History of Chicago from Trading Post to Metropolis
External Studies Program | University College

Module 2 Chapter 4
Prohibition Politics, Chicago Style, 1911 to 1919

The Republican party, as we saw in the last chapter, had split into two factions by 1911, with progressive reformers aligned against the boss rule of William Lorimer. The Democrats also had factions within their party, but the split was not as divisive, so that Democrats usually could get together during an election and support one candidate. Their factionalism was based on questions of patronage rather than on the ideological questions which divided the Republicans, because the number of jobs an alderman might get could be settled far more easily than could questions of how best to govern a city pressed by reformers.

In the mayoral primary in 1911, each faction in both parties entered a candidate. Mayor Busse did not run but supported a candidate in the primary who also received the support of the Lorimer machine. Reform Republicans led the campaign against the Busse administration. A new face on the political scene, Charles Merriam, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and an alderman, had led the city council committee that investigated the Busse scandals and, in 1911, he easily defeated the machine candidate in the primary. On the Democratic side, former Mayor Edward Dunne, running on a progressive platform, faced former Mayor Carter Harrison II, who was trying to become the second five term mayor in Chicago's history with a campaign dedicated to keeping Chicago a wide open town. Harrison defeated Dunne in a close race amid many charges of vote stealing and fraud. Dunne felt so embittered by the alleged fraud that he refused to support Harrison during the mayoral campaign.

So, the election was a confrontation between progressive reform and old-style politics. Harrison campaigned chiefly on the issue of "cheap gas" to heat homes and the maintenance of an open city. He received the support of the United Societies for Local Self-Government early in the campaign. Merriam opposed prohibition laws because he felt they could not be enforced but he promised that Chicago would not be governed by "Hinky Dink," "Bathhouse John," and other hoodlums. Merriam challenged Harrison to publish a list of contributors, believing that they included many gamblers and saloon-keepers. Harrison refused to publish a complete list of contributors even though Merriam did.

The Republican candidate openly appealed to ethnic voters, especially Germans, in the campaign. Merriam, fluent in German, having studied at a German university, published several articles in the Tribune in German, Polish, Swedish, and Bohemian, about the cleanliness of German cities and the efficiency of their police departments. He promised to do all he could to establish regular street cleaning operations for Chicago, professionalize the police department, and protect the "personal liberty" so dear to Germans.

Harrison stressed that "experience was better than book learning," and emphasized his close connection with common people as against Merriam's contacts with professors. The Chicago Federation of Labor, in a move that showed that labor unions were the captive of neither party, supported Merriam. The Chicago Teachers' Union, a major force in the Federation, led the move to support the Republican, accusing Harrison of neglecting schools during his previous terms and criticizing him for closing dozens of classrooms at a time when thousands of school children were denied adequate facilities.

On election day, the voters gave Harrison 49% of the vote to Merriam's 44% with the Socialist candidate getting 6%. Harrison won chiefly because Boss Lorimer refused to support Merriam, so that the west side wards he controlled all went to Harrison. Merriam had expected support from Democratic progressives and Edward Dunne, but that support did not materialize. Carter Harrison II was now, like his father, a five term mayor and William Lorimer had had much to do with the fifth term.

William Lorimer had been elected to the United States Senate in 1908. In 1910, the Chicago Tribune published a series of articles by a former state legislator who claimed that he had accepted a bribe in 1908 to vote for Lorimer. (State legislatures elected senators until 1912.) After two investigations by the Senate, that body voted to oust Lorimer in 1912, making him the first Senator in American history to be thrown out of the senate for bribery and corruption. Lorimer returned to Chicago where he continued to be a power in Republican politics until the 1920's.

Carter Harrison II kept his promise to keep Chicago "open," until he got into trouble with an Irish faction in the Democratic party controlled by Roger Sullivan, who had been an important influence in the party since the 1890's. His close ties with gas companies prevented him from running for public office but he had much to say in distributing patronage and in naming candidates. Sullivan had been feuding with Harrison for some time. The feud came into the open in 1912 at the national presidential convention in Baltimore, where both men led delegations. The National Party decided to seat Sullivan; angered, Harrison returned to Chicago and attempted to wrest complete control of the party machinery from the Sullivan forces.

