SPECIAL FEATURE

Many of the most objective observers of Mayor Daley and the machine he controlled for over 20 years are outsiders. Since most of the insiders aren't talking, the task of assessing Richard J. Daley's influence and achievements will be long and controversial — and political, just as the Mayor would have wanted it. But a good start was made at a recent conference sponsored by the Department of History of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and the Chicago Historical Society. With grant assistance from the Illinois Humanities Council, Dr. Melvin G. Holli, conference director, assembled forty-odd journalists, academics, city officials and neighborhood leaders to present their views on the late mayor and his city at a four-day conference, October 11-14, 1977, entitled "Richard J. Daley's Chicago." Excerpts from the best of the papers presented, at the conference will be published in this and future issues, with the permission of the authors and the university. Professors Holli and Peter d'A. Jones are editing the proceedings for publication in book form.

The late mayor's views about the suburbs were shaped by certain conditions during the first half of his 50-year political career, and though conditions changed, his views remained largely fixed and immutable until the end. In the last 25 years of Daley's political stewardship, a preoccupation with broadening and consolidating his base of power in Chicago hopelessly blinded him to the demographic and political revolution that was unfolding in the quiet villages on the city's periphery and on the vast, once sparsely populated spreads of farmland beyond.

In 1946 Daley voluntarily gave up a secure seat in the state Senate, and instead he sought and was slated for the post of Cook County sheriff. He lost the election to a relatively unknown Republican, Elmer Michael Walsh. Daley's 51 per cent share of the Chicago vote was simply insufficient to offset Walsh's 115,000-vote plurality in the townships.

The disappointment and humiliation of defeat gave Richard Daley time to think about his future and the condition of his party. If his political career was endangered, Daley also recognized that enemy within — those pronounced pockets of Republican resistance within Chicago itself— was largely responsible for his dismal performance. The suburbs were a problem that eventually would have to be dealt with, but the first order of business was to begin cleansing Chicago of its Republican influences.

Winning with city votes
After a brief interlude as Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson's state director of revenue, Daley returned to the political hustings in 1950 as a candidate for Cook County clerk. He won this time by a comfortable margin and in 1954 was reelected overwhelmingly. In both of these contests, the outcomes were determined wholly by the city's voters.

Unlike 1946, Daley's Chicago pluralities in these two elections were larger than his and his opponent's combined vote in the townships. The suburbs had not been decisive, not even remotely relevant to the outcomes of these contests, and they never would be, Daley reasoned, so long as the city

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In July 1953, Richard J. Daley inherited the house built by Tony Cermak, Ed Kelly, Patrick Nash and Jake Arvey; he was elected chairman of the Cook County Democratic organization. As party chairman and county clerk, he could not have been unaware of the massive outmigration of people from Chicago to the suburbs — a movement which had commenced in the 1950's, accelerated in the 1960's and continues to this day. For the first time since its incorporation, Chicago had lost population. There was no visible sign of concern or alarm by Daley about the demographic transformation that was rapidly unfolding in the metropolitan region. In the 1950's the population of suburban Cook County grew by almost 80 per cent. No less prodigious was the population growth being experienced in the surrounding counties. DuPage County's population in the 1950's limped by 103 percent; Lake County by 64 per cent; Will County by 43 per cent; McHenry County by 66 per cent; and Kane County by 40 per cent.

Predicting every election
Neither Daley nor his organization were panicked by this drain. They could count noses as well as the Census Bureau, and they knew that Chicago's population had remained relatively constant for three decades — that the city's numerical superiority was largely undiminished. Even in 1960, seven years after Daley assumed the chairmanship of his party, only 31 per cent of the county's population lived in the townships. The fact that the population of suburban Cook County had actually doubled in the 30 years since Daley joined County Treasurer Joseph McDonough's staff did not alter the common view that the suburbs were an annoyance which, like a pesty fly, could be paid little attention or ruthlessly crushed by the inner city's massive Democratic majorities.

Election returns from Cook County for gubernatorial and senatorial candidates between 1932 and 1956 reveal that a standoff of sorts had developed between the county's Democrats and Republicans, on the one hand, and between Chicago and the suburbs, on the other. The arrangement became so customary that it tended to memorialize the decided advantage enjoyed by the city and its Democratic organization. In election after election for a quarter of a century, 80 per cent of the county's vote on an average was cast by Chicagoans. And although no Democratic candidate for governor and only one for the U.S. Senate ever received an electoral majority in the townships during this period, their percentage of Chicago's vote consistently averaged out at 59 per cent.

