.
Efficient government most often meant
the promotion of economic
growth, otherwise known as the public
interest. Its promoters took it
as axiomatic that there was a definable
public interest which tran-
scended any private interests and that
the purpose of government was
to promote this public interest in the
most effective manner possible.
Hence their model of government was the
business corporation where
there was an agreement upon goals, and
the task at hand was to de-
fine the most effective means of
attaining those goals.
Specifically, efficiency could be
achieved if the executive could be
strengthened, party labels eliminated in
municipal elections, effective
procedures of budgeting and accounting
introduced, men with execu-
316 OHIO HISTORY
tive ability and experience appointed to
administrative posts, and pub-
lic servants insulated from patronage
removals and partisan pres-
sures generally. The city manager
movement with its separation of
administration from policy making, its
nonpartisan at-large elec-
tions for Council, its appointed
administrator, and its explicit model-
ing of municipal government upon the
business corporation embodied
all of the major themes advanced in the
name of efficiency.
Schiesl asserts that there was no
necessary conflict between effi-
ciency and social welfare. Reformers
believed that more efficient gov-
ernment meant better services and more
humane government. Thus
Schiesl disagrees with Augustus Cerillo
and other scholars who have
found the Mitchel administration in New
York City long on econ-
omy and efficiency and short on social
welfare. According to Schiesl,
Mitchel and his followers saw a
necessary connection between effi-
ciency and social welfare. If the books
were not kept properly, the
chances are that the clients would be
neglected. In addition, with care-
ful budgeting and accounting controls,
less money would be wasted
and more made available for social
welfare expenditures. Government
could thus expand its activities without
unduly burdening the tax-
payers.
Schiesl also gives high marks to an
earlier New York reform mayor,
Seth Low, who served, as did Mitchel,
just one term after his election
in 1901. Melvin Holli, the historian who
originally developed the dis-
tinction between structural reform and
social reform, had treated the
Low Administration as the epitome of
structural reform, that is a
single-minded concern for economy and
efficiency in government with-
out any interest in social reform or
social welfare.7 Schiesl has ob-
viously learned from Holli but denies
the validity of his sharp dichot-
omy between structural and social reform
and uses Low as an
example of an urban reformer who
combined both perspectives.
The book's final chapters deal with the
increasing bureaucratiza-
tion of municipal government and the
development of the commis-
sion and city manager forms. Such
changes emphasized administra-
tive independence and competence and
deemphasized popular
control and the role of elected
officials. To make these changes
compatible with a formally democratic
tradition, the reformers needed
to redefine democracy so that it
"became less a system of stimulating
greater individual participation in the
decision-making process and
more a method of making decisions which
insured efficiency in civic
administration while requiring some
measure of responsiveness to
7. Melvin G. Holli, Reform in
Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New
York, 1969).
Urban Political Change 317
public opinion" (p.149). Under this
model civil servants would need
to be competent and selflessly devoted
to the public interest rather
than to individual concerns.
Professionals such as engineers and pub-
lic health specialists looked to their
peers around the country, even
internationally, for approval and
support, not to local elected officials.
Within the city they built alliances
with constituencies organized on a
functional rather than a neighborhood
basis. Perforce, these profes-
sionals and administrators became highly
active politically as they
sought larger budgets and more autonomy
for their operations. Their
values were those of the expert and
scientist, values often not shared
by the majority of the city's
population. As their power grew, that of
the ward-based politicians and their
constituencies declined.
The city manager form represented the
ultimate in structural re-
form and it spread widely in the 1920s.
Yet, as Schiesl notes, even
with the benefits provided in more
effective government, including
better social services, the structural
reformers often failed in building
a permanent political base. A case in
point is Cleveland which
adopted the city manager form in the
1920s only to abandon it for
the traditional mayor-council form in
the early 1930s.
In an excellent epilogue, entitled
"The Model and Political Real-
ity," Schiesl evaluates the lasting
strengths and weaknesses of the
politics of efficiency. In overcoming
the power of the ward-based ma-
chines, the reformers weakened popular
control by stressing the role
of experts and promoting the interests
of elites. However, the de-
struction of the machine also facilitated
access to important power
centers on the part of functionally
organized groups within the city.
No longer would these people have to go
through the boss, no longer
would the political organization come
between the public and the
public's servants. And even short-lived
reform movements often initi-
ated programs and practices that
subsequent machine administra-
tions had to maintain. Perhaps the
greatest weakness of the pro-
moters of efficiency lay in their
failure to anticipate that an insulated
bureaucracy could be every bit as
self-serving, if not necessarily cor-
rupt, and unresponsive as the most
entrenched political machine.