Harrison's administration had been under attack for some time by the Republican state's attorney who demanded that Chicago enforce liquor and vice laws, and who had personally led several raids in the Levee district, the major vice district in Chicago, and had uncovered dozens of cases of police bribery. The Chicago Vice Commission, a private group organized to keep a watch on connections between crime and politics, published a report in late 1911 that estimated profits of $15 million a year from prostitution alone in Chicago. Perhaps one fifth of that amount, the Commission said, went to police officers for protection.

Because of mounting pressure, Harrison told his police chief in 1914 to close down the gambling casinos and houses of prostitution in the Levee district. Demands for action reached a climax when a police officer was shot down in front of police headquarters after a vice raid. In late 1914, Chicago's most notorious vice district was finally shut down.

ANSWER QUESTION 17 IN THE REPLY BOOKLET. (Provided after registering for courses through the External Studies Program.)

Harrison wanted to be mayor for a sixth term. But in the Democratic primary of 1915, he was soundly beaten by Robert Sweitzer, a man closely identified with Roger Sullivan. In the Republican primary, a familiar battle between a reformer and a machine candidate took place. Judge Harry Olson, of the Municipal Court, a Progressive, faced William Hale Thompson, a former reform alderman but now a close associate of the Lorimer machine. Thompson, who eventually would be elected mayor three times, had been nominally a reformer during his single term as alderman early in the century. He won the primary by a narrow margin mainly because of help from the Lorimer machine and the large number of votes he collected in the heavily black second ward. It was the first time a Chicago politician made a major effort to win black votes and it paid off with a margin in the Second ward that was the decisive factor in his victory.

In the mayoral election, Thompson and Sweitzer both pledged to the United Societies that they would not enforce liquor laws. Therefore, the political action committee of the United Societies made no recommendation. Three issues dominated the campaign: religion, unemployment, and the world war which had broken out in Europe in August, 1914. Sweitzer was a German and a Catholic. Early in the campaign circulars were sent out warning of the danger to public schools in Chicago if Sweitzer were elected, and the "Guardians of Liberty" marched from door to door telling people that if Sweitzer were elected the Pope would be the real mayor of Chicago. The war had a major effect on the election, at least for Chicago's Germans; German language newspapers urged a large vote for Sweitzer because this would signal President Woodrow Wilson that Chicago wanted him to remain friendly to Germany. The war also awakened the animosities of other ethnic groups toward the Germans; Bohemians especially were urged to vote against the "German" candidate.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, a major recession had broken out in the country in 1914. William Thompson, in several speeches, reminded his listeners of the great depression of 1893 and of how it had been the Republican party that had ended it. A Republican victory in Chicago, Thompson urged, would signal the national Democratic administration that many people were dissatisfied. Perhaps 150,000 Chicagoans were out of work in 1914, and that did not bode well for the Democrats.

On election day, 87% of the eligible voters turned out and for the first time women were allowed to vote. Many politicians wondered whether the "woman vote" would make any difference, but it did not. Both male and female voters gave Thompson almost exactly the same percentage of their votes. Thompson won in a landslide, the first real landslide victory in Chicago since the 1880's, as he received 58% of the vote to Sweitzer's 37%. The Socialist party candidate received 5%, the typical vote for a Socialist candidate.

Why had Thompson won by such a wide margin? First, it was not unusual for voters to turn against the party in power during hard economic times. Thompson also benefited from his previous reputation as a reformer; he held the reform vote. Then, Boss Lorimer gave him his full support. So Thompson, unlike other reform candidates, held the Republican machine vote. Many ethnic Democrats apparently voted against Sweitzer because he was a German, and many German Lutherans voted against Sweitzer because he was a Catholic. Thompson also received support from an embittered Carter Harrison. In other words, almost everything went in Thompson's favor. He had effectively nullified the anti-prohibition vote early in the campaign, so the United Societies did not actively support the Democratic candidate and the nullification of that support cut heavily into Sweitzer's total. The election of 1915 signaled a change in Chicago politics and for 12 of the next 18 years it would be under the rule of "Big Bill" Thompson, who, however, hardly fitted into the mold of a typical Republican.

