Poster for John Maynard Harlan, 1905
Chicago's mayors from incorporation in 1837 through the Great
were drawn from the upper reaches of the socioeconomic registers. Although Chicago was not old enough to have a patrician
class equivalent to Boston's Back Bay Brahmins, these men were a representative sample of the social and commercial elite.
Chicago's first mayor, William B. Ogden (;1838), was a founding father not only of the city (because he wrote its first
charter) but of the Chicago & North Western Railway, and was a principal in the nation's first transcontinental . He built the city's credit reputation as well as his own by keeping the city solvent during the depression of 1837. Also
prominent in business was Chicago's third mayor, Benjamin Raymond, who founded the Elgin Watch Company. The city's fifth mayor,
Francis Sherman, was a brick manufacturer,
investor, and a man whose wealth permitted him to retire at an early age and build the Sherman House , a Chicago landmark. His successor, Augustus Garrett, ran an auction house and inv his fortune was used
to establish the Garrett Biblical Institute. The seventh mayor, Alson Sherman, established the first sawmill in Chicago, developed
marble , and was one of the original trustees of . One of the city's earliest , John Chapin, a New England Yankee and one of the founders of the Chicago Board of Trade, was the eighth mayor. The tenth,
James Woodworth, acquired a comfortable fortune in land speculation, banking, and the milling of flour. His successor, Walter
Gurnee, came from a well-to-do family and amassed a sizable fortune in his saddle and tanning business. Gurnee also founded
the village of
on land he had purchased and was at one time president of the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad. As president of the Board of
Trade, Chicago's eighteenth mayor, Julian Rumsey, was one of the primary movers behind implementing the stringent grain inspection
that established Chicago's solid reputation in the national grain markets. He was also president of the Corn Exchange Bank.
Even those mayors who were not part of the commercial elite ranked high in income and public recognition. Levi Boone, a descendant
of Daniel Boone, and fourteenth person to occupy the mayor's chair, was first president of the Chicago Medical Society and
a prosperous physician whose wealth came from canal lands and downtown real estate. Joseph Medill (;1873), was an owner,
publisher, and editor of the .
Mayor Thompson at Weeghman, 1915
Mayor Medill's tempestuous administration, which included the unpopular enforcement of the
law, ended a period of relative tranquillity in the mayoralty and ushered in significant changes, including the “Mayor's
Bill” of 1872, by which the legislature enlarged the mayor's powers of appointment. In 1875 a new city
lengthened the mayor's term from one to two years and expanded the office's powers. Because it was not clear whether the
new charter extended the term of incumbent mayor Harvey Colvin, political chaos and near riots resulted when Colvin refused
to give up the seat to the newly elected Thomas Hoyne in 1876. After a police cordon around City Hall prevented bloodshed,
the court permitted Colvin to remain in office until a new election later that year.
The disputed mayoralty and the violent
brought about a sea change in mayoral politics as well as a shift in the social origins of its occupants. Thereafter men (and later one woman) of more humble origins began
to occupy the office. The two Carter Harrisons, who served five terms each (;; and ;&#, respectively),
were not wealthy nabobs but professional politicians.
American Fred Busse (;1911), the first mayor to serve a four-year term, was a saloonkeeper politician and the first Chicago
mayor without British ancestry. He died a pauper and bequeathed to his widow the life of a charwoman scrubbing floors to pay
the rent. His successor William “Big Bill” Thompson (;&#) practiced the politics of the “wide open town” to the delight of
and gangsters. A mayor who accepted campaign funds from Al Capone and enriched himself from politics, Big Bill was a far
cry from the civic-minded founding fathers and economic titans who ran the office in the nineteenth century.
After Thompson came a succession of plebes or former plebes such as a tanner's son, William Dever (;1927), who became
the city's only foreign-born mayor, Anton Cermak (;1933), a
and fo sanitary district ax-man Edward Kelly, who built the
Martin Kennelly, a self-made moving and s and Richard J. Daley, a former stockyards cowboy out of working-class
Mayors began to resemble the voters more than had been the case in the nineteenth century. Whereas in the nineteenth century
politics had often been a civic avocation, after the Great Fire it became a profession and a way of making of a living. Some
did exceedingly well on the job. Big Bill Thompson left his widow $1.5 million in unmarked bills in his safety deposit boxes.
Daley, Douglas, and Chacharis at Dunes
Although by charter Chicago government remains a “weak” mayor system, the office's powers have been strengthened over time,
sometimes by formal and sometimes by extralegal methods. The mayor's authority and influence were considerably enlarged by
the growth of the Kelly-Nash and Daley political , ;1976. In addition, Daley took control of the city's budget from the city council, considerably enhancing his office's
powers over those of the council.
Mayor Daley's death in 1976 broke a logjam of history that had slowed change in the city's governance. In 1977 Chicago picked
its first non- mayor since 1933, Michael B in 1979 its first female mayor, Jane B in 1983 its first
mayor, Harold Washington. The decade-long interregnum was punctuated by intensive ethnic-racial squabbling, including Chicago's “Ugly Racial Election”
of 1983 and a stalemate dubbed “Council Wars” by a local comedian.
Washington Tribute to Daley, 1986
Other more substantive changes also occurred. Mayor Washington signed onto the
banning political hiring and firing, strengthening civil service regulations, and cutting into the vitals of the dying political
machine. (Even so, “pinstripe patronage” survived the Washington years whereby a mayor can reward his political friends with
consulting and vendor contracts.) Washington also opened city records by executive order and expanded contract set-asides
for black and women contractors, policies that were continued by his successors.
Many of these changes have brought Chicago closer to the statutorily prescribed weak-mayor model. Nonetheless, because of
tradition and practice, the Chicago mayor's office under an aggressive leader remains an office with considerable executive
power, or what Chicagoans have dubbed “.”
The last mayor elected in the twentieth century, Richard M. Daley (;), son of Richard J., was reelected to a fifth term
in February 2003 in the city's second nonpartisan election, which had replaced the partisan primary in February and general
election in April. The new Daley, who carried more than 40 percent of the African American vote, was one of a new breed of
pragmatic-minded mayors and built a national reputation for his leadership in school reform, with Chicago's model emulated
by several other big city mayors.
Melvin G. Holli
Bibliography
Bradley, Donald S., and Mayer Zald. “From Commercial Elite to Political Administrators ... Mayors of Chicago.” American Journal of Sociology 71 (September 1965): 153&#.
Grosser, Hugo. Chicago: A Review of Its Governmental History from 1837 to 1906. 1906.
Holli, Melvin G., and Peter D'A. Jones, eds. The Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, ;1980. 1981.Welcome to City of St. Petersburg
City of St. Petersburg P.O. Box 2842 St. Petersburg, FL 33731
p: 727-893-7111f: 727-892-5102tty: 727-892-5259《Mayors of Thunder Bay, Ontario: Walter Assef, Ken Boshcoff, List of Mayors of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Saul Laskin, Jack Masters, Lynn Peterson》 【摘要 书评 试读】图书
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