The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900-1930 available in Hardcover, eBook
The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900-1930
- ISBN-10:
- 1607320525
- ISBN-13:
- 9781607320524
- Pub. Date:
- 09/24/2010
- Publisher:
- University Press of Colorado
- ISBN-10:
- 1607320525
- ISBN-13:
- 9781607320524
- Pub. Date:
- 09/24/2010
- Publisher:
- University Press of Colorado
The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900-1930
Buy New
$18.95Buy Used
$12.66-
-
SHIP THIS ITEM
Temporarily Out of Stock Online
Please check back later for updated availability.
-
Overview
Sharing enemies like the party boss and corporate lobbyist who undermined honest and responsive government, Progressive leaders were determined to root out selfish political action with public exposure. Labor unions defied bosses and rallied for government protection of workers. Women's clubs appealed to other women as mothers, calling for social welfare, economic justice, and government responsiveness. Protestant church congregations formed a core of support for moral reform. Labor relations experts struggled to prevent the outbreak of violence through mediation between corporate employers and organized labor. Persevering through World War I, Colorado reformers faced their greatest challenge in the 1920s, when leaders of the Ku Klux Klan drew upon the rhetoric of Protestant Progressives and manipulated reform tools to strengthen their own political machine. Once in power, Klan legislators turned on Progressive leaders in the state government.
A story of promising alliances never fully realized, zealous crusaders who resisted compromise, and reforms with unexpected consequences, The Gospel of Progressivism will appeal to those interested in Progressive Era reform, Colorado history, labor relations, and women's activism.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781607320524 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University Press of Colorado |
| Publication date: | 09/24/2010 |
| Series: | Timberline Book |
| Pages: | 264 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.24(w) x 9.27(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Gospel of Progressivism
Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900â"1930
By R. Todd Laugen
University Press of Colorado
Copyright © 2010 University Press of ColoradoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60732-052-4
CHAPTER 1
Protestant Progressives and the Denver Party Machine
In his second year as Denver's juvenile court judge, Benjamin Barr Lindsey invited police commissioners to his courtroom. Judge Lindsey had just begun a series of innovative reforms to help delinquent children. However, urban temptations continually led his charges astray. Gambling halls, saloons, and brothels operating chiefly in downtown Denver mixed closely with working-class homes. Numerous boys and girls had come before the judge to relate stories of easy access to alcohol, drunken children as young as four, and friends lured into prostitution. After a series of fruitless appeals to the district attorney and police to uphold city ordinances regulating closing hours and barring entry to children, Lindsey could no longer contain his frustration. When the police leadership appeared on that Saturday morning in May 1902, they were met by a crowd of boys, a handful of reporters, and the bantam-weight Lindsey raring for a fight.
The kid's judge wasted little time on pleasantries. He insisted that crime was forced on poor children in the city when police so consistently refused to regulate the saloons and "gambling hells" in the downtown district. "If the surroundings of children are tainted with the foul and pestilential vapors of the evils," how could the commissioners expect his juvenile court to save them? Lindsey begged the commissioners to "war upon these places" and break the spell that the "devil's agents" had over them. Only then would the officers have the respect and goodwill of decent people of the city.
Lindsey's public shaming of the Democratic police leadership was vividly reported in the newspapers. The event launched his career as a muck-raker, exposing the ills of urban, industrial life in moral terms familiar especially to church-going readers. He inspired a number of clergymen to back his criticism. Although educated at Notre Dame's preparatory academy, Lindsey would not openly champion any particular faith. He celebrated the "church element" in Denver for its fight against saloons, gambling houses, and brothels on behalf of children of the city. It was "good Christian people who conquered ... the political supporters of protected vice." Like his good friend Edward Costigan, the judge increasingly recognized the political potential of Protestant voters in the city. In his first decades on the bench, he would frame his crusades for child welfare in terms that appealed to Denver's Protestant public.