Chicago During the World War

Thompson had been mayor for less than a year when he issued an order to his police chief in October, 1915, to enforce the liquor laws. He claimed that as mayor he had an obligation to enforce the laws, despite his pre-election promise to the United Societies that he would keep Chicago wide open. In response, the United Societies called for a massive demonstration in the Loop in support of "personal liberty." A "Miss Liberty" was crowned and early in November Anthony Cermak and other officers of the United Societies led an estimated 40,000 to 45,000 marchers down State Street carrying thousands of signs calling for an end to prohibition laws. The police estimated that over half a million persons watched the parade. Though Thompson called the marchers "un-American" and admonished them for showing disrespect for the law, he also recognized the power of the United Societies and rescinded his order to enforce liquor laws: From now on Chicago would be a wide open town as long as "Big Bill" Thompson served as mayor.

When the United States entered the World War in 1917, Thompson and his political adviser, Fred "Poor Swede" Lundin, came to the conclusion that the war would be unpopular with voters. Lundin had been a one term United States Congressman (1908-1910) and had later been an associate of Boss Lorimer. In 1915 he had been the chief political adviser to the Republican party, and after Thompson took over City Hall he installed Lundin in an office next to his. Lundin kept that office throughout Thompson's first two terms.

Only a few days after the United States declared war on Germany (April 12, 1917), Thompson gave a statement to the press denouncing Woodrow Wilson and American foreign policy. He told reporters that Chicago was the sixth largest German city in the world and that German-Americans had a right to be heard. A few weeks later, the Mayor refused to meet a French general who was touring the United States, an incident that infuriated the Chicago Tribune and leaders of the pro-war movement. Late in May, Thompson asked President Wilson to ban the shipment of foodstuffs to Britain and France because if he did not, "there'd be a lot of poor people starving to death" during the winter.

As a result, Chicago became the Mecca for peace meetings and rallies during 1917 and 1918, but though Thompson approved of them, his police department did not. At the first peace conference in the late spring of 1917, the Chicago police broke up a rally of 2,000 in Grant Park across from the Auditorium Theatre, charging into the demonstrators with clubs swinging. Dozens of heads were broken, according to the Tribune, and several hundred people were arrested.

In September, there was another clash between peace demonstrators and the forces of law and order. The "People's Council of America for Democracy and Terms of Peace," a group of several hundred pacifists, had been barred from meeting in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and several other Midwestern cities. The "Council" had spent several days on a train traveling from city to city looking for a place to meet, when "Big Bill" granted their request to come to Chicago.

When the Republican governor of Illinois, Frank Lowden heard of Thompson's action, he announced that it would be a disgrace to Illinois to have pacifists meeting in the State and he ordered the Chicago police to disband the meeting. Thompson responded with an order of his own--the police would not shut down the meeting. "I want to know by what right Governor Lowden is giving orders to the police department of Chicago," the mayor asked. The governor replied that he was acting under the extraordinary powers, conferred on him by the state legislature, as head of the state council of defense established to co-ordinate Illinois's contribution to the war effort. Initially, the Chicago police obeyed the governor and refused to permit the peace activists to meet. Thompson again ordered his police chief to allow the meeting to take place and this time it was not stopped. Lowden now ordered several hundred National Guard troops to break up the meeting, but by the time they arrived in Chicago most of the participants had already left town. Thompson's actions made him unpopular with many Americans, who dubbed him "Burgermeister Bill" and "Kaiser Bill," and the Chicago City Council voted 42 to 6 to rebuke the Mayor for allowing the peace meeting to be held. But his opposition to the war endeared him to large numbers of Irish-American and German-American voters to whom he became "Unser Bill" ("Our Bill.")

The Mayor miscalculated the unpopularity of the war with other Americans, however and when he ran for Senator in 1918 in the Republican primary against Medill McCormick of the Tribune family, the campaign centered around the issue of the war, and the question of Thompson's patriotism. He ran well in German areas of Chicago, but statewide he received only one-third of the vote.

