Edward C. Banfield, Big City Politics

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" BIG CITY POLITICS, A comparative guide to the politicalsystems ofATLANTA 0 BOSTON DDETROITDEL PASOD

LOS ANGELESD MIAMID' PHILADELPHIAD! 81 LOUISDSEATTLED

EDWARD C. BANFI ELD.. Harvard University

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Edward C. Banfield Big City Politics: ComparativeGuide to the Political Systems of Atlanta, Boston, DetroitEl Paso, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, St. LouisSeattle (New York: Random House , 1965)

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" BIG CITY POLITICS, A comparative guide to the politicalsystems ofATLANTA 0 BOSTON DDETROITDEL PASOD

LOS ANGELESD MIAMID' PHILADELPHIAD! 81 LOUISDSEATTLED

EDWARD C. BANFI ELD.. Harvard University

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Big City Politics

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STUDIES IN POLITICAL SCIENCERandom House New Y ark

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ElXG CXTY" POLXTXCSA Comparative Guide to the Political Systems ofATLANTABOSTONDETROIT

EL PASOLOS ANGELES

MIAMI

PHILADELPHIAST. LOUISSEATTLE

EDWARD C. BANFIELDHARVARD UNIVERSITY


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Third Printing, August I967(Q) Copyright, I965, by Random House Inc.All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc, andrimultaneously in Toronto, Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65 ";'I3765Manufactured in the United States of America

by H. Wolff, New York

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_ _A Note on Authorship

This book has an author in the sense that one person decidedon its plan, put its language in final form, and takes re-sponsibility for everything in it. In another sense, howeverit has nine authors and an editor-compiler. The principalsource of each chapter was a report in the series publishedby the Joint Center for Urban StUdies of the MassachusettsInstitUte of Technology and Harvard University. The au-thor wishes to express his appreciation to the authors ofthese reports (they are listed below) and to the Joint Cen-ter for its generous support of this undertaking. Appre-ciation is also due Mark K. Adams, Martha Derthick, andMitchell Grodzins, who gave editorial assistance. Informa-tion to supplement the Joint Center reports on some pointswas obtained by the author through interviews with politi-cians in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, EI Paso, and Los Angeles.Additional information was obtained through interviewsconducted by students and from published sources; to thestUdent volunteers (also listed below) particular thanks aredue. Obviously the authors of the original reports cannot beheld responsible for a product that has passed through somany hands; the author assumes sole responsibility for it.In the following listing, the name of the author of theJoint Center report is given immediately after the name ofthe city.

Atlanta. Kenneth E. Gray. Mr. Gray was prevented fromcompleting his report on Atlanta; however, his notes werethe principal source of the chapter that appears here. WayneKelley and Raleigh Bryans provided additional information.See also M. Kent Jennings Community Influentials TheFree Press of Glencoe, New York, 1964; Jack L. WalkerProtest and Negotiation: A Case StUdy of Negro Lead-ership in Atlanta, Georgia Midwest Journal of PoliticalScience VII (May, 1963); Seymour Freedgood Life inBuckhead Fortune, September, 1961; James L. Townsend


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vi A Note on AuthorshipWhat Sort of a Mayor?," Atlanta Magazine, January, 1962and Eugene Patterson The Making of a Mayor," Atlanta

Magazine November, 1963.Boston. The Joint Center report was the product of agraduate seminar at Harvard and was edited by E. C. Ban-field and Martha Derthick. A section of this report by Peter

Braestrup dealing with the Boston press appeared in ab-breviated form in Harper's October, 1960.

Detroit. David Greenstone. See also Tom NicholsonDetroit's Surprising Mayor," Harper December, 1963.El Paso. Mark and Gertrude Adams.Los Angeles. James Q. Wilson. See also James Phelan

Trouble in Happyland," Saturday Evening Post, May 25,1963; Charles G. Mayo The Mass Media and CampaignStrategy in a Mayoralty Election Journalism Quarterly,41:3 (Summer 1964) and "The 1961 Mayoralty Electionin Los Angeles: The Political Party in a Nonpartisan Elec-tion The Western Political Quarterly, XVII:2 (June1964), and The Los Angeles Newsletter.

Miami (Dade County). Edward Sofen. Clarence Jonesprovided additional information.Philadelphia. Robert 1. Freedman, William A. Humenuk, provided additional information. See also James Reichley,The Art of Government: Reform and Organization Politics

in Philadelphia Fund for the Republic, New York, 1959.Seattle. Charles W. Bender. Charles 1. Jackson and DavidD. Tripple provided additional information.St. Louis. Kenneth E. Gray. Leonard Strauss , Jr. providedadditional information. See also Robert H. Salisbury, "St.Louis Politics: A Note on Relationships Among InterestsParties, and Governmental Structure Western Political

Quarterly, June, 1960, and "The Dynamics of Reform:Charter Politics in St. Louis Midwest Journal of PoliticalScience August, 1961. Also H. J. Schmandt, P. G. Stein-bicker, and G. D. Wendel Metropolitan Reform in St. Louis,Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1962.

