Category: City Managers Political Bosses 1920’s

Colorful Kohler Checkered Past Doesn’t Stop Oddball From Getting Elected

Sunday July 5, 1998 Plain Dealer article about Fred Kohler

COLORFUL KOHER CHECKERED PAST DOESN’T STOP ODDBALL FROM GETTING ELECTED

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) – Sunday, July 5, 1998
Author: Fred McGunagle
Good or bad, right or wrong, I alone have been your mayor. 

– FRED KOHLER – 

Fred Kohler was Cleveland’s most colorful mayor – and the colors were orange and black. They showed up on park benches, waste baskets, city buildings, hydrants and especially signs like the one above. 

But even without paint, nobody was as colorful as Kohler. In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt called him “the best police chief in the United States.” He was fired in disgrace for “gross immorality” in 1913, and defeated by voters in 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1916. 

Then, in 1921, he was elected mayor in what The Plain Dealer called “the most bizarre and dramatic mayoralty fight Cleveland has ever witnessed” – one in which he was opposed by Democrats, Republicans, newspapers, ministers and civic organizations. And one in which he had no organization, no campaign funds and made no speeches and no promises. 

Fred Kohler dropped out of school in the sixth grade to work in his father’s business. In 1889, at the age of 25, he achieved his boyhood dream of becoming a police officer. He rose quickly through the ranks and in 1903 was named chief by Democratic Mayor Tom L. Johnson, even though Kohler himself was a Republican. 

He built a national reputation as a spit-and-polish chief who wielded an ax on vice raids while adopting a “golden rule” policy in which first-time minor offenders were released with a warning. He put houses of prostitution out of business by stationing an officer at the door to take the names and addresses of their customers. 

In 1910, Mayor Herman Baehr tried to fire Kohler on 25 charges of drunkenness, immorality and conduct unbecoming a police officer, but the Civil Service Commission exonerated him. He was not as fortunate in 1913, after a citizen returned home to find the police chief in bed with his wife. There was a messy divorce and ministers demanded Kohler’s dismissal. 

This time, the Civil Service Commission fired him. “All right, boys,” Kohler told reporters. “I’ll be leading the Police Department down Euclid Ave. again someday.” 

He promptly ran for councilman in his home ward. To everyone’s surprise, he finished first in first-place votes but lost when second- and third-place votes were counted. 

Undaunted, he ran for sheriff the next year and lost. Then he ran for clerk of Municipal Court and lost. Then he ran for county commissioner and won the Republican nomination but lost the general election. In 1918, however, he was elected county commissioner – the only Republican to win that year – and in 1920, led all vote-getters in winning a second term. 

That made Kohler a contender for mayor. Still, nobody gave him a chance in the seven-candidate field, especially since he shunned all public appearances. Instead, he trod the streets for months, ringing doorbells and telling citizens, “Hello, I’m Kohler. I’m running for mayor. If you vote for me, I’ll appreciate it. If you don’t, I’ll never know and we can still be good friends just the same.” 

Kohler amazed the experts by finishing first, 2,500 votes ahead of Mayor William Fitzgerald. He amazed them again by naming a highly qualified Cabinet without even asking his appointees whether they had voted for him. His first order to them: Prepare a list of unnecessary city workers. 

Before the month was out, he had fired 400 employees, cut the pay of the rest by 10 percent, forced them to punch time clocks and notified city unions that existing labor agreements would not be renewed. When the unions threatened a general strike, Kohler said the city would close down if it had to. Critics tried to recall him, but failed to collect the 15,000 signatures to put the issue on the ballot. 

Anticipating Dennis Kucinich by 65 years, he called a council investigation “a bunch of pinheads seeking cheap publicity.” At the dedication of Public Hall, he denounced “uplifters” (the do-gooders of that era) who got in the way of “practical roughnecks” like himself. Three of his directors resigned after run-ins. 

He rejected plans to buy new guns for police, telling them instead to keep the old ones clean. He put signs in city elevators: “Please keep your hats on so that you may have better service.” 

