Mira Lloyd Dock’s December 1900 slide show in Harrisburg was an instant and smashing success.
Both city newspapers, the Telegraph and the Patriot, would quickly climb on board to boost Dock’s campaign.
The Telegraph took an early lead. Just a few days after Dock’s speech, in January 1901, E.J. Stackpole bought the paper. (Stackpole and his Telegraph Press would later publish Dr. Donehoo’s 1927 book “Harrisburg: The City Beautiful, Romantic and Historic” to commemorate Stackpole’s contribution.)
There can be no doubt that both city newspapers of the early 1900s, the Telegraph and the Patriot, would thereafter play important roles in what was to follow. The newspapers competed to boost the development of the city, to educate the public about what was to be done, and why, and to gain broad public approval of the necessary bond issues.
ecades later, ironically, this is precisely what the Harrisburg Patriot monumentally failed to do, and continues to fail to do, leading up to the present bond debt crisis, and its continuing aftermath.
Today’s much better financially heeled newspaper of the same name, under different ownership, would repeatedly fail to inform the public what was going on, and why.
Dr. Donehoo writes:
“Soon after the Telegraph came into the possession of its present owners (January, 1901), there was launched a campaign for the improvement of the city, the paper laying special stress upon adornment of the river front, public parks, pure water and street paving. In April, 1901, this newspaper published a program of the suggested improvements, with a general sketch of the plans relating to the river front.”
Donehoo reports that on May 3, 1901, a superintendent of the Pennsylvania Steel Company in Steelton, J. V. W. Reynders, “wrote to the Telegraph commending the plan outlined and suggesting the raising of a fund of $5,000 for the purpose of hiring experts to make a complete survey of the needs of the city and submit a report. To show his good faith in this movement he made the first subscription to the fund. An appeal was made to the people of the city.”
Steelmaker Reynders pledged $100 to start the fund.
s this campaign took on steam, it became evident that milestone events were not so much spontaneous, as perhaps orchestrated.
The next day after Reynders pledged his $100, the Telegraph printed a similar letter of support written by wealthy Harrisburg businessman J. Horace McFarland
“McFarland’s letter of support and offer of $50 appeared the next day in the Telegraph,” Professor Wilson relates, “followed by a drumfire of Telegraph articles and editorials and the pledging of $5,000 within ten days. McFarland described how the leadership dealt with recalcitrants among the elite. ‘The money came ‘voluntarily,’ he wrote, ‘but I never did notice the voluntary part of it, because Mr. Reynders and several other men with nothing to do but run big industries simply came into your office and looked pleasant until you cashed up, or signed up!'”
Thanks in large part to the Telegraph the $5,000 in seed money was raised “voluntarily” in ten days.
The very next week prominent civic leaders formed a committee, calling the Harrisburg League for Municipal Improvements. This committee of seven included several city councilmen, and several future mayors.
Democratic city councilman Vance McCormick chaired the Municipal League. Businessman J. Horace McFarland, who early on had pledged his $50, became its secretary.
“The Municipal League Functioned until McCormick’s death in June 1946, when he was its last president,” Beers writes. “J. Horace McFarland was its secretary all 45 years.”
Noting the speed with which things began to happen, Beers writes, “Just 18 days after the