The Personality of American CitiesHungerford, Edward
History
The Personality of American Cities
Hungerford, Edward
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
Indeed Cleveland has "bobbed up." And her growth within the last quarter
of a century has been more than physical, more than that recorded by
emotionless census-takers. For beneath those grimy old houses on Euclid
avenue and the down town residence streets, beneath the roofs of those
gray and grimy story-and-a-half wooden houses which line far less
pretentious streets for long miles, lies as restless and as hopeful a
civic spirit as any town in America can boast. It makes itself manifest
in many ways--as we shall see. The man who first brought it into a
working force was a resourceful little man who died a little while ago.
But before Tom L. Johnson died he was Mayor of the city; something more;
he was the best liked and the best hated man that Cleveland had ever
known; and he was better liked than he was hated.
In person a plump little man with a ceaseless smile that might have been
stolen from a Raphael cherub, a democratic little man, who knew his
fellows and who could read them, almost unfailingly. And the smile could
change from softness into severity--when Tom L. Johnson wanted a thing
he wanted it mighty hard. And he generally succeeded in getting it. He
could not only read men; he could read affairs. He saw Cleveland coming
to be the Sixth City. And he determined that she should realize the
dignity of metropolitanism in other fashion than in merely census totals
or bank clearances.
[Illustration: Cleveland is proud of her great, broad streets]
Johnson began by going after the street railroad system of the town. He
had had some experience in building and operating street railroads in
other parts of the country, and he set out along paths that were not
entirely unfamiliar to him. It so happened that at the time he began his
crusade Cleveland was quite satisfied with her street railroad service.
Her residents went out to other cities of the land and bragged about how
their big yellow cars ran out to all the far corners of their rapidly
growing city. But Johnson was not criticising the service. He was merely
saying in his gentle insistent way that five cents was too much for a
man to pay to ride upon a street car. He thought three cents was quite
enough. The street railroad company quite naturally thought differently.
In every other town in the land five cents was the standard fare, and
any Cleveland man could tell you how much better the car-service was at
home. That company produced vast tables of statistics to prove its
contentions. Tom L. Johnson merely laughed at the statistics and
reiterated that three cents was a sufficient street-car fare for
Cleveland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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