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“The Ohio Air-Ship”
No caption
This
cartoon features Mayor Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland as a hot-air balloon. Johnson was a wealthy businessman turned political
reformer, who at the time of this cartoon's publication had set his
sights on the Ohio governorship and possibly the White House.
Tom L. Johnson was born in Kentucky in 1854. After the Civil
War impoverished his former slave-owning family, they moved to
Louisville, Kentucky, in 1868. As a teenager, Johnson worked for a
Louisville streetcar company owned by the DuPont family, patented the
first coin box for fares (the first of 31 patents during his lifetime),
and became the company superintendent in 1873. Three years later,
Johnson took a loan from the DuPonts to buy a streetcar company in
Indianapolis, Indiana, and in 1879 purchased a streetcar company in
Cleveland, where he moved.
In the early 1880s, Johnson became a disciple of reformer Henry
George, whose influential book, Progress and Poverty (1879),
denounced the power of wealthy landowners. George's
"single-tax" solution was to replace all personal and
corporate taxes with a steep tax on speculative land purchases.
Johnson continued expanding his business holdings, operating a streetcar
manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania, buying other streetcar lines in
Brooklyn and Detroit, purchasing steel and iron mills, and (despite his
professed single-tax belief) becoming a land speculator. The
"3 cent fare" banner in the cartoon refers to a streetcar
controversy in Detroit, where in 1895 the city's reform mayor, Hazen
Pingree, pressured Johnson's company to lower its fares from five to
three cents. During the battle, Johnson came to symbolize the
greed and power of wealthy streetcar owners.
Johnson served uneventfully as a Democratic congressman (1891-1895)
from Ohio. After having been chastened by the Detroit press in
the streetcar battle, he sought to develop a more populist image by
becoming the champion of the average citizen. In 1901, he won the
first of three terms as Cleveland's mayor. Like Mayor Pingree of
Detroit, his
former nemesis, Mayor Johnson, forced Cleveland's private streetcar
companies to lower their fares. As mayor, he also reformed the
property tax system, improved prison conditions, provided public
bathhouses, and constructed a civic center planned by famed architect
Daniel Burnham.
Johnson gained national attention as a reform mayor, spawning many
imitators across the country, and sparking speculation about his
prospects for state and federal office. As this cartoon indicates,
he was flying high in 1902, casting a formidable shadow over the Ohio
landscape. The next year he won the Democratic nomination for
governor, but lost in the general election to the Republican
candidate. He had been discussed as a possible presidential
candidate in 1904, but his gubernatorial defeat undercut his chances and
he chose not to enter the race. He finally lost reelection as
mayor in 1909, and died two years later.
Robert C. Kennedy
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