American Pharaoh

by Adam Cohen

  Daley wasted little time, once he became mayor, in beginning his war on Kennelly’s civil-service reforms. On April 15, just days after the election, Civil Service Commission head Stephen Hurley submitted his resignation, even though he had a year remaining on his contract. Kennelly’s reform-minded Civil Service Commission president had done significant damage to the machine’s patronage operations by bringing 12,000 political hires under civil-service protection. To replace Hurley, Daley selected his old friend and political ally William Lee. Reformers were outraged by the appointment, because Lee was president of the Chicago Federation of Labor — a position he intended to keep — and actually represented 36,000 of the government workers who would fall under his jurisdiction. The Chicago Crime Commission decried Lee’s selection as a conflict of interest that was “wrong in principle.” Daley cannily framed the reformers’ criticism as an attack on organized labor, and defended Lee’s selection by pointing out that unions represented “a large segment of our people.” 35

  Lee’s greatest conflict-of-interest was not his union position, but the fact that he did not believe in the civil-service system he would be in charge of promoting. The Chicago labor movement that Lee came out of was a bastion of favoritism and featherbedding. Its leaders were men like “Umbrella” Mike Boyle, onetime head of the plumbers’ union, who got his nickname from his practice of hanging up an open umbrella when he went out drinking at his favorite saloon, using it to collect political payoffs. Lee set the new tone in the Civil Service Commission with one of his first hires: his own twenty-seven-year-old nephew, Robert E. Lee Jr., who became a labor examiner on his staff. Critics attacked the appointment as undisguised nepotism, but Daley rushed to defend it. Daley declared that he had known the younger Lee and his family for years and that “this man is particularly well equipped for this job.” So much, it seemed, for Daley’s promise to continue Kennelly’s reform policies. Lee’s hiring of his relatives did not end with his nephew. Robert E. Lee Sr., father of the new labor examiner, was assigned to work full-time as his brother’s bodyguard. 36

  With Hurley out and Lee in, Daley could begin the real work of undoing Kennelly’s civil-service reforms. He hired a consultant named Fred Hoehler to consider possible changes in the city’s civil-service code. There was, of course, considerable room to improve the civil-service system — the machine was still managing to place tens of thousands of its political workers in patronage jobs. But Hoehler’s recommendations were not to extend civil service reform, but to roll it back. Hoehler’s report found fault with “the intense rigidity with which civil service has been administered over the last few years.” He recommended rewriting the rules to give greater weight to oral examinations and less to written tests. This was exactly the direction Daley wanted civil service to move in, since oral examinations were more subjective, and made it easier for employers to give preference to politically connected applicants. 37

  The biggest campaign promise Daley broke on the subject of political reform was his vow to step down as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Organization if he were elected mayor. Daley had made this promise as early as 1953, when Arvey asked him about it, and in the primary and general elections he had made the same public commitment to the voters. But Daley understood better than anyone the political risks he would be taking by keeping his promise. Kennelly had been removed from City Hall because Daley, as head of the machine, had the power to unslate him. If Daley handed over the machine to someone else, they would be able to do the same thing to him at the end of his first term. Daley also understood that, important as the mayoralty was, the position of machine boss carried with it more power. The party boss filled more patronage positions, had more power to punish politicians from the governor down to the lowliest ward committeeman, and controlled more votes in Spring-field and Washington than a mayor ever did. “Daley is known as ‘Mayor Daley’ because ‘Mayor’ is his prestigious and sonorous title,” Leon Despres, a leading anti-machine alderman, would observe on Daley’s tenth anniversary as mayor, “but if we used the more powerful title, we would certainly call him ‘Party Chairman Daley.’” Once in office, Daley conveniently forgot his promise to step down as machine boss. He would always insist that he tried to offer his resignation, but the Cook County Central Committee had refused it. 38