The war had finally led to a vigorous attack against almost everything German in the city and most Germans regarded Thompson as their only defender. The American Protective League led the anti-German crusade. The League had been authorized by the United States Justice Department to investigate anti-American activities and to watch out for "slackers," the name given to men seeking to avoid the draft. In Chicago, the League had over 13,000 active members and was organized down to the precinct level. After League members discovered that there were few German spies to be found in the city, they turned their attention to the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), which had been organized in Chicago in 1905. It preached a philosophy of violence and direct action to overthrow the capitalist system. Numerically never successful, the I.W.W. still managed to capture attention in the press because of its advocacy of violence. Several hundred members were arrested in Chicago during World War I because of the union's opposition to the draft and because of its calls for obstruction of the war--producing capabilities of the United States,--in effect, sabotage. Because so many of its members were in jail, the I.W.W. achieved little success in pursuit of its goals.

The war brought many changes to the city and the nation. Alan Spear, in Chapter 7, discusses the vast demographic changes that resulted in Chicago. Perhaps the most significant social change nation wide was the introduction of Prohibition. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, it became illegal to sell or buy anything containing more than 1.5% alcohol, anywhere in the country. Proponents of the complete abolition of alcohol had been pressing the amendment since before the war and during the war, they successfully argued that too much grain, that should be feeding the troops, was being wasted in the production of alcohol. Before the war ended in November, 1918, three-quarters of the states bought that argument and Prohibition became the law of the land: January 15, 1920, would be the last day a person could legally buy a drink anywhere in the United States. "Life will be sufficiently exciting without liquor," the Tribune predicted.

The war ended on November 11, 1918. But the war and its consequences remained central issues in Chicago politics throughout 1919 and 1920. The mayoral election of 1919 centered on issues of patriotism, loyalty, and anti-German hysteria. Robert Merriam entered the Republican primary against Thompson and charged the mayor with actively supporting Germany during the war. Thompson "thought that the red, white, and blue of the American flag had become a yellow streak," Merriam (who had fought in France as a captain in the U.S. Army) told his audiences, but "it was only his jaundiced eye which saw yellow." Merriam suggested that Thompson join the German Kaiser in exile since both had fought for a German victory, and later called Thompson the "greatest slacker" of all. Nevertheless, Thompson won a rather easy victory in the primary. Again he received heavy support from black as well as German and Irish voters.

Thompson's Democratic opponent in the election was Robert Sweitzer, the same man he had beaten decisively in 1915. The campaign became a three way race when Maclay Hoyne, the state's attorney, entered as an independent because he considered Sweitzer a tool of Roger Sullivan and the gas monopoly. Thompson, in Hoyne's view, was a failure as mayor and a disgrace to the city because of his war-time activities.

Sweitzer declared that Thompson's policies as mayor had driven the city dangerously close to financial collapse and he promised to restore the city treasury to solvency. Thompson actually had abused city finances and the city was very near bankruptcy, but many voters apparently had more important concerns. The issue gained Sweitzer few votes. Sweitzer also promised to do everything possible to delay as long as possible the imposition of prohibition on the city. On a separate ballot, Chicago voters would be able to voice their feelings towards the 18th amendment. Whether they vote for or against the amendment would make little difference, however, for Prohibition was already the law of the land.

"Big Bill" Thompson spent most of his time campaigning against Woodrow Wilson's proposals for the League of Nations and the Versailles Peace Treaty. The Treaty was especially unpopular with German voters because they thought certain provisions were far too harsh toward Germany. Italian voters also objected to the Treaty and the League because they felt Italy had been short-changed. Thompson profited from these feelings of outrage because he was a Republican: a vote for him, he declared, would signal Washington that Chicagoans opposed both the League of Nations and the Versailles Peace Treaty. But the recession and outbreak of unemployment that hit the United States with the ending of the war also aided him. Thompson kept repeating that Republican government meant "a full dinner pail."

State's attorney Hoyne campaigned on a theme of "pure Americanism." He accused his opponents of making promises to separate racial groups. "My appeal," Hoyne said, "is made only to American citizens . . . I expect that those men of German blood who are first and foremost American citizens will welcome the opportunity to vote against both Thompson's hypocritical play for disloyal support and the prejudicial play for racial support by the Sweitzer ticket."

Sweitzer had played up his German ancestry in 1915 when he was trying to stir up German voters. The war at that time was highly unpopular to most people and Sweitzer felt his ethnic background would only help him. In 1919, of course, things were different, so Sweitzer and his managers let the story get around that despite his name he was not really German: his real ancestry was Irish and his original name was Roche. His own father had died when Robert "Roche" was only a few years old and his mother later married a man named Sweitzer. The truth of this story was never corroborated but it points out that being of German background was considered a major liability by many people after the war.

