We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
The progressive idea of reform developed through years of experimentation in St. Louis and achieved success in the 1897 School Board reorganization. As early as 1877 the tendency to treat the city as a separate entity became apparent when a new charter separating the city from the county was effected. Previously there had been both a city and a county government in the same area, each with two legislative houses and the power to tax. The “dual double-headed system then in force,” one critic argued, “was anomalous and absurd.” The two bodies, both of which levied taxes, did not really represent the people, since neither was elected at large. The new charter, although retaining the two-house City Council, required one house to be elected at large; efficiency was increased through extended terms for most officials and an increase of administrative powers for the mayor.
1. Hays, Samuel P., “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, XXXXXV (October 1964), 157–69; Robert H. Weibe, The Search for Order 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).Google Scholar
Recent interest in the Progressive Era has centered on the sources of reform sentiment. Wiebe argues that many segments of society, especially the new middle class, desired centralization of power and an increased orderliness in government, business, and community life. Samuel P. Hays identifies the reform groups as a new upper class; migration to newly fashionable, outlying areas, he says, had given this group an interest in the city as a whole while tending to disfranchise it. Both men identify the reformers as business and professional men interested in the rationalization and systematization of modern life; both identify them as people who had risen to social position from newly created wealth or in professions. The difference between the “new middle” and “new upper” classes to which these men refer would seem to be one of terminology, in the main. For purposes of clarity the reform group will be referred to as “upper-class” in this paper. The city political “machines” based on ward organizations had given lower and middle-income groups, including immigrants, what seemed to reformers an undue influence on city government. The upper-class reformers, in order to minimize their own geographic and social distance from city government, made the ward system their special target in the battle to gain political power. The characteristics marking this movement, which Hays dates between 1901 and the Great Depression, were a desire to model government on efficient business enterprise rather than on the New England town meeting, a revolt against ward politics in favor of narrowing centers of power, and a disdainfulness toward the waste and inefficiency of customary government. In order to accomplish their political goals, the reformers believed such changes as direct city-wide election of the city council and school board were essential. The change to election at large did achieve the desired results in some known cases, Hays says. For example, in 1911 Pittsburgh changed to city-wide representation for both the city council and the school board. In the new government professional men and large business dominated. Of the newly elected members, none were small businessmen or white-collar workers, and each body had only one man designated as a representative of labor.
2. Missouri Republican Editorials: During the Years 1875 and 1876 Regarding the Separation of the City of St. Louis from the County of St. Louis (St. Louis: Board of Freeholders, 1925), p. 26.Google Scholar
3. Snow, Marshall S., “City Government of St. Louis,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, V (Baltimore, 1887), 151. See also Dwight M. Collier, “The Freeholders and the Scheme and Charter, address delivered to St. Louis Commercial Club (February 17, 1894), p. 11.Google Scholar
4. Missouri Republican Editorials, pp. 28–29.Google Scholar
5. Ibid., p. 33.Google Scholar
6. Ibid., pp. 21-22.Google Scholar
7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 19, 1887, p. 4.Google Scholar
8. Ibid., November 23, 1887, p. 1. See also “Report of the President,” Annual Reports of the Board of Education of the City of St. Louis, 1887-1888 and 1888-1889.Google Scholar
9. “Our Public School System: A Summary,” The Forum, XV (June 1893), 512. See also J. M. Rice, “A Plan to Free the Schools from Politics,” The Forum, XVI (December 1893), 500. For a discussion of Rice, see Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), pp. 4-6.Google Scholar