  The Chicago that Daley inherited in 1955 was in serious decline. The novelist Nelson Algren compared his fading hometown to “a juke box running down in a deserted bar.” Chicago’s 1950 population of 3,620,962 turned out to be the high-water mark: for the rest of the century, the city would steadily lose inhabitants. Chicago was losing not only people, but jobs, to the fast-growing Cook County suburbs. In the seven years before Daley took over as mayor, the city lost 53,209 manufacturing jobs, while the rest of the county gained 30,000. The city’s infrastructure was also in decline: new housing starts had all but ground to a halt, and only one major building had risen downtown in a decade. Even Chicago’s once-thriving vice trade, which had serviced generations of farm boys and conventioneers, was sliding into oblivion. “The strip-tease joints are still operating on West Madison and North Clark Streets but with the weary air of sin gone stale,” wrote one Chicago journalist. Mid-1950s Chicago, he concluded, had “a surplus of only one thing — ennui.” It was in 1955, Daley’s first year as mayor, that Chicago suffered the greatest indignity of all: it ceded its status as “hog butcher for the world” when it was surpassed in total receipts from livestock by Omaha, Nebraska. 39

  Among the hardest-hit parts of the city was the downtown business district, better known as the Loop. The Loop had been the center of Chicago’s commerce since the 1800s, when the city’s vast cable car system, at that time the largest in the world, brought shoppers in from the neighborhoods to State Street, to shop at the mammoth Marshall Field department store. The district got its name from the turnabout, or loop, of cable-car track in front of Marshall Field, which allowed the cars to change directions and head back to the South Side. In time, as the streets became more congested, the cable cars gave way to an elevated railway system that swooped around the perimeter of the downtown commercial district, giving Chicagoans a new and more visible reason to call their downtown the Loop. Chicago’s Loop has long been one of the world’s most densely concentrated business centers. In 1910, the one-half-mile district contained almost 40 percent of the assessed land value in a 190-square-mile city. And, from its earliest days, the Loop has always had a distinctly rough-and-tumble character. Blue-blooded bankers reported for work next door to pawnshops and honky-tonks. Haute couture was sold in stores that looked out on thrift shops and dancing schools. Many observers were struck by its essential charmlessness. “Buildings are too frequently drab,” noted one study that urged an immediate downtown beautification project. “Street furniture is finished in dull grays, black and olive drab. The subway is glum and dreary. The sidewalk paving lacks either color or pattern.” A. J. Liebling, who came to know the Loop in his year of exile from Manhattan in the 1940s, dismissed it as “a boundless agglutination of streets, dramshops, and low buildings without any urban character.” In the early 1950s, when other cities’ downtowns were in the midst of a postwar building boom, the Loop was in the doldrums. From 1947 to 1955, when New York added 10.7 million square feet of new office space, Chicago built less than one million. With growing competition from suburban stores, retail sales in the Loop were plummeting. By 1962, net profits at the five largest downtown department stores were only 30 percent of what they had been in 1948. 40

  Along with the physical decline, Chicago seemed to be in the midst of a citywide crisis of confidence. Chicago had once been the most optimistic of cities, its spirit captured in its motto: “I will.” During the 1920s, every day’s Chicago Tribune carried an injunction to its readers to “Make Chicago the First City of the World,” and many Chicagoans believed it was only a matter of time before that lofty goal was achieved. But the city’s optimism had been flagging lately. Robert Maynard Hutchi
ns, the legendary University of Chicago chancellor who had done much to build his school into a world-class institution, had resigned and declared on his way out that the city was slipping into insignificance. “Nobody cares about Chicago,” Hutchins said bluntly. From his first days in office, Daley set out to revive Chicago’s civic spirit. Scarcely a month into his mayoralty, he told U.S. News & World Report that despite what appeared to be un-stoppable national trends, he intended to “bring people back from the suburbs to our city.” And in the tradition of the old Chicago Tribune slogan, he boldly predicted that it was only a matter of time before Chicago would eclipse New York in size. Chicago’s real problem, Daley insisted, was that it had been hamstrung by years of weak municipal leadership. City government under Kennelly had been “unbelievable,” he said — the police and fire departments were in poor shape, and the condition of public buildings was “wretched.” But all this was about to change. “I’m dedicated to a program of making this a better city,” Daley declared. “I’ll go to the people of Chicago whenever I think more money is needed.” 41

