Daniel
Webster Hoan was born in Waukesha,
Wisconsin in 1881. He left school early but he studied at evening
classes and in 1908 qualified as a lawyer.
A member of the Socialist Party, Hoan
moved to Milwaukee where he worked
closely with Victor Berger, the editor
of the radical newspaper, Milwaukee Leader,
in trying to persuade the city to adopt radical reforms. This included
municipal ownership of utilities, urban renewal programs and free
legal, medical and educational services.
In 1910 Emil Seidel was elected mayor
of Milwaukee and became the first socialist
leader of a major city in the United States. The following year Hoan
became Milwaukee's city attorney and over the next six years he clamped
down on the corruption of public officials. In 1917 Hoan was elected
as mayor of Milwaukee. Unlike many members of the Socialist
Party, Hoan supported United States entry into the First
World War.
Hoan remained mayor for twenty-four years, the longest continuous
Socialist administration in United States history. He brought in a
large number of progressive reforms including the country's first
public housing project, Garden Homes, started in 1923. Hoan also led
the successful drive towards municipal ownership of the stone quarry,
street lighting, sewage disposal and water purification.
Hoan developed a reputation for honest and efficient government. In
1999, Melvin Holli, the author of The American
Mayor, and a group of experts on local government, voted
Hoan as the eighth best mayor in United States history. Holli wrote:
"Although this self-identified socialist had difficulty pushing
progressive legislation through a nonpartisan city council, he experimented
with the municipal marketing of food, backed city-built housing, and
in providing public markets, city harbor improvements, and purging
graft from Milwaukee politics. Perhaps Hoan's most important legacy
was cleaning up the free-and-easy corruption that prevailed before
he took office."
Hoan was defeated in 1941 and three years later left the Socialist
Party and joined the Democratic Party.
He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1944 and 1946. In 1948 he was
unsuccessful in his attempt to once again become mayor of Milwaukee
when he was defeated by the socialist
candidate, Frank Zeidler. Daniel Webster
Hoan died in 1961.
(1)
Daniel Hoan, while the mayor of Milwaukee,
had an article published in the radical journal, The
Unemployed (Spring, 1931)
Our
large industrial cities have been the greatest beneficiaries and the
worst sufferers from this transition to a complex mechanization of
our economic life.
The machine has not only transformed our social environment but has
solved the age-old struggle to produce enough to properly feed, house
and clothe the human family. In the past families periodically visited
the peoples of the world, taking a toll of millions of lives. The
machine has multiplied production on the farm and in the factory ten-fold.
The problem is no longer one of famine due to under-production. The
machine has changed all of this to one of danger of starvation because
we can produce too much.
The cause of this period of depression is deep-seated, not superficial.
It lies in the fact that the machine has been made an instrument of
exploitation of the workers for private gain, and not the means of
relieving their burden, shortening hours of work, and allowing more
leisure for recreation and the enjoyment of the fruits of their toil.
The machine has enslaved the workers, instead of the workers becoming
the masters of the machine.
The country cannot be restored to its status of artificial prosperity
which followed the world war by superficial remedies. A temporary
cure can be effected, and Milwaukee and other cities have taken the
initial step toward such a cure. But full rehabilitation will not
come until the core of the situation is touched.
Mother:
"I hear Papa walking slow up the
stairs. Don't ask him if he found a job."
Denys
Wortman, The Unemployed
(February, 1931)
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