10. American School Board Journal, IV (April 1892), 1.Google Scholar
11. “Plans of Organization for School Purposes in Large Cities,” Educational Review, VI (June 1893), 10–12. For other discussions of this change, see James C. Boykin, “Organization of City School Boards,” Educational Review, XIII (March 1897), 243, and L. H. Jones, “The Politician and the Public School,” The Atlantic Monthly, LXXVII. (June 1896), 820.Google Scholar
12. Draper, Andrew S., Powell, W. B. and Poland, A. B., “Committee of Fifteen: Report of the Sub-Committee on the Organization of City School Systems,” Educational Review, IX (March 1895), 304–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13. “Confessions of Three School Superintendents,” Atlantic Monthly, LXXXII (October 1898), 652.Google Scholar
14. Judd, Charles H. et al., Survey of the St. Louis Public Schools (St. Louis: Board of Education, 1917), p. 48.Google Scholar
15. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 29, 1895, p. 7; November 10, 1896, p. 7; Boykin, op. cit., p. 242.Google Scholar
16. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 18, 1896, p. 6; February 27, 1896, p. 7.Google Scholar
17. Ibid., February 15, 1896, p. 2; February 17, 1896, p. 4.Google Scholar
18. Ibid., February 23, 1896, p. 15; February 24, 1896, pp. 2, 3.Google Scholar
19. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 4, 1896, p. 6.Google Scholar
20. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 14, 1896, p. 8.Google Scholar
21. Ibid., March 5, 1896, p. 6; March 10, 1896, p. 3; March 11, 1896, p. 10; March 12, 1896, p. 8; April 13, 1896, p. 2; April 16, 1896, p. 8.Google Scholar
22. Ibid., March 14, 1896, p. 8.Google Scholar
23. Ibid., March 28, 1896, p. 5; April 15, 1896, p. 4; April 27, 1896, p. 3; May 12, 1896, p. 2; May 13, 1896, p. 4; May 26, 1896, p. 7; June 21, 1896, p. 5.Google Scholar
24. Ibid., June 30, 1896, p. 3; July 15, 1896, p. 1; September 8, 1896, p. 2.Google Scholar
25. Hyde, William and Conard, Howard L., eds., Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis (New York: The Southern History Company, 1899), I, 389-90.Google Scholar
26. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 7, 1896, p. 8. See also Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia, I, 393.Google Scholar
27. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 12, 1896, p. 2.Google Scholar
28. Hyde, and Conard, , Encyclopedia I, 391.Google Scholar
29. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 24, 1896, p. 7.Google Scholar
30. Ibid., November 22, 1896, p. 16.Google Scholar
31. Ibid., December 27, 1896, p. 10.Google Scholar
32. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 6, 1896, p. 12.Google Scholar
33. Ibid., September 9, 1896, p. 6; March 2, 1897, p. 6; March 4, 1897, p. 6.Google Scholar
34. St. Louis Republic, March 5, 1897, p. 12.Google Scholar
35. Woerner, William F., The Revised Code of St. Louis, General Ordinances (St. Louis: Sam'l F. Myerson Printing Co., 1907), pp. 191–99.Google Scholar
36. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 8, 1897, p. 9; April 18, 1897, p. 20; April 24, 1897, p. 3.Google Scholar
37. Ibid., April 28, 1897, p. 9; May 8, 1897, p. 5; May 9, 1897, p. 4.Google Scholar
38. Ibid., May 1, 1897, p. 3; May 2, 1897, p. 5; May 4, 1897, p. 6.Google Scholar
39. Ibid., May 19, 1897, p. 2; May 20, 1897, p. 4.Google Scholar
40. Eliot, Edward C., “School Administration: The St. Louis Method,” Educational Review, XXVI (December 1903), 467; David Mahan, “The Influence of the Efficiency Movement on Public Education in a Large Urban School System: A Case Study of the St. Louis Public Schools” (Dissertation for Ph.D., Washington University, 1968), p. 111.Google Scholar
41. Eliot, , “School Administration,” p. 467.Google Scholar
42. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 15, 1897, p. 3.Google Scholar
43. Ibid., June 27, 1897, p. 8; July 14, 1897, p. 5.Google Scholar
44. Ibid., August 23, 1897, p. 4; August 26, 1897, p. 2.Google Scholar
45. Ibid., October 12, 1897, p. 10. Also, Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1897-1898, p. 20.Google Scholar
46. Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1897-1898, pp. 17-18.Google Scholar
47. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 1897, p. 5.Google Scholar
48. Eliot, , “School Administration,” p. 475.Google Scholar
49. Ibid., p. 466.Google Scholar