  And Daley did think more money would be needed. In his first days in office, Daley held a series of closed-door meetings with his budget director, his acting corporation counsel, and the ubiquitous alderman Tom Keane to try to determine how much. At an April 30 conference of city leaders, Daley announced that based on these calculations he would need an additional $35 million for the 1956 budget. Most of the new money, he said, would be used to pay for more policemen and firemen, more street cleaning and playground staffing, and rehabilitation of down-at-the-heels city facilities. Roughly $10 million would be needed just to carry out his campaign promise to hire an additional 2,000 police officers. 42

  There was only one problem with the new spending plans: figuring out how to raise the money. To increase the sales tax, which would have gone a long way toward raising the additional funds, Daley needed the approval of the voters. Referenda of this type were risky — even the machine could not always convince its voters to raise their own taxes. But there was a loophole: Illinois law allowed Chicago mayors to raise the sales tax without a referendum provided the state legislature gave its approval. Instead of risking the vagaries of a citywide vote, Daley could just work on persuading one man — William Stratton, the Republican governor, who could deliver his party’s vote in the legislature. Stratton was no ally of the Chicago Democratic machine, and he was not partial to higher taxes, but Daley flew to Springfield to negotiate. After five hours of talks, Daley and Stratton agreed on a package that gave both men something: the city and the state would each be authorized to adopt a half-cent sales tax increase. At the same time, Daley and Stratton agreed on several other common goals, including working toward getting Chicago a world-class exposition center, an expanded airport, and improved highways and mass transit. 43

  Not everyone applauded Daley’s shrewd political work in Spring-field. Critics of the new sales tax — notably the Illinois Federation of Retail Associations, whose members stood to lose business as a result — complained that Daley and Stratton had improperly taken the question of taxation out of the hands of the voters. Before long, a more sinister charge began to circulate: that Stratton had given Daley the taxing authority he wanted in exchange for a promise that the machine would put up only a token opponent in the next election. Daley angrily denied that he had struck any such deal. The charges came from “a polluted, twisted mind,” he said, pausing for breath and then adding that it came from a “vicious, proselyted, deluded mind who sees evil in everything men in public life try to do for people.” 44

  Early in his mayoralty, Daley took up a cause he would forever be associated with: improving city services. A few of his policy initiatives were large and cutting edge. In 1956, he directed that Chicago’s water be fluoridated, making the city a leader in what was still a controversial area of public health. He also upgraded the health care provided in city clinics, and allocated city funding for alcoholism treatment, again putting Chicago in the vanguard. But what captured Daley’s imagination were the small things — improved streetlighting and, most of all, street cleaning. Daley took a personal interest in the details of municipal housekeeping, and often became directly involved. As he was driven around town in the mayoral limousine, he often took notes on problems he observed along the way — broken traffic lights, dirty streets, and potholes. When he arrived at City Hall, he would direct his staff to fix the problems he had come across. Daley had a keen eye for potholes: by one estimate, fully half the city’s complaints for pothole repair began in the mayor’s office. Sometimes he took matters into his own hands. Daley once stopped his car when he saw a man drop a newspaper onto Michigan Avenue. As the sheets began to scatter to the wind, Daley and his police bodyguard leaped out and picked up the paper, putting it in the garbage. 45

