“Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy”

This picture and these words belong to a man by the name of Hazen Senter Pingree. He isn’t well known among Americans generally, but he remains one of the great forebears of the progression that brought better days to the Americans he presided over during his time as mayor of Detroit and governor of Michigan. 

If we want to understand what made Pingree so great as a politician and a reformer, we must transport ourselves to the times he lived in, and see how he ameliorated the strife which brought calls for reformers like him originally.

The Words of Inspiration

Pingree lived during the Gilded Age, a time of great strife and poverty among great strides in technological progress. Depressions and instability were rampant as there existed a troubling increase in the prevalence of poverty and misery. Strikes  carried out by laborers and suffering among those lost under the tide abounded in a system that was truly unfair and rife with problems.

Seeing the harsh living standards that plagued the country, many reformers sought to fight for a future that could alleviate poverty and bring about a true form of progress that could lift all boats. One of these men was Henry George, and it was his words which carried Pingree’s boat to the shores of battle. 

George’s theory was simple. Society’s well-being was being ground to dust by a combination of taxes on the production and trade of goods and services, and the free profits from withholding resources that are non-reproducible by the people. While George most prominently spoke about land, it wasn’t the only target of his policy proposals. Another were the natural monopolies, industries that were naturally inclined to being dominated by one company. 

We covered them already in another article, but in summary George wanted natural monopolies to be treated as public good, not to be run for-profit by monopolistic wealth extractors at the cost of society. As we’ll soon see, Pingree took the fight beyond just landowners to the doorstep of these naturally monopolistic giants.

The War Against Monopoly

With his sights set, Pingree went to war for the betterment of his political homeland of Michigan, especially the state’s capital and crowning city of Detroit. On a reformist platform, he was elected mayor of the latter in 1889, and by the year of his re-election in 1893, a depression was on in the United States. Looking to save his constituents from the fallout, he went to work immediately. 

Pingree first went to battle against the landed interests, in the words of Mason Gaffney and Polly Cleveland:

“The city was riddled with vacant lots held by land speculators; Pingree arranged for the unemployed to plant vegetables. “Pingree’s Potato Patches” inspired other cities to follow. Meanwhile, he had campaigned for “higher taxes on the vast landed estates of the city”; when big industries threatened to leave town, he responded by raising just the land assessments. This won the support of small business”

He had already sent powerful shockwaves of the anti-monopolist progressivism that George had espoused, but his biggest test would come against the aforementioned natural monopolies that roosted and plagued the people of Detroit.

Pingree, echoing the words of George in his activism, fought tooth and nail for natural monopolies like utilities and local railways to be brought under municipal control. He had particular trouble with a monopolist by the name of Tom Loftin Johnson. It seems Pingree’s battles had a particular impact on Johnson’s ideals, as he would go on to become one of Henry George’s strongest advocates, and the Georgist mayor who made Cleveland great; a man whose story and personal reformation we covered some time ago. He would have his day eventually, but before then he was a tried-and-true monopolist, and a staunch enemy of Pingree and his Georgist goals.

Ultimately, it would be of no use to Johnson and his contemporaries. Pingree successfully fought for fixed rates funded by the land focused taxes he brought to Detroit, and the people prospered. His actions as mayor would give Detroit a lasting legacy, attracting some now household names. Per Gaffney and Cleveland:

“Detroit’s private sector was a big collection of small machine shops, little businesses and services. That’s what attracted Henry Ford, the Dodge brothers and other young tinkerers to Detroit. In one of history’s ironies, trolley cars nursed the auto industry that later rose up to slay them.”

Despite Pingree’s popularity at his position, he ultimately decided not to run for mayor again after the end of his second term in 1897; the same year of Henry George’s death during his second attempt at obtaining the mayoralty of the biggest political prize in the country, New York City. Pingree had bigger plans than being mayor, he wanted to govern the state of Michigan.

And riding the wave of his popularity from his mayoralty, he did just that. Pingree was elected to his first term as governor in 1897, carrying his inspiration from Henry George to the state level. Similar to his work in Detroit, Pingree had the properties of Michigan re-evaluated according to new property assessment standards, and just as at his prior position, Pingree and his office found that land was severely undertaxed. The land values were promptly recaptured by his administration, raising more revenue despite lowering rates.

Pingree continued his progressive battle throughout his time as governor, a position he won re-election for in 1898 with a landslide 58% of the popular vote.

Unfortunately, similar to his once rival and eventually fellow Henry George-inspired reformer, Tom Johnson, Pingree’s retirement was short. A few months after leaving office in June of 1901, Pingree died in England. He was eventually buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.

In commemoration of his fight to better the lives of Michiganders, a monument dedicated to him was created in Grand Circus Park in Detroit, overlooking the people of the land he once served.

An Eternal Legacy

Pingree may not be well known among Americans generally, but his legacy and his actions deserve remembering. Pingree is considered among the top 5 for mayors in American history. In his case he was ranked third, just behind his fellow Georgist political compatriot, the aforementioned Tom Loftin Johnson. 

The aforementioned monument dedicated to Pingree that now stands in Detroit describes him as an “Idol of the people”. In his war against wealth extraction from the non-reproducible powers brought by monopoly privileges, he served the people, and he saved them much misery and poverty too.

There was a proposal a few years ago by recent Detroit mayor and now potential governor of Michigan Mike Duggan to implement a land value tax, in the hopes of alleviating the blight of land speculation and hoarding. Whether the people of the Great Lakes State will take the opportunity to recoup the value of land, as Pingree had done around 125 years ago, remains to be seen.

What can not be mistaken though, even if it’s gone buried among the knowledge of the public, is that Detroit has a long history of warring with the free, unearned profits of land and other forms of monopoly. That history has been lost, but it’s not the end; because what has been lost, can certainly be found again.