But he also stepped up paving, cut streetcar fares, put up street signs, made police shine their shoes, bought an elephant for the zoo, ordered cleanups of city property and told employees they would not be forced to contribute to the Community Fund. And he kept citizens informed of his accomplishments with orange-and-black signs such as, “Tax and Rent Payers have received a dollar’s worth of value for every dollar spent – FRED KOHLER , MAYOR.” 

At the end of his term, Kohler declared he had saved taxpayers $1.8 million. Nobody knows whether he would have been re-elected – the city manager plan took effect at the beginning of 1924 – but he won two terms as county sheriff after leaving City Hall. The second ended in turmoil when he was reprimanded for skimping on prisoners’ food and using the money thus saved for other purposes instead of returning it to the county. 

Years later, he reflected on his career: “Yes, sir, I wouldn’t mind going all over it again, because I know I was right. And if I did, I’d tell all the old crowd to go to hell – newspapers, council, uplifters, tipoff guys, political hangers-on, bookbugs, ingrates – the whole crowd. I’d paint everything orange again. 

“I know I’ve been accused of being high-handed, but I was elected mayor, not anybody else. It was my picnic or my funeral.”

City Manager Plan A Flop – Plain Dealer July 26, 1998

Article about Cleveland City Manager Plan. Plain Dealer July 26, 1998

CITY MANAGER PLAN A FLOP CORRUPTION, POLITICS STILL RULE DESPITE HOPKINS’ LEADERSHIP

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) – Sunday, July 26, 1998

Author: Fred McGunagle

It had the support of “all the best people” – the Board of Real Estate Dealers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Civic League (forerunner of the Citizens League). But as the city manager plan entered its second year, Clevelanders were starting to have second thoughts.

 

As proposed, the plan would take politics out of city government. Instead of an elected mayor answerable to dozens of diverse groups, there would be a professional manager answerable to a policy-making board, much like a corporation.

The board would be a revised City Council of 25, smaller than the old Council but elected from only four districts. It would end the evils of politics – just as Prohibition was to end the evil of the saloon.

 

And just like Prohibition, the city manager plan in Cleveland turned out to be a disaster.

 

A cynical patronage deal between Republican and Democratic bosses ensured that the politicians would be more firmly in control than ever. The city manager was accused of acting like a czar. Councilmen went to prison for corruption and a former councilman expected to turn state’s evidence was murdered just before his court appearance.

 

The plan was passed by voters in November 1921, to take effect with the elections of 1923. “They were immensely proud of themselves for having solved their municipal ills by taking this new cure in one big dose,” Richard L. Maher wrote in “Our Fair City,” a 1947 book. “They didn’t bother to set up a watchdog. They left the plan to shift for itself.”

 

Maurice Maschke and Burr Gongwer knew how to shift for themselves. Maschke had been Republican boss since 1914. Gongwer, who had been The Plain Dealer’s politics reporter during the Tom L. Johnson administration, had succeeded Newton D. Baker as head of the declining Democratic organization. The two agreed that Maschke would get 60 percent of city jobs and Gongwer the other 40 percent. On Maschke’s orders, City Council elected William R. Hopkins city manager.

 

The choice was widely applauded. Hopkins, often described as “a square-jawed Welshman,” had served a term as a Republican councilman in 1897-99 and thereafter was a successful industrial developer and businessman. His vision of the future moved citizens; although he failed to make Cleveland a stopping point on a worldwide dirigible route, he did open Cleveland Municipal Airport (which, in 1951, was renamed Cleveland Hopkins Airport).

 

Harry L. Davis, the former mayor and governor, led a fight in 1927 to knock out the manager plan. Both parties, newspapers and civic groups rallied to its defense. “The manager plan was saved; or, rather, Hopkins was saved, for he immediately assumed greater powers than before,” Maher wrote. “Clevelanders learned they had a manager who was not interested in background roles. He was determined to be the star – and he was.”

 

That was fine with Maschke, as long as Hopkins hired the people Maschke wanted hired and took care of Maschke’s friends.

