Milwaukee
is situated where the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic rivers
flow into Milwaukee Bay. Mahn-a-waukee Seepe ("gathering place
by the river") was used by several Native American tribes and
was visited by Jacques Marquette and
Luis Joliet in 1673.
In 1793 the North West Company established a fur-trading post in Milwaukee.
A French-Canadian, Solomon Juneau, arrived
in 1818 and his fur trading enabled him to acquire a considerable
fortune. Juneau acquired large areas of land in the area and built
the settlement's first store and tavern and became president of the
village in 1837.
After the failed revolutions in Europe in 1848, Milwaukee attracted
large numbers of immigrants escaping
from dictatorial rulers. In 1890 over
80,000 people living in the city had been born in Europe. This was
39 per cent of the 240,000 population and included over 55,000 from
Germany.
These immigrants brought with them progressive political ideas and
the city soon had a large and active branch of the Socialist
Party. The leader of the group was Victor
Berger, the editor of the Milwaukee Leader. In 1910 the
party put up Emil Seidel as their candidate
for mayor. With the support of the city's large German-born population,
Seidel became the first socialist mayor
of a city in the United States. One of Seidel's achievements was to
introduce the country's first worker's compensation program in 1911.
Other initiatives included adult and worker education classes and
free medical and dental examinations for schoolchildren.
The supporters of the Democratic Party
and the Republican Party joined forces
to defeat Seidel in 1912. However, another socialist, Daniel
Hoan, was elected in 1916. 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 for mayor again in 1948 but was defeated by the socialist
candidate, Frank Zeidler who remained
in power until 1960.
Milwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin and in 1990 had a population
of 628,000. It is the main port of entry for the entire Midwest and
to world ports via the St. Lawrence Seaway. Milwaukee produces heavy
machinery, electrical equipment, diesel and gasoline engines, tractors,
motorcycles, refrigeration equipment and beer. The city was hard hit
in the 1979-82 recession but recovered in the late 1980s.
(1)
In 1856 Henry Villard moved to
Milwaukee where he started a career
in journalism. He wrote about the city in his Memoirs: Journalist
and Financier (1904)
Milwaukee has always been an almost German city. In 1856, the preponderance
of the German element was even greater than at present; in fact, its
Americanization, which has in the meantime progressed very rapidly,
had then hardly begun. It was known among German-Americans as "Deutsch-Athen"
and comparatively speaking, deserved the name. There was a large number
of educated and accomplish men among my countrymen, and in them the
love of music and art was very marked.
(2)
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.
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