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Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter

Chapter

Contents

Atlanta: Strange Bedfellows

Boston: The New Hurrah

Detroit: Balancing Act

Chapter EI Paso: Two Cultures

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Chapter Los Angeles: Pre (Civil) War

Chapter Miami (Dade County): Yes, But. . .Chapter Philadelphia: Nice While It Lasted

Chapter St. Louis: Better Than She Should Be

Chapter

Index

Seattle: Anybody in Charge?

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Big City Politics

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Introduction

The 9E~tacles in the wa of solvin tY problems (insofaras "solutions" exist) e mainl olitical. Slums, racial injus-tice, traffic congestion, inadequate schools, air pollution-there is not an item on the whole familiar list that is aproblem solely, or even primarily, for lack of resourcestechnical knowledge, or organization. In each case ~he mainthin that stands in the of remedial action is conflict.People s interests and opinions differ, and therefore theydisagree about what, if anything, is to be done. Politics ist!teprocess py,:w..Qic~ conflict is carrieej"..on in matters of.Ebli_ s.~, and the olitical s stem of a ci is the set offormal and informal arrangements (laws, offices, interestgroups, voting procedures, and so on) by which a public, ortbose who act for it , decide-or, it may be, fail to decide-what is to be done. It follows , then, that anyone interestedin the problems of tbe cities ought also to be interested inthe way their political systems work.These systems differ greatly from city to city, and veryfew have been comprehensively described in print.l If onegoes to the city hall or public library, one can usually get theprincipal facts about the legal structure of a city s govern-ment-what the elective offices are, how to get on the bal-lot, how many votes in council are necessary to override themayor s vetO, and the like. But if one cannot do this, it isoften not easy to get such simple facts. There is no centralplace where they are collected for all cities or even for alllarge ones. And if one wants to go beyond the simple factsto find out how the system " really works " there is often nolA l1::Jtable exception is Wallace Sayre and William Kaufman,Governing New York City (New York: Russell Sage Foundation,1960).


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Selected Comparative Data on the Cities in this VolumeDade County Los Phila-Atlanta Boston (Miami) Detroit El Paso Angeles delphia St. Louis Seattle

Population, 1960(m thousands) 487 697 935 1670 277 2479 2003 750 557% of change in population1950- -13 -10 112 -13% foreign stockl% non-white% in white collar jobsMedian years of schooling 10. 11. 11.4 10. II. 12. 12.Median family income $5029 $5747 $5348 $6069 $52II $6896 $5782 $5355 $6942% of family incomeunder $3,000% of family incomeover $10 000% of dwelling unitsowner-occupied% of dwelling unitsdilapidated 1.4Median gross rent(per month) $65 $78 $85 $77 $61 $78 $65 $66 $75Per capita general

municipal expenditUre2 $85 $243 $101 $135 $68 $102 $137 $II8 $921 I.e. foreign-born persons plus native population of foreign or 3 Miami only; Dade County not available.mixed parentage. . Source: 1960 Census of Population and 1960 HOUSlllg Census.2 Total gener , expenditUres , less education, for the fiscal year 1961.Source: Munlclpal Yearbook, 1963.

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PHILADELPHIA20He still did not have the eight Democratic votes heneeded on the council. To get them he traveled to Washing-Congressman Green, the ST. LOUIS:


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ton for a confidential talk withchairman of the Democratic City Committee. Apparently hemade three concessions to Green as the price for the neededvotes: he would let an organization man be cochairman ofthe Citizens for Kennedy, he would reduce the amount ofthe proposed wage tax slightly, an~ he would recommendincreasing the salaries of the councilmen from $12 000 to$15,000, These arrangements having been made, the fifteeDemocrats on the council voted unanimously for the modI-fied tax proposal and the two Republicans voted againstit.

