political power and highly abstract expressions of policy preferences. Most residents of 1920s Detroit barely had a voice in the city’s policymaking process due to the scarcity of effective and engaged political pressure groups. Members of Detroit’s commercial and industrial elite, on the other hand, had far less trouble making themselves heard as they sought to use local government to create the city and the citizenry that they desired.
Behind the Wheel, 1919–1922
In the first elections under Detroit’s new charter, voters not only elected every single candidate on the Citizens League’s slate for city council. They also chose one of the most well-known corporate executives in the city to serve as mayor. James Couzens had made his fortune as the general manager of the Ford Motor Company, where he worked until 1915. Over the years, Couzens had gained a reputation for being a maverick who was willing to take worker-friendly stances even if they put him at odds with his corporate brethren. While at Ford, Couzens helped dream up the five-dollar day, a policy that most employers in the city opposed. During a nationwide unemployment epidemic at the start of World War I, Couzens publicly chastised his fellow industrialists for not doing more to aid the jobless. In the 1918 mayoral campaign, Couzens ran on a platform calling for municipal ownership of the city’s street railway system. To show solidarity with Detroiters struggling in the face of high fares, Couzens boarded a streetcar and refused to pay. Other local citizens followed suit, sparking a wave of confrontations across the city. A number of local executives who opposed municipal ownership of Detroit’s street railways accused Couzens of opportunistic rabble-rousing. Henry Leland and the Detroit Citizens League chose to back another candidate for mayor.5
Still, despite such instances of friction, Couzens and the rest of Detroit’s commercial and industrial elite agreed in a number of realms. Couzens relied heavily on his corporate colleagues for input and advice throughout his term. At times Couzens denounced members of the business-dominated city council when they did not follow his lead, but he and local legislators moved in tandem on most major issues, a pattern that led to accusations in the local press that the city council was merely a rubber stamp for Couzens’s agenda. In fact, Couzens and the city council’s tendency to agree was indicative of a relatively robust consensus among elite Detroiters about what the city needed most.6
Detroit’s population had skyrocketed during the war as the city’s booming economy had drawn ever more people to the city. Between 1910 and 1920, the number of Detroiters grew from 465,766 to 993,768. By 1930, the city would boast 1,568,662 residents. Detroit’s geography was expanding at a similarly rapid pace. Between 1910 and 1920, annexations of nearby territories increased the size of the city from 41 square miles to 78, a number that would continue to grow until the city encompassed 138 square miles in 1930. Most of this new land was undeveloped. The throngs of newcomers who arrived in Detroit during the war and its immediate aftermath continued to crowd into the city’s densely populated core, an increasingly congested island in a sea of open land. Because of a shortage of classrooms, more than fifteen thousand grade-schoolers were able to attend only half-day sessions in 1919. By one account, over half the city’s school-aged children were not in school at all. Reports of crime and juvenile delinquency had increased during the war, a trend that elite Detroiters associated with the population boom and the concomitant shortage of housing, schools, recreational outlets, and other city services. As the Red Scare and militant strikes swept across the country in the wake of the armistice, the anxieties of Detroit’s business leaders peaked. Connecting postwar radicalism with the foreign born, businessmen’s long-standing worries about immigrant assimilation intensified.7
Once in office, Couzens and his elite colleagues on the city council and school board moved quickly to address these issues. In his first year as mayor, Couzens convened what he called a “reconstruction meeting” that brought together “250 bankers, manufacturers,” and public officials to find ways to resurrect what an advertisement for the forum called Detroit: “a civic giant flat on its back.”8 The city’s commissioner of public works called for $20 to $25 million in new debt spending to improve the city’s sewer system and millions more to build and improve roads, alleys, and sidewalks. Alex Dow, an executive at Detroit Edison and the city’s water commissioner, demanded millions more for new water mains. Frank W. Blair, the president of the Union Trust Company, proclaimed that the city had to spend nearly a quarter billion dollars to meet its needs. James Vernor, a local manufacturer and president of the city council, declared, “The Council is ready to go the limit as far as construction work is concerned.” The president of the Detroit Board of Commerce—Allan A. Templeton, a successful auto parts supplier—pledged his organization’s support.9 Soon thereafter, an editorial in the board of commerce’s weekly publication called for a cascade of spending: “Instead of a slow and deliberate program of public improvements, it is necessary to do a great number of things all at once.” “Immense bond issues must be sold.”10
And indeed they were. In August 1920, voters approved the Department of Public Works and the Water Commissioner’s request for a windfall of bonds, $37 million in all. By the time Couzens left office at the end of 1922, the city had built 100 miles of sewer mains and another 200 miles of lateral sewers at a cost of over $30 million. It laid 170 miles of road and spent more than $18 million to improve the city’s water system.11 While most of this new construction did not follow a formal city plan—Detroit would not officially adopt one until 1925—promoting residential decentralization formed a guiding principle. As Couzens attested, it is “the consensus of opinion that there is more immorality being caused by people huddled together in small rooms, who are robbed of normal home life … than from any other cause.”12
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