For Lindsey as for many churchgoers in Denver, political corruption was linked to various sins. As a leader of the city's Progressives, Lindsey helped to define a gendered opposition between honorable, independent manly citizenship and a morally corrupting party system. Progressive reformers launched a variety of associations designed to curb voting fraud and police corruption. They demanded an end to party reliance on private utilities, saloon owners, gamblers, and prostitutes. Even the municipal ownership of utilities assumed the character of a religious reform in Denver, given perceptions of an insidious network linking Mayor Speer's administration with saloon and utility owners. Temperance advocates also exerted a strong influence within Denver's Protestant crusade, advancing local option along with structural reforms to end the reign of the party machine. Local option would have allowed voters to ban saloons within their designated neighborhoods.
The main target of Protestant reformers in early twentieth-century Denver was Mayor Robert Walter Speer's Democratic Party machine. These reformers worked to link Speer with all the evils of urban life, particularly highlighting those that threatened moral purity. Speer had only recently ended his service on the Fire and Police Board when Lindsey leveled his accusations against law enforcement officials. Control over the police was crucial to party-machine success. Progressive leaders and their Protestant allies insisted that decency, transparency, and Christian morality guide city government. Yet Mayor Speer offered a different vision for the municipal public, one stressing the compromise of competing group interests and the need for coalition building. A booster at heart, Speer sought to expand urban infrastructure and create the City Beautiful by enlisting the support of Denver's elite and employing a significant section of its working class. Between 1902 and 1912, Progressive reformers and their Protestant supporters battled Boss Speer for control of Denver.
PARTY AND CORPORATE ALLIANCES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY COLORADO
In 1900, Speer's party machine was hardly unique on the political landscape. Parties and corporations had developed in mutually beneficial ways in late nineteenth-century Colorado. Along with other western states, Coloradans created political institutions in the heated context of rapid industrialization and consolidating corporate capitalism. After 1865 the Republican Party devoted the resources of a recently unified federal government to support the Euroamerican settlement of the state. Republicans dominated Colorado's politics from its territorial days through the 1890s.
Denver grew rapidly from the 1880s through 1910 because of mining expansion in the Rockies. A transcontinental rail link in the 1870s helped transform Denver into a financial and commercial center to serve previously isolated mining camps. Denver became primarily a distribution and collection point and never developed substantial heavy industry, although mining corporations opened smelters in the city. Its manufacturing was diversified and oriented toward regional markets. Stockyards and meatpacking plants processed growing numbers of livestock raised in the state. Yet city boosters relied chiefly on the fortunes of mining and railroad owners to build urban infrastructure and fund party campaigns while keeping tax rates low.
Because of these developments, political parties functioned differently in this western state than in the East or South. First, party organizations remained weaker and yet more dependent on corporate backing in Colorado than in the northeast. Bipartisan corporate funding limited interparty competition across much of the state. Additionally, Colorado voters were more likely to split tickets and switch parties on the basis of short-term issues. Ethno-cultural divisions proved less salient here than in the East, at least until the Progressive Era.
By 1900 both the Republican and Democratic parties had developed political machines with ties to utilities in Denver. Controlling the downtown precincts with election monitors and sympathetic police support was only one tactic. Denver reformer George Creel insisted that the "tramway company, the water company, the telephone company, the coal companies, the smelters — all operating as a unit — controlled both parties and named both tickets in every election." Parties also falsified voter registration records and cast ballots for the dead. Judge Lindsey gave a name to this network of party activists, saloonkeepers, and utility sponsors in early twentieth-century Denver — "the Beast."
Party and corporate dominance over politics in the city had generated potent nineteenth-century opposition. The Populist campaigns of the 1890s offered a broad critique of corporate consolidation in industry in hopes of revitalizing democracy. A Farmers' Alliance organizer in Colorado insisted in 1890 that "the toilers of the earth have become the mere vassals of the railway potentates, and the victims of the political leaders of both parties who ... serve them." Mobilizing behind gubernatorial candidate Davis Waite in 1892, farmers and laborers elected the entire Populist state ticket that year. Governor Waite railed against a "ruthless plutocracy" and briefly challenged Republican dominance. Populist electoral success inspired the hope that, in the words of one zealous supporter, "Colorado, at last, has been lifted up out of the political cess-pools of degenerated filth." Confronting the devastating depression of 1893 with a tenuous coalition, however, Populists achieved few of their reform goals save the passage of a measure granting women full suffrage in 1893. Governor Waite did earn the enduring gratitude of workers and opprobrium of corporate owners for his defense of striking miners at Cripple Creek in 1894. His defiance of mine-owner power shaped Populism as a radical movement, appealing chiefly to foreign-born workers.
