Social scientists interested in the political economy of cities in the early twentieth century will find a fresh perspective in Daniel Amsterdam's Roaring Metropolis. The book explores the political underpinnings of the civic welfare state, which is the term Amsterdam uses to refer to elements of urban social policy generally promoted by business leaders at the time. These same corporate interests were generally opposed to government-sponsored social welfare programs intended to reduce poverty and economic insecurity, a point made by Theda Skocpol and others. The previous history emphasized business opposition to minimum wages, labor regulations, and any policy that served to reduce reliance on the labor market—for instance, pensions for widowed mothers or the elderly. A primary motivation of the book is to move beyond this narrative and place the political contribution of urban business leaders in appropriate historical perspective. The book argues that, far from opposing all forms of public spending, business interests often supported public schooling, parks and playgrounds, municipal libraries, and city planning for infrastructure and housing. Business leaders believed that such initiatives, which could be enormously expensive, would support economic growth and social stability. Their support for such investments helped shape this era of high urban spending and growth. Daniel Amsterdam is an assistant professor of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech.
The book is organized around three case studies intended to capture the main types of political regimes found in American cities by the 1920s, a decade marked by an especially business-oriented reformism. The cities are Detroit, which was largely free of political machines; Philadelphia, which was dominated by a Republican machine; and finally Atlanta, which by this point had disenfranchised much of its population. Chapter 1 sets the stage by tracing the history of businessmen's reform efforts in each of the three cities prior to the conclusion of WWI. In Detroit, business interests found their civic reform efforts stymied by the city's municipal structure and thus focused their attention on the ultimately successful transition from a large, locally-elected city council to one that was smaller, elected at large, and more responsive to their interests. On the other hand, businessmen in Philadelphia found their efforts to streamline the city council and reduce corruption in the civil service greatly diluted, despite the dominance of industrial leaders in the machine. Efforts to adopt a commission-style government in Atlanta failed completely, although business leaders were successful in their efforts to begin reforming the city's scandalously poor schools and sanitation infrastructure.
The next three chapters detail the urban reform campaigns of business interests of the 1920s in each city. Chapter 2 details the public spending spree in Detroit, which commenced after the city's new charter came into force. Amsterdam argues that the corporate executives swept to power in the city council and mayor's office in the 1919 election supported spending on recreational facilities, school construction, and infrastructure expansions out of a genuine belief that such urban improvements would be good for business. The related bond issues were so enormous that business interests suffered some losses in the 1923 election as opponents successfully challenged runaway spending. The power of industrial leaders reached its limit only with a proposal to build a subway in the city, which was ultimately defeated by voters concerned by the cost. In Detroit, the shift to at-large elections allowed business interests to exert disproportionate influence on public spending either by direct capture of elected office or through committees set up by the mayor.
Chapter 3 details the difficulties Philadelphia's businessmen faced when they tried to enact similar policies while facing headwinds from a weaker economy, declining industries, and a political machine that could not be dislodged even with a revised charter. After seeing only limited progress on their “City Beautiful” plan early on, business leaders eventually backed the Republic machine when its 1923 mayoral candidate ran on a platform filled with corporate metaphors. The winner, W. Freeland Kendrick, ramped up public spending on priorities of the business community including water and sewer pipes, rapid transit, the art museum, and the Free Library. Businessmen failed to oppose the scandal-tainted machine candidate for mayor in 1927; by the end of the 1920s, Philadelphia's captains of industry had clearly decided action taken by a corrupt machine was better than independent inaction.
The experience of Atlanta is the subject of Chapter 4. In contrast to Detroit, where business leaders simply got themselves elected to public office, or Philadelphia, where they were eventually co-opted by the political machine, business leaders in Atlanta found the most success on special commissions. These commissions were set up to oversee bond initiatives or city planning—the latter of which involved promoting residential segregation by race and decentralization in nearly equal measure. The electoral constraints on bond referenda required business interests to form alliances with other urban interest groups in order to fund their vision of a civic welfare state, including blacks who remained eligible to vote and were desperate to secure resources for African American schools.
Chapter 5 provides a review of contemporaneous efforts by urban businessmen to provide welfare capitalism to their employees, support for local emergency unemployment campaigns, and streamlined private charity for the poor. The Epilogue links these case studies to the federal action taken in the 1930s and thereafter to combat urban poverty and joblessness. Cities were too hamstrung by their massive debt commitments from the 1920s to offer the kind of support that the federal government eventually provided, demonstrating the limits of local responses to economic downturns. Nonetheless, the closing chapters of the book demonstrate that businessmen's involvement in urban affairs went beyond support for public spending intended to foster economic growth and improve the behavior of workers.
In sum, Roaring Metropolis offers a set of richly researched case studies illuminating how businessmen shaped urban policy in the 1920s. The chapters bookending these case studies can be at times overly insistent on revising particular historical narratives—for instance, no serious scholar of American urban history would argue that city dwellers took a break from political reform during the 1920s. In addition, it is not clear from the book how important business interests were for observed public policy outcomes. Infrastructure improvements and investments in education were broadly popular at the time and supported by a diverse coalition of urban voters. Nonetheless, I learned a great deal from reading the book and recommend it to scholars interested in urban reform in the early twentieth century.