Only five days before the election, the Chicago Tribune filed a suit in the Circuit Court of Chicago which charged Mayor Thompson with disloyalty and sedition. This move was in response to a $500,000 libel suit the Mayor brought against the paper for articles it had run during the war which came close to calling Thompson a traitor. The Tribune had been especially upset with Thompson's comment that "the closer you get to Wall Street the more flags you see."

Despite the attack on the Mayor for his conduct during the war, he managed to defeat his two opponents in the final vote count. Thompson received only 38.9% of the vote, however. Sweitzer had 36.2%, Hoyne got 16.7%, and the Socialist candidate received 8.2%. Hoyne had spent most of his time campaigning against Thompson, pulling in an anti-Thompson vote that would otherwise have gone to Sweitzer. If Hoyne had not entered the race, it seems possible that Sweitzer would have won easily. In the referendum on Prohibition, 73.1% of Chicago voters voted against the 18th amendment. Thompson won the election chiefly because he had been the only candidate to appeal directly to black voters in the second ward and that appeal, just as in 1915, had again paid off. German voters supported Thompson but not in the large numbers he had expected. Apparently, they felt too confused by the agitation against them during the war to support a candidate who appealed to their ethnic pride. Many wanted only to forget their ancestry and become Americans as quickly and as quietly as possible. Sweitzer's denial of his German ancestry symbolized the tragic position of many German-Americans; they could no longer be proud of their heritage and the sooner they forgot about it the better. The black vote, not the German vote, gave Thompson the majority he needed.

Chicago's Black Belt, as Alan Spear points out, had more than doubled its population between 1915 and 1919. The major reason was the war that had cut off the supply of European immigrants who had filled Chicago's ever-increasing demands for unskilled labor since the 1880's. Out of necessity, Chicago businessmen turned south in their search for employees. Some blacks had been imported before, most notably during the Teamsters' strike of 1904. Blacks, therefore, had acquired a reputation as strikebreakers, but it should be pointed out that many Poles and Lithuanians had also been used as strikebreakers at meat-packing plants and steel mills. So, more than merely a reputation for strike breaking had led to animosities between blacks and whites in the city. The vast influx of blacks during the war years increased demands by the growing numbers of middle-class blacks for adequate housing, and it was their quest for living space outside the black belt that led to the terrible race riot of the summer of 1919.

We will try to answer the question of why Mayor Thompson was so reluctant to call for state troops to quell the riot. Both Thompson and Governor Lowden were Republican yet both men refused to work together during the critical days of the riot. Lowden had not hesitated to send troops in 1917 to break up a peaceful gathering of anti-war demonstrators. He had acted, of course, under extraordinary war-time powers granted him by the legislature. With the war over, in 1919 Lowden claimed he no longer had such extraordinary powers and could now send troops only upon request of the Mayor. Thompson was not about to make that request, being still angry at the Governor for supporting his opponent in the 1918 senatorial primary. So, while the Mayor and the Governor stood their ground and refused to act, angry mobs raced through the streets of Chicago killing and maiming citizens purely on the basis of the color of their skin.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have considered Chicago politics from 1911 to 1919. The importance of prohibition has been emphasized along with the continuing power of ethnic voters. The early career of William Hale Thompson has been discussed as well as his conduct during World War One. Enormous changes in population took place in the city during this period but politics remained essentially the same. The Republican party ran the city for most of the period, but it was the machine Republican party that held the important offices. Chicago was not yet ready for reform. A new element in Chicago politics, the black voters, entered the picture, and as will be shown in Module III, the politics of race predominated in the city for much of the 1920's.

The decisive issue in Chicago was prohibition. Whichever party appeared the "wettest" carried an election. In 1920, prohibition entered the city. The battle apparently had been lost, but only for a short time. Ethnic Chicagoans refused to be deterred by anything, including a constitutional amendment, from their quest for recognition or for a drink. During the Twenties both quests continued, and "Big Bill" Thompson fought the Democratic party for leadership of the ethnic movement.