In the mid-1890s, Denver reformers challenged utility and party dominance through a range of civic associations. A reform mayor in 1895 endorsed the program of the Taxpayers' Reform Association. This association called for a separation between city hall and the utilities, hoping to reduce taxes and curb corruption. Several Denver clubwomen joined together in these years to form the Civic Federation, modeled on the Chicago organization of the same name, to promote honest elections, nonpartisan city administration, and municipal ownership of utilities. Protestant activists in the Anti-Saloon League and Denver's Ministerial Alliance endorsed these campaigns. Reform mayors Platt Rodgers (1891–1893) and Thomas McMurray (1895–1899) had drawn on discontent in the new suburbs to challenge the saloon–party machine network. Yet in 1899, McMurray lost to a Democratic candidate with ties to the tramway utility. Progressives in the twentieth century would expand on these crusades.
HOME RULE FOR DENVER
The struggle over home rule for Denver between 1899 and 1904 led Protestant reformers to mobilize politically in hopes of remaking city politics. Responding to growing calls for a city government independent of the governor and his partisan loyalists, Denver attorney John Rush introduced Senate Bill 2 in 1901. The Rush bill proposed a separate City and County of Denver with elected, not governor-appointed, officials. As passed that spring, the Rush Act called for voters to ratify a new article to the state constitution. Rush created the Municipal League to advocate for passage, assuring voters home rule would lower property taxes and ensure efficient administration. After voters overwhelmingly approved home rule in 1902, religiously motivated reformers began to mobilize.
The first charter convention met over the summer of 1903 and reformers dominated the proceedings. Members included the director of the recently formed Honest Elections League, journalist Ed Keating at the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Woman's Club members such as Ellis Meredith, and several from the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Wealthy flour miller and temperance advocate John K. Mullen was a Catholic participant. Although some Catholics and even a few Jewish leaders shared the crusading zeal of many Protestant Progressives, they were typically underrepresented among reformers. Behind the leadership of John Rush, convention members drafted a charter that called for tight regulation of utilities, civil service requirements for city boards, and at-large elections for councilmen. The proposal included provisions to close "disreputable" saloons and abolish gambling. Hopes for moral renewal were joined with calls for efficiency and lower taxes.
Protestant activists quickly took up the campaign for this moral charter. The campaign sparked Protestants to create new political organizations across the city. Foremost among these was the Denver Christian Citizenship Union, a group led by Protestant ministers in affluent neighborhoods. The director was Harry Fisher, who advocated a host of Progressive reforms in early twentieth-century Denver, especially in partnership with Judge Ben Lindsey. In September 1903, Fisher insisted that "Christian people are awake" and would "rally to the standard of good citizenship" and "public spirit" to vote for the charter. The Christian Citizenship Union held numerous pro-charter rallies in churches across Denver in the weeks leading up to the citywide vote.
Democratic senator Thomas Patterson also threw the full weight of his newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News, behind the effort. The moral charter campaign initiated a discursive contest to define the character of masculine citizenship in Denver. A front-page cartoon in support of the moral charter depicted a brawny but shackled male "Denver" breaking the fetters of "Corporation Rule," "Bossism," the "Gang Machine," "Election Frauds," and not least "High Taxes!" by means of this reform charter (Figure 1.1).
The challenge to boss and corporate rule would require the muscle and determination of a physical struggle. The cartoon projected an assertion of masculine strength by the Christian activists. The illustration projected the views of the paper's political editor, charter convention member Ed Keating, in prominent terms. Initially a Democratic activist, Keating became a leading spokesperson for the moral charter on behalf of religious Progressives. With their moral charter campaign, reformers like Keating defined their muscular Christian ideal for urban government. His Catholicism did not interfere with his partnership with the otherwise Protestant Christian Citizenship Union. They shared a desire to enact civil service rules to undermine party machines and liberate the enslaved male citizen, temperance to curb the influence of the saloon, and regulations to curtail lobbying and campaign spending by utility corporations.