A unique equilibrium had been achieved in Cook County, and the principal beneficiary was the Chicago Democratic organization

The Republican candidates expected and almost always received 60 per cent of the township vote, and they meekly settled for 40 per cent or less in the city. The outcomes of elections became increasingly predictable. In the 17 elections for governor and U.S. senator, Republicans carried Cook County only twice and by narrow margins. A unique equilibrium had been achieved in Cook County, and the principal beneficiary was the Chicago Democratic organization. Daley not only grew accustomed to this balance, he expected it to endure indefinitely.

The delivery of Chicago's Democratic vote, of course, did not necessarily assure victory for the party's statewide candidates, but invariably the city vote accounted for a large part of the survivor's winning margins. Gov. Henry Homer's Chicago plurality in 1932, for example, equaled 67 per cent of his statewide plurality — 83 per cent when he was reelected in 1935. Twelve years later Adlai Stevenson II in his race for governor carried the state by 572,000 votes, an astonishing 98 per cent of which came from Chicago. Here was unparalleled power which not only affected the course of Cook County and Illinois politics, but invariably sent quivers of foreboding or joyful anticipation through presidential candidates — depending, of course, on whether they were Republicans or Democrats.

Until the late 1960's, suburban voters of both parties were at best supporting actors in a larger political drama in which the director, producer and star was the Chicago Democratic organization. It controlled the government of Cook County almost as thoroughly as it did the government of Chicago. Between the time Richard Daley joined County Treasurer Joe McDonough's staff in 1930 and the year Daley died, Republicans were elected to countywide offices in only nine of twenty-four elections. Not a single Republican served in county office between 1933 and 1945. And after the war, in those identifiably good Republican years — 1946, 1950, 1952 and 1956, the Republicans actually enjoyed some success; they elected an occasional sheriff, treasurer, state's attorney and coroner. They even elected two County Board presidents — two in thirteen elections between 1922 and 1974. But Republican successes did not upset the historic equilibrium between Democrats and Republicans. They only revealed the machine's imperfections and need for new leadership — leadership which Daley was anxious to provide.

The plight of Cook County Republicans, of course, was not nearly as severe as the nonrecognition reserved for suburban Democrats. As Milton Rakove has pointed out, Chicago Democrats regarded their suburban brethren ". . . with suspicion or, at best, tolerance, consulted with them infrequently, ignored them often, and practically made no effort to bring them into a more important role in the party's inner council."

Neglecting suburban Dems
So few were their numbers that suburban Democrats had virtually no voice in the governance of their own party. In 1954, only 10 per cent of the 428,000 Democratic primary ballots cast in Cook County were suburban in origin. And as a result, the influence of Democratic township committeemen with respect to the slating of county candidates, the use of patronage and the distribution of the party's vast treasury was only one-tenth of the power exercised by city Democrats. Little was expected of suburban Democrats, and even less was given in return.

This neglect was absolute, and I am

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inclined to believe that beginning in the 1960's the neglect was purposeful and designed to discourage the establishment in the suburbs of a potentially competitive center of Democratic power. The machine's control of Chicago was enhanced by its control of those county offices having any political, patronage or financial significance. And because there was no place in this design for suburban Democrats, the subordination of their interests to those of the Chicago Democratic organization became commonplace. At no time before or after Daley's ascendancy to his party's chairmanship was a suburban Democrat ever slated for a major county office. In time, Daley and his closest political advisors became immobilized by their own firmly held conviction — which statistics and appeals to reason could not shake — that suburban Democrats were so outnumbered by Republicans, so hopelessly disorganized, so lacking in discipline, and so disagreeably independent and ideological that they could never become an influential factor in our politics. An accommodation with such forces, Daley's view, was not wise or necessary. But, this neglect nourished an underlying discontent which eventually unleashed forces Daley did not comprehend and could not fully control.

In the final analysis, Daley's views of the suburbs were shaped principally by his personal political experiences and observations in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's; by the relatively static relationship between the city and the suburbs with respect to population and the apportionment of political power; and

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by an intense desire, inherited from his predecessors, to satisfy the exigencies and endless requirements of the Chicago Democratic organization.