 

M.J. and O.P. Van Sweringen were very much Maschke’s friends. In the process of building their railroad and transit empire, along with the Terminal Group of buildings, “the Vans” wanted a railroad bridge in a place that interfered with plans for straightening the Cuyahoga River.

 

Hopkins objected, but Maschke straightened out the city manager – or so he thought. While Maschke was out of town, Hopkins tried to force the issue. Maschke hurried back and, Maher reported, “summoned the members of the Council, cracked the whip for the Van Sweringens, and Hopkins was defeated.”

 

When another vote to scrap the manager plan was put on the ballot in 1928, Maschke did little. It was Hopkins and the Democrats who led the battle that saved it, though by a narrower margin than before. Hopkins began handing out jobs to Democrats and independents as he pleased.

 

The margin was even narrower in 1929, but while the Democrats campaigned to save the manager plan, Maschke campaigned to elect a Republican Council, which didn’t need help from Democrats and independents.

 

He succeeded, and in January 1930, Council fired Hopkins by a vote of 14-11.

In his place, Council – really, Maschke – picked Daniel E. Morgan, a respected state senator but also a loyal Republican.

 

Adding to the public’s disillusionment with the system was a series of land scandals. Thomas Fleming, who had become Cleveland’s first black councilman in 1907 and ran the black wards for Maschke, was sent to the penitentiary for graft. So was Councilman Liston Schooley, chairman of the powerful Finance Committee, along with his son.

 

Councilman William Potter and City Clerk Fred Thomas were indicted but escaped conviction after three trials. Potter was then charged with perjury and was rumored to have made a deal with Prosecutor Ray T. Miller to implicate other councilmen. On Feb. 8, 1931, the day before his trial was to start, he was found in a Glenville apartment with a bullet through his head.

 

That November, voters threw out the city manager plan. Law Director Harold Burton took office as acting mayor until a special election could be held.

 

In his chapter on political reform in “The Birth of Modern Cleveland, 1865-1930,” Thomas Campbell offers a final word on the manager plan. Unlike the earlier reforms of the Tom L. Johnson era, he wrote, it was “not rooted in the ideology that was committed to the American dream of greater equality for all citizens.

 

“Indeed, these structural reforms, with their emphasis on efficiency and bureaucracy and the anti-foreign and anti-union attitudes of the business leadership of these years, left an underlying hostility among the white ethnics that has endured for many years.”

The Cleveland Orchestra History (from Telarc)

Another brief history of the Cleveland Orchestra from Telarc, long a recording company for the Cleveland Orchestra

Cleveland Orchestra

Long considered one of this country’s best symphony orchestras, The Cleveland Orchestra celebrated its 75th anniversary during the 1993-94 season. Under the leadership of its music director, Christoph von Dohnanyi, it has won unanimous acclaim from music lovers and critics throughout the world. Its performances at home, on tour, and on recordings continually demonstrate the orchestra’s ranking among the handful of great international orchestras. In its artistic, educational and community programming, The Cleveland Orchestra consistently shows its commitment to the people of the city for which it is named.

Among the last of America’s major symphony orchestras to be created, The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918 by Cleveland music patron Adella Prentiss Hughes. The new orchestra soon became the primary concern of the Musical Arts Association, a non-profit community organization that had been incorporated three years earlier to help facilitate the ongoing presentation of concerts by visiting ensembles.

The orchestra’s first concerts were given at Grays’ Armory in downtown Cleveland during the opening 1918-19 season, after which they were moved to Cleveland’s Masonic Auditorium. In 1931, Severance Hall opened as The Cleveland Orchestra’s permanent concert home. Located five miles east of downtown in Cleveland’s “University Circle” area, Severance Hall was built for the orchestra by industrialist/philanthropist John Long Severance. It is today considered one of the world’s finer music halls.

Russian-American Nikolai Sokoloff served as The Cleveland Orchestra’s first conductor and music director. During his tenure, Sokoloff initiated an extensive domestic touring schedule that included annual trips throughout the Midwest and special tours to Canada and Cuba. In January 1922, Sokoloff and the orchestra made their first concert appearance at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Over the following decade, they appeared together annually there in the nation’s music capital, garnering favorable press for themselves and for their hometown of Cleveland.