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Better Than She Should Be

Generally speaking, upper-income people tend to supportreform and "good government" and lower- income peopletend to be indifferent or downright hostile to them. St. Louishas fewer upper-income and more lower-income people (inproportion to total population) than any other big city out-side the South; it should therefore be one of the worst-. . governed cities in the United States. In fact, the structure of

- its political system is unreformed; St. Louis is one of the few:' big cities where elections are partisan and where aldermenrepresent wards, The functioning of the system, however, isexactly the opposite of what one would expect. The city. government is characterized by the very virtues-honesty,efficiency, and impartiality-reformers cherish most. Tothese rather paradoxical facts, another must be added: ageneration or so ago St. Louis was predominantly middledass-and notoriously corrupt.Population and Economy

., In the last twenty years, the middle class has moved from: the city to the suburbs at a rapid rate. Southern l)Jegroes andmountain" whites have moved in, some to stay and others. to pass on after a few months or years to places furthernorth. Despite this in-migration, the net loss of populationhas been considerable: 13 per cent between 1950 and 1960.Of the 750 000 people who lived in the city in 1960, 29 percent were Negro, as opposed to only IS per cent ten yearse:u-lier,Germans are the largest foreign-stock group, with Italians

,. and Irish next. Most of the Germans and the Irish are third-\and fourth-generation; for this reason, perhaps, nationality


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ST. LOUIS32Tucker, necessitated a constitutional amendment and so hadto be voted on by the whole state. It was defeated by a 6-to-5 margin in the city, a 4-tO-1 margin in the county, and a

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SEATTLE:

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3-tO-1 margin elsewhere. If the St. Louis area was to be gov-erned well, it would have to be through organizational ar-rangements of which the "good government" movementthoroughly disapproved. This, of course, was the way thecity had long been governed, t!

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Anybody in Charge?

In the 1930 S Seattle was probably the widest-open port inthe country. Its politicians were always flamboyant andoften corrupt, ("There s going to be no cheap chiseling atthe City Hall. I intend to take it all myself " promised VieMeyers, a band leader and nightclub owner who ran formayor in 1932. ) The city had a tradition of labor radicalismand popular discontent; elections were bitterly fought alongclass lines, and incumbents usually lost.In 1938 Seattle eleCted a reform mayor who cleaned itthoroughly, The war then brought industry and prosperity,and the post-war years, a residential building boom. TodaySeattle has more middle-class people (in proportion to pop-ulation) and more prosperous ones than any other largecity, Its people are busy making money, rearing childrentrimming lawns, and boating, and its politics, far from be-ing radical, corrupt, or bitter, is downright dullPopulation and Economy

Seattle s population was 557,087 in 1960, an increase 'of19 per cent in the decade, It is predominantly native white.Persons of foreign stock (28 per cent of the total) comemainly from Canada, Norway, Sweden, and the UnitedKingdom, The Ballard district, where the first Scandinavianimmigrants settled, is still the Norwegian-Swedish centerbur second- and third-generation Scandinavian-Americanslive all over the city. The nonwhite population is small-8-4per cent of the total. It consists of 27,000 Negroes who areconcentrated in the Capital Hill distriCt and 14,000 Orien-tals scattered throughout the city. The Jewish population isvery small-about IO 500 in the whole metropolitan area.


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I46 SEATTLEdivided along class, ethnic, and other lines as most largecities, it could not be governed by citizen-committees; theelected officials would in this case have to play dominantroles, either as mediators of the conflicting interests or as

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Index


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the agents of whatever interests were dominant. Whateverthe importance of these other factors may be , it seems clearthat doing-it-by-citizen-committee is highly congenial to theProtestant middle class. Whether it accomplishes anythingor not, they like it this way.

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Allen, Ivan , Jr., II , 14, 22 , 24-Amberg, Richard, 129American Civil Liberties Union14, 139Anglos " 66, 67, 7 IAnti-Defamation League, 105Atlanta, 9, 10, 12, 1;0, 16-Beck, Dave, 142Blethen, William , 142Boston, 7, 8 , 9, 10, I2 , 37-Braman, J. D., I37, 138, I4014IBreck, Julia, 72, 73, 78Brickley, James , 55Campbell, O. W. , 98, 99Canadians, 52 , 8 ICatholics, I9, 38 , 96, I05, 108I22 , I27Cavanagh, Jerome P., II , 57,, 60, 6I , 64, 65, 86Cervantes , A, J., I26 , 130Chandler , Otis , 89Cherberg, John A. , I38City Council, 20, 39, 52-53, 54,109, I22 , I35-I36Clark, Joseph S., Jr., I4, I07,IIO, III , II3, 1I4, 1I7, 1I8Clark, Peter B. , 60Cleague, Reverend Albert B. , Jr.Clinton, Gordon, I4, I37, 140I4I , 145

Collins, John F., 9, IO, II , 4243, 44, 47, 49,Committee on Political Educa-tion, AFL-CIO (COPE), 47,55, 56, 57, 60, 6I, 63, 75,103, I43Committee on Racial Equality(CORE), 49, 90 , I28County Manager, 97Cunningham, Ross, I42Curley, James Michael, 9, 36