Several prominent women's club leaders backed the moral charter, appealing to women voters with less masculine and more maternal rhetoric. Julia Welles stumped for the charter at Christian Union meetings in Protestant churches throughout the city. She particularly stressed its poor relief provisions. For Welles, the charter deserved support largely because the enemies it had generated — utility and saloon owners, the city Democratic Party machine — threatened feminine virtue. The women's executive committee of the Denver County Democratic Party even endorsed the moral charter over the objection of the Democratic men. One member argued that it stood "for a broader morality" and "protection for the young." The activist also noted that the moral charter should result "in a lower rate of taxation by cutting down the expenses of city government, and that as the bulk of taxes upon small homes are paid by women ... they should all be in favor." Again moral appeals were combined with hopes for fiscal restraint. Yet the Denver Christian Citizenship Union relied more on its male leadership, as supportive women tended to assume secondary roles in the struggle for the home rule charter.
ROBERT SPEER AND THE DEMOCRATIC MACHINE
As religious Progressives appealed for charter support on the eve of the election, they noted the opposition of both party organizations along with the "liquor interest, the breweries, and the liberal element." These opponents feared that the moral charter would destroy party organizations and constrain saloons and gambling. Coordinating this opposition was the head of Denver's Board of Public Works and the city's Democratic machine, Robert Speer. Many urban workers formed a significant base of support for Speer, having already forged ties to his Democratic machine.
Born in 1855, Speer moved from Pennsylvania to Colorado in 1878, hoping the dry air would aid his recovery from tuberculosis. Once cured, he turned his attention to real estate. Speer became an inaugural member of the Denver Fire and Police Board in 1891. Later appointed by the governor to the Board of Public Works, Speer supervised street construction and park projects from 1901 to 1904. Utilities worked directly with him to gain permission to string electrical wires and lay water pipes and rail lines. In his years building the Democratic Party machine, Speer also cultivated ties to downtown saloon owners, their patrons, and diverse urban workers in the heart of the city. His association with gambling and burlesque-hall owners Edward Chase and Vaso Chucovitch was particularly galling to reformers. In 1900, Speer created a modest poor-relief program, instructing police to distribute coupons to unemployed residents that could be redeemed for cash to purchase food. Workers increasingly looked to the Democratic Party and Boss Speer for support in their efforts to secure union recognition and the eight-hour day on city jobs.
In Denver, private utility owners forged close ties to leaders of both parties. Denver Union Water Company head Walter Cheeseman and Denver Tramway president William Gray Evans worked closely with railroad executive David Moffat to promote candidates within the Republican Party. Yet the Republican Evans also became a close ally of the Democratic Speer. Evans ran the Denver Tramway Company from 1902 to 1913 and provided Speer with access to the boardrooms and parlors of Denver's elite. The two men shared a vision of the "City Beautiful" with Evans facilitating the funding and Speer providing the administrative leadership. Speer also helped fend off demands for lower tramway fares, increased regulation, and municipal ownership. Evans in return helped sustain the party machinery of Speer's Democrats, earning him the dubious title "Boss of the Boss" among Progressives. Reformer Clyde King was not far off the mark when he wrote that it was "through party machinery that the public service corporations [exerted] their control over city officials. ... [I]n the agents of franchise-holding and franchise-seeking companies ... the professional politicians have found ... their principal allies and sources of supply."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Gospel of Progressivism by R. Todd Laugen. Copyright © 2010 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Acknowledgments,
Foreword by Stephen J. Leonard,
Introduction: The Varieties of Colorado Progressivism,
1. Protestant Progressives and the Denver Party Machine,
2. Public Enemy: Colorado Fuel and Iron or the Saloon?,
3. The Denver Tramway Crisis and the Struggle for Masculine Citizenship,
4. The Consuming Public and the Industrial Commission,
5. Ben Lindsey and Women Progressives,
6. The Colorado Klan and the Decline of Progressivism,
Epilogue: The Progressive Legacy,
Notes,
Index,