Among early mandates handed to Sokoloff from Mrs. Hughes was the creation of a series of educational concerts for young people. These matinee concerts have continued up to the present day as an integral part of the orchestra’s music-making each season, and, to date, have helped to introduce nearly 3 million children to classical orchestral music.

Sokoloff also led the orchestra’s first commercial disc recording of Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture and first radio broadcasts. By 1930, the orchestra’s recordings, radio broadcasts and tours were carrying the name of the city of Cleveland throughout the United States and Canada.

In 1933, Sokoloff was succeeded by Artur Rodzinski. Rodzinski remained with the orchestra for ten seasons and, amid many recordings and radio broadcasts, polished Sokoloff’s ensemble into one of America’s best symphony orchestras. Among highlights of his tenure was the presentation of 15 fully-staged opera productions at Severance Hall. Erich Leinsdorf served as music director from 1943 to 1946 although largely in absentia while serving in the United State armed forces during World War II.

In 1946, George Szell was named the orchestra’s fourth music director. Under Szell, the orchestra entered a new period of dramatic and sustained growth. The orchestra’s personnel was enlarged, eventually reaching 105 members, and the length of the season gradually grew from 30 to 52 weeks.

In 1948 Szell reinstituted annual Cleveland Orchestra performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and, in 1958, inaugurated the orchestra’s own yearly subscription series there. These annual appearances quickly helped to establish and then to confirm the ensemble’s place at the forefront of the musical world.

With Szell, the orchestra made its first international tours – to Europe (1957, 1965, 1967), and to Eastern Asia (1970) – and was widely acknowledged to be not only among America’s best but – for the first time – to be among the world’s handful of top orchestral ensembles. New series were also inaugurated or expanded to meet audience demand, and popular family programs and summer pops concerts were produced. In addition, the orchestra and Szell made numerous recordings of both classic and contemporary repertoire – recordings that today are regarded as “classic” of the LP era.

In 1952, Szell founded The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus to serve as the orchestra’s performing companion for choral works. This 170-voice volunteer choir was brought to early brilliance by Robert Shaw, the orchestra’s associate conductor from 1956-67, and has continued to join the orchestra in critically acclaimed concerts at home in Cleveland, on recordings and on tour.

The expansion of The Cleveland Orchestra’s performing schedule to a 52-week, year-round season was made possible in 1968 with the opening of Blossom Music Center. Located 25 miles south of Cleveland on 800 acres in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Blossom was conceived as both a summer home for the orchestra and as a regional performing arts center. Presentations at Blossom have included fully-staged ballet, musical and opera productions, as well as concerts by rock, pop and jazz artists.

Following George Szell’s death in 1970, French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was appointed the orchestra’s musical advisor, a post he held through the end of the 1971-72 season. He and the orchestra made several prize-winning recordings during this time. In the fall of 1971, Lorin Maazel was appointed the orchestra’s fifth music director. His tenure began at the start of the 1972-73 season. Maazel continued The Cleveland Orchestra’s tradition of regular domestic and international touring, as well as recording activities with CBS, Decca/London and Telarc Records. Following a decade of achievement with The Cleveland Orchestra, Maazel resigned to accept the post of general manager and artistic director of the Vienna State Opera.

In March 1982, Christoph von Dohnanyi was named music director-designate and subsequently assumed his full-time duties with The Cleveland orchestra with the 1984-85 season. His contract was recently extended through the 1999-2000 season.

At home and on tour in the United States and abroad, the orchestra and Dohnanyi are today widely hailed as one of the world’s premier orchestra-conductor partnerships. Under Dohnanyi, The Cleveland Orchestra has become the most recorded orchestra in America.

The orchestra and Dohnanyi have made three concert tours to Eastern Asia (1987, 1990 and 1993) and four to Europe (1986, 1989, 1990 and 1992). The last two included performances at Austria’s prestigious Salzburg Festival, to which they returned in 1994 and will again in 1995. Their most recent Asian tour included performances of all nine Beethoven symphonies at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.