Dade County, 94, 95, 96, 105Davis, James c., 33Democrats, 85, 86, IOO, 101I07, IIO-II4, II7, II8 , 1I9,I20, I2I , I26Detroit, 7, 8 , 9, I2 , I3, 51-Devin , William F., I40, I44Dilworth, Richardson, I4, 107,IIO, III , II3, II5, II6, II8I 19, I20

EI Paso, IO, 66-Fitzgerald, JohnFitz ) , 43Ford , Henry, 2d, 57Ford Foundation, I3I

("Honey

'German- Americans, 58, 10812IGreen, William J., Jr" 107,110, III , 1I8

I48Hartsfield , William B., 23, 24,25, , 29, 30Holman, Carl , 35Homer, Porter W. , IOO

IndexNational Association for the Ad-vancement of Colored People(NAACP), 34, 49, 6I, 90I04, I I8 , I27

IndexSmith, Francis R., I I ISteffens, Lincoln, I ISullivan, Thomas A" 4I , 42 , 45

I49United Automobile Workers(UAW) , 5I , 6IUrban League, 6I , 90, I27


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Hooten, W.Hynes , John B. , 42 , 45Irish-Americans , 38, I:/IItalian-Americans, 38, 44, 52I08, I2IJews, 38, 44, 45, 49, 8I , 89,, I04, I05, I08 , I22, I33Kelly, John F. , I36King, Reverend Martin Luther

Labor, 32 , 60-6I , 74-75, 89,I03, II7, I28-I29, I42-I43Langlie , Arthur, I40Latin-Americans, 95, 96, I04,I05Latins " 66 67, 7I , 76-Lee, Robert W. , 76Levine, David, I37Los Angeles, 9, ro, I3, 80-McGill , Ralph, 3I , 33McNayr, Irving C , 99, IOOMayor, formal powers of office

, 39, 52 , 68, 82 , I08 , I22I34-I35Mead , William , I I 3Metro see Dade CountyMexican-Americans (and Mexi-cans), IO, 66, 67, 7I , 89Meyers, Vic, I33Miami, 97; see also Dade CountyMilwaukee, I2Miriani, Louis C, 57, 58, 6IMurphy, Frank, 55

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Negroes , IO , 26-29, 34-35, 44-45, 48-49, , 6I- , 67, 72, 8I , 87, 89- , 95, I04,I07-I08 , 1I2, II5, 1I7-118127-128 , 133Newspapers see PressOrientals , 8I , 89, 133Patronage, 22, 54, II2, I33,

138Philadelphia, 7, 8 , 9, 12 , 13, 19,I07-120Pittsburgh, 36Polish-Americans, 52 , I08Pomeroy, Allen, 137, 138 , 140Poulson, Norris, 85, 89Powers, John 44, 48Press, IO, 32-33, 60, 75-76,89, I02-I03, 1I6-I17, I29,I42

Puerto Ricans , I08Pulitzer, Joseph , 129Red necks " 25, 29, I04Republicans, 85- , IOO-IOII07, IIO-II4, II7-I20, I25,I3IRoosevelt, James , 86Russian-Americans , 8I , I08

St. Louis , 7, 8 , I2, I3, I2I-I32Scandinavian-Americans, I33Scott, W. A. , 34Seattle , 8 , 9, I2 , 14, I33-I46Seitsinger, Ralph , 73, 78Sheffield, Horace 1. , 62, 63

Tate, James H. 1., II5, II7Tucker, Raymond R., II, I4,I26, I27, I29, I3IUnion labor see Labor

Walden, A. T. , 34Woodruff, Robert W., 3I , 35,Yorty, Samuel W" II , 84, 8687, 9I , 92, 93

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BIG CITY POLITICS describes in con-cise and readable style these aspects of the political systemsof nine important American cities:1. Population and Economy


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2, How the GDvernment Is Organized3, How It Really Works4. How They Get Elected5. Interest Groups and Influentials6. How Issues Are Handled

EDWARD Cg BANFI ELD is Henry LeeShattuck Professor of Urban Government at Harvard Uni-versity and the author of numerous works in the general fieldof urban government and public administration , includingPoliticallnf/uence and City Politics (with James Q, Wilson).OiHfR RkNDOM HOUSE STUDIES IN POLITICAL SCIENCESMALL CITY GOVERNMENTWarner E, Mills, Jr. and Harry R, Dav~s (PS 39)THE STATE LEGISLATUREMalcolm E. Jewell (PS 37)THE ?OLITICAL. PROCESSRevised edition by J, Leiper Freeman (PS 13)CONGRESSNorman C, Thomas and Karl A, Lamb (PS 45)WIRETAPPING ON TRIALWalter F. Murphy (PS 50)A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE IS APPOINTEDDavid J. Danelski (PS 46)

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Edward C. Banfield, Big City Politics