Schiesl's portrait is a complex one,
marked by shadings and nu-
ances, and therefore more accurate than
some of the one-dimensional
interpretations of urban progressivism
offered by Weinstein and
Hays. He writes well and provides a good
balance between analysis
and supporting descriptive detail. Of
course he makes a few mis-
takes. One howler is his comment that
cities in the progressive period
did not experience the fiscal bind
facing contemporary municipali-
ties. He cites Cincinnati and Cleveland
frequently, without noting or
apparently knowing that these cities
suffered severe financial prob-
318 OHIO HISTORY
lems because of state-imposed taxing and
borrowing limits. True, the
fiscal crisis then did not arise from
the same sources as current finan-
cial problems, but it was a fiscal
crisis nonetheless. But, I would not
like to leave Schiesl's book on a
negative note. It is the most useful
study we have of urban political change
in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, and it is an
especially impressive achieve-
ment for a young scholar's first book.
Bradley Rice has chosen a more limited
topic than either Fox or
Schiesl in his Progressive Cities:
The Commission Government
Movement in America, 1901-1920; in so doing he has produced a book
that successfully accomplishes its
modest aims. He provides a straight-
forward treatment of the adoption of
commission government from
its inception in Galveston, Texas, in
1901, until the commission move-
ment gave way to the city manager plan
in the late teens. In the com-
mission format, a limited number of
commissioners, usually five, com-
bined legislative and executive
functions. Each commissioner pre-
sided over a specific administrative
area; as a body the commission
served as the city's legislature.
Businessmen and others with city-wide
interests looked to this structure as a
way of eliminating the parochi-
alism and inefficiency of the
traditional mayor-council form with its
ward-oriented councilmen and short-term
executive.
Galveston adopted the plan in the
aftermath of the disastrous 1900
flood when existing governmental
machinery broke down. The com-
missioners, two of whom were elected by
the voters of the city and
three appointed by the governor of the
state, presided over the restora-
tion of the city and provided better
services at lower taxes. Other east
Texas cities soon adopted the
innovation. As in Galveston, leading
businessmen took the lead in getting
charters changed and in serving
on the commissions. Des Moines, Iowa,
went to the commission form
in 1907 and the idea was then publicized
around the country as the
Des Moines Plan. With few exceptions,
organized business and pro-
fessional groups supported the plan,
while workers, ethnics, and so-
cialists opposed it. At-large elections,
a key feature, raised the social
class level of government officials;
workers and small businessmen did
not have the visibility or the resources
to mount city-wide campaigns.
Moreover, the plan presupposed executive
ability on the part of those
chosen. Often the initiative,
referendum, and recall were added to the
commission form to enhance its appeal to
believers in direct democ-
racy. However the usual requirement that
the petitions calling for
such special elections be signed by
one-fourth the number of voters
at the previous election limited the use
of these devices.8
8. In a separately published article,
Rice and Richard Bernard have examined the
Urban Political Change
319
Several serious weaknesses soon became
apparent. Wichita, Kan-
sas, elected a popular street laborer as
a commissioner and other cities
also chose men without the requisite
executive talent or experience.
The combination of legislative and
executive functions in the same
body violated the American tradition of
separation of powers. The
commissioners did not always act as a
body but rather tended to con-
centrate on their own departments. There
was no central director or
authority to limit squabbling and ensure
cooperation. The at-large
elections and the business domination of
most commissions ignored
minority interests and social welfare measures.
When the city man-
ager form emerged a few years later,
Richard Childs of the Short Bal-
lot Association and the leaders of the
National Municipal League
abandoned the commission form for the
city manager which prom-
ised
the benefits without the weaknesses. In retrospect, for most
cities and most of its advocates, the
commission plan served as a way
station between the traditional
mayor-council form and the city
manager.
Rice's treatment of the rise and fall of
the commission plan sup-
ports that offered by James Weinstein in
the 1960s. What Weinstein
presented in outline, Rice has now
offered in detail. He does suggest
that major newspapers and downtown
business organizations were
not the only supporters of the proposal;
in Fort Worth, organized
labor was brought into the coalition. So
while Rice offers some shad-
ings to Weinstein's portrait, the
essentials remain unchanged. Rice's
work is nonetheless useful for his
careful examination of a number
of cities and the way in which he demonstrates
the interaction be-
tween reformers with a national
orientation such as Richard Childs
and local elites in bringing about the
desired changes. He also has a
useful appendix listing all cities
adopting the commission form and
the year in which the innovation was
introduced.
Rice's emphasis on the role of
businessmen in bringing about ur-
ban political change is supported by
most of the essays in a collection
edited by Michael Ebner and Eugene
Tobin, The Age of Urban Re-
form: New Perspectives on the
Progressive Era. The volume con-
sists of ten essays by young scholars,
most of which embody portions
statistical probabilities of cities
choosing the commission or city manager form. Their
analysis indicates that cities most
prone to adopt one of these charter forms were
moderate in size, newer, youthful in age
composition with an ethnically homogeneous
old-stock population and relatively
large numbers of white collar workers and home
owners. Of 156 cities studied,
twenty-five fit the above profile but did not adopt either
form; in nineteen other cases, cities
did change their charters without possessing all
of the expected characteristics. Richard
M. Bernard and Bradley R. Rice, "Political
Environment and the Adoption of
Progressive Municipal Reform," Journal of Urban
History, I (February 1975), 149-74.