 

Szell Was Musical Turning Point For City

Plain Dealer article written by Bob Rich and published on May 5, 1996

 

SZELL WAS MUSICAL TURNING POINT FOR CITY

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) – Sunday, May 5, 1996
Author: BOB RICH

Vienna-born Erich Leinsdorf was 31 when he replaced the dynamic Artur Rodzinski as musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1943. He had been the boy wonder of the New York Metropolitan Opera when he caught the eye of Adella Prentiss Hughes, at 73 still a dominant force in Cleveland music.

The Cleveland Press stated that his appointment was a gamble “on talent, intelligence and youth rather than an established symphonic experience. …”

And Rodzinski was a tough act to follow. He had a loyal following and a national reputation. Board members who found Leinsdorf aloof or just plain brash were able to put off worrying about him when he was drafted into the Army in January 1944. By the time Leinsdorf was discharged and returned to Severance in the autumn of ’45, his musical world had turned upside down. Orchestral standards had dropped because of the effects of the draft, and this was blamed on the conductor – not the war.

There had been a great parade of guest conductors in Cleveland during those war years, but the turning point was Nov. 2, 1944, when a conductor named George Szell walked on stage and electrified the audience with a performance the likes of which no Clevelander had ever heard before.

In December, a second series of concerts of Beethoven, French and Russian music, followed by Brahms and Bartok, swept the audience, musicians and critics completely away.

One critic said, “This was surely not the same orchestra we have been listening to all season.” The Cleveland Press said, “Cleveland probably can have Mr. Szell, but on his terms and his terms only – absolute power!” Exactly. And when George Szell was made orchestra director in 1946, Cleveland’s whole musical world was changed forever.

Actually, the Szell legend had been forming earlier. He was born in Budapest in 1897 of Czech background, was a child prodigy who appeared in a public concert at the age of 11, and at 16 led the Vienna Philharmonic when the regular conductor fell ill. Szell was a conductor of a type that no longer exists: Philadelphia’s Ormandy, Boston’s Koussevitsky, NBC’s Arturo Toscanini – men with a commitment to their orchestras.

Szell was a pefectionist, a taskmaster who some feared, dictatorial, as demanding in rehearsal as on the concert stage – but just as demanding of himself. Legend has it that he transformed the orchestra with one rehearsal, saying. “There are no bad orchestras, only bad conductors.” True or not, he definitely did say, “where others stop playing, we begin to rehearse.”

Somebody once said that “the Cleveland Orchestra plays six concerts a week and admits the public to the final two.”

His repertoire emphasized the classic and romantic periods, but he did the “modern classics” also, and was hardly the Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann captive that legend would have him.

It was once said he was his own worst enemy – until the Metropolitan Opera’s Rudolf Bing retorted, “Not as long as I’m alive!”

He would tell the musicians what color socks to wear, how to have their glasses adjusted, how to take a nap. He once fired a musician for driving too good a car and not spending enough on his violin. He ordered the stationery, approved record jackets, and checked the box-office receipts every morning, arriving ahead of the orchestra. He would rehearse the national anthem, “Happy Birthday,” a comedy routine with Jack Benny – all with equal intensity.

Szell lived to see the realization of his dream of a summer home for his orchestra when Blossom Music Center opened in 1968, built on 500 acres in the Cuyahoga River Valley halfway between Cleveland and Akron. He died July 30, 1970, when the orchestra under Pierre Boulez was playing a concert there, leaving a city stunned.

Harold Schonberg of the New York Times said, “The world of music will miss the authoritarian, profound George Szell, he of the perfect ear and flawless technique, the master of rhythm, balances, and textures, the creator of structure in sound. …” Time magazine said, “He demonstrated an unswerving aural vision of how music should sound … and the almost psychic power of leadership to make it sound that way. …”

Szell would say with pride of his Cleveland Orchestra, “That is how we make music in Cleveland!” To cities all over the world, Cleveland was known because of how the “Szell orchestra” made music.

Teaching Cleveland Digital