  Cleaning up the city became a crusade for Daley. In May 1955, he returned from his first U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in New York and announced a citywide cleanup campaign. By the end of June, he had purchased forty new street sweepers, raising the total fleet size to more than one hundred, and Daley vowed that every street in Chicago would be cleaned at least once a month. His cleanup drive gained force over the summer, with an initiative to have businessmen sign pledge cards committing to keep the sidewalks in front of their establishments clean, and to place all their garbage in covered containers. Daley’s Streets and Sanitation commissioner issued a steady flow of statistics charting the drive’s progress. As of August 1, 3,640 shifts had been worked, up from 1,823 in the same period in 1954, and roughly 10,000 tons more street dirt had been removed than in the same period a year earlier. Later the same month, Daley spoke to eighty-three community cochairmen of the city’s cleanup campaign, gathered in the City Council chambers, and outlined plans for improving street cleaning and garbage removal, including a contest with prizes for blocks with the best cleanup records. 46

  Daley personally reaped the good publicity that came from the cleanup campaign. He rode through the Loop in a 1916 Isotta-Fraschini, heading up an antique car parade. Pulling up the rear were five city sanitation trucks handing out the first installment of 7,000 new wire garbage baskets Daley had ordered up for immediate distribution around the city. He urged all Chicagoans to “make a special effort over the Labor Day holiday to put waste paper and trash in waste baskets in parks, beaches, and city streets.” Daley also inspected a “Cleanerama” display that was touring the city, consisting of eight floats, including a fire truck with signs warning that 25 percent of Chicago’s fires began with litter or debris, and a cage showing rats feeding on garbage. Hardly a week went by without a prominent newspaper story featuring the mayor and his war on grime. One day Daley was directing that 2,000 metal signs and 10,000 decals be posted across the city with the message “Keep Chicago Clean.” Another day he was addressing 200 members of the Women’s Division of the Mayor’s Commission for a Cleaner City at the Bismarck Hotel, telling them that housewives were “naturals” to play a major role in cleaning up the city and handing out paper cleanup-drive boutonnieres that they could wear when they went out into the neighborhoods with pledge cards for the merchants to sign. 47

  A tangible symbol of Daley’s new attention to city services showed up in the lobby of City Hall on July 18. Chicago’s official information booth, technically the Office of Inquiry and Information, was unveiled with great fanfare. Reporters looked on as one Marquard Howe became the first Chicagoan to take advantage of the new service. Howe complained that his neighbor had placed cinder blocks on the parkway near his home, preventing him from parking his car and causing a backup of rainwater onto Howe’s lawn. Daley also announced plans for a “City Hall on Wheels,” a station wagon that would cruise the streets five days a week, staffed with mayoral aides who would be available to listen to constituents’ problems. The City Hall information booth was a Daley favorite, and he marked its one-year anniversary by manning the booth himself and personally answering a citizen’s question. 48 />
  Daley may have had a sincere interest in improved city services. His admirers have always attributed his attention to street cleaning and potholes to his love for Chicago and its inhabitants. Chicago was Daley’s “Our Lady of the Lake,” a Chicago journalist once wrote, “and he would never stop building shrines and lighting candles for her.” Daley’s attention to Chicago’s streets and sidewalks can be seen as a form of loving ministration. If there was a psychological explanation, though, it is just as likely that his furious efforts to clean and repair were a manifestation of his extraordinarily controlling personality. Chicago was his city, and a litter-strewn sidewalk was as much a challenge to his authority as an insurgent candidate for ward committeeman. Most likely of all, however, is that Daley swept and paved for political reasons. Daley had come into office with a cloud over him: his critics openly predicted that he and his allies would plunder city government for their own gain. “The attitude was that the Daley people were going to get screwdrivers and take the doors off the hinges,” recalls Daniel Rostenkowski. To fight this perception, Rostenkowski’s father, 32nd Ward alderman Joseph Rostenkowski, offered Daley a word of advice: “Put the money where they can see it.” Daley was increasing taxes, but the stream of headlines about city services gave at least the appearance that the money was being used to buy better government. 49