320 OHIO HISTORY
of the authors' dissertation research.
Each essay deals with only one
city; comparative studies are easier to
talk about and to advocate than
to do. The cities treated range from
east coast (Chelsea, Mass., New
York, Passaic and Jersey City, and
Philadelphia) to west (Seattle
and Los Angeles), dip into the South
with Atlanta and Houston, and
include Chicago as the middle western
representative. As the editors
note in their introduction, the essays
vary in the questions asked and
in the answers supplied. Since there is
no comparability in subject or
methodology, the pieces must be
considered as case studies of various
aspects of municipal government and
politics in the early twentieth
century. In a general way, most of the
authors support the thesis that
organized business and professional men
played the major role in in-
stituting changes in governmental form
and function during these
years, whether the particular subject be
Houston's charter, Atlanta's
schools, or Seattle's Municipal League.
The point is probably suffi-
ciently accepted by now that the authors
do not have to treat it either
as revelation or conspiracy, which was
often the dominant tone of his-
torians writing in the 1960s.
One of the most provocative essays in
the book is Michael McCar-
thy's study of the impact of Chicago's
physical expansion upon its
political life. The elites of various
suburban towns successfully sought
annexation to Chicago in the 1880s. In
the 1890s the Municipal Vot-
ers League came into being as a means of
combining the interests and
influence of native American
middle-class people. Presumably
there is some connection between these
developments in that geo-
graphical dispersion required a
city-wide organization, that people
scattered in various wards could not
otherwise make their wishes felt.
Unfortunately McCarthy does not
demonstrate the nature of the rela-
tionships between the events described.
He also includes material on
the changing locations of ethnic groups
within the city. One wishes
that the piece were considerably longer
so that McCarthy would have
the opportunity to develop the points
introduced. Despite this caveat,
the essay is still one of the most
interesting in the book for its recogni-
tion of the importance of space and
spatial relations in urban history.
In an equally provocative and too brief
piece, Augustus Cerillo, Jr.,
provides a useful portrait of the
relationship between ideology and
organizational development in New York
City's government. In eigh-
teen pages he examines the impact of
Lawrence Veiller on housing
reform, Herman Biggs on the health
department, Charles Evans
Hughes on the Public Service Commission,
William Allen, Henry
Bruere, and Frederick Cleveland on the
privately supported Bureau
of Municipal Research, and the
relationship between the bureau and
the mayoral administration of John
Purroy Mitchel (1914-1917). Un-
Urban Political Change 321
like Schiesl, Cerillo concludes that
Mitchel and his followers concen-
trated excessively on efficiency and
economy and ignored human needs.
His essay is valuable for showing in a
specific context the way in
which public administrators and
independent reformers developed
their ideas on methods for greater
governmental effectiveness and ex-
panded public responsibility and then
put them into practice.
Using Los Angeles as his case study,
Martin Schiesl also empha-
sizes the growing importance of
professional administrators who to a
considerable extent replaced old style
organization politicians as the
key power bloc in the city. Los Angeles
progressives destroyed the
old machine through the adoption of
nonpartisan, at-large elections,
and numerous recommendations of the
extra-governmental Efficiency
Commission. These changes enhanced the
power of administrators in
their drive to enlarge the scope of
their activities and in their effort
to resist pressures for change from
external sources. Schiesl con-
cludes that in Los Angeles the reformed
bureaucracy was an en-
trenched power bloc by 1920. In the
light of subsequent history, when
the enormous clout of organized
municipal employees has become ap-
parent almost everywhere, the point is
persuasive on its face, although
one would appreciate a few specific
illustrations.
Some of the other essays also provide
insights useful beyond the
immediate case study under
consideration. For example, in his study
of Philadelphia housing, John Bauman
offers a good treatment of
the conflict in values between
reformers, whether motivated by scien-
tific or social concern, and the bulk of
the population. The reformers
succeeded in getting legislation passed,
but keeping it intact and
providing for effective enforcement was
another matter. Lee Pren-
dergass treats Seattle politics in terms
of a conflict between an older
elite and a new group of businessmen and
professionals struggling for
power. As outs the new group presented
themselves as reformers;
once in power they became increasingly
conservative. Wayne Urban
concludes that school reform in Atlanta
conforms to the business ori-
ented model advanced by David Tyack in
his general history of urban
education. The book has eight tables
which might be useful if they
could be read, but they cannot, at least
by me. The five maps are
rather better. The editors also include
a useful bibliographic essay.
Taken together, then, these four books,
especially Schiesl's, add
to our knowledge and understanding of
urban government and poli-
tics in the progressive era. They may be
evidence of a new historio-
graphic phase in which scholars can
equitably assess the strengths
and weaknesses of urban progressivism,
and by extension the Ameri-
can political tradition, without feeling
compelled to be ideologically
partisan attackers or defenders of that
tradition.