These were the essential ideas or assumptions Richard Daley had formulated over a 30-year period about the nature of politics in the metropolitan region. And, during at least the pre-mayoral era, Daley's conclusions rested on a foundation that was solidly factual, thoroughly logical and largely irrefutable. But circumstances changed, and the once valid framework through which Daley sought to understand and control suburban politics proved too narrow and inflexible to accommodate the new and inexorable demographic and political realities of the 1960's and 1970's. He failed to grasp the long-term, but inescapable, implications of suburban growth and did almost nothing to adjust. Daley came to political maturity and reached the height of this power in an environment which had not changed appreciably between 1925 and 1955. As county chairman and later as mayor, Daley was fully committed to preserving Chicago's preeminent position in Illinois politics and to insuring the perpetuation of the Chicago Democratic organization's control of city and county government. The commitment left Daley little time to think about the suburbs.

Realizing his dependency
Richard Daley's political agenda for the 1960's and 1970's was largely defined by the outcome of his first and third campaigns for mayor of Chicago. It was an agenda that relegated the suburbs to a position of relative unimportance for the next two decades. He defeated Republican Robert Merriam in 1955 by only 127,000 votes, and in the process Daley had failed to carry 21 of the city's 50 wards. Things might have been worse had it not been for the incredible majorities amassed for Daley by the notoriously Democratic river wards on the city's west and south sides. The so-called "automatic eleven" provided Daley with a 125,000-vote plurality, which was almost precisely the margin by which he won the election.

Any exhilaration Daley experienced on April 5, 1955, was tempered by a sinking realization that his political base was narrow and, what was more sobering, a racially changing one. The city's black population had reached the 700,000 mark, a threefold increase since 1930. Although blacks had constituted majorities in only two wards after World War II, by 1955 Congressman William Dawson, the city's preeminent black Democrat, controlled five south-side wards. And the wards on the city's west side — those which were largely the creations of Jacob Arvey, Al Horan and Frank Sain — were also experiencing rapid racial change. By 1963, the year Daley was seeking a third term as mayor, 10 wards held black majorities and several more were undergoing irreversible transition.

It was imperative, in Daley's view, to create a base of power that was citywide as well as racially and ethnically diverse

Daley's dependency on 20 wards, more than half of which had become black within eight years, was a condition which eventually required 15 years of his time, energy and organizational skill to alter. Daley's resolve to free himself of this dependency hardened after his race against Ben Adamowski in 1963 when half of Daley's votes were cast by blacks. But 1963 was different than 1955; race had become a conspicuous issue and Daley's dependency on the river wards and on the black vote had become even more pronounced. Taking full advantage of the white backlash, Adamowski piled up incredible pluralities in those white areas bordering on the city's black neighborhoods. He carried 18 wards, but when all the votes were counted, victory had eluded the Democrat-turned Republican by 140,000 votes.

Daley quickly realized that his survival required the creation of a Democratic organization which enjoyed a genuinely citywide base of support — the kind of support that would not only overwhelm and demoralize the city's Republicans, but would put some distance between himself and the city's burgeoning black population. For the first time, all of his powers as mayor and party chairman were focused on the achievement of this objective, including the services of thousands of city and county patronage workers. City services in Republican and marginally Democratic wards — like street and sidewalk repairs, garbage pickups, snow removal and all the rest — markedly improved. There were jobs to be parcelled out and money to be spent. This Herculean effort culminated in the 1967 mayoral election, in which Daley trounced Republican John Waner by more than a half million votes and carried all 50 of the city's wards. Daley repeated this performance again in 1971 and 1975, and while his pluralities were smaller, his percentage of the total vote continued to range between 70 and 80 per cent.

Governing a city and leading its Democratic party organization were undertakings to which Richard Daley fully applied his and his party's enormous financial, human and organizational resources. It was imperative, in Daley's view, to create a base of power that was citywide as well as racially and ethnically diverse, and until that base was secured, the diversion of resources for other political purposes was strictly limited. Before 1955 Daley had little reason to think about the suburbs, and after 1955 he had neither the time nor inclination to think about them at all. There was simply too much to be done in Chicago.

To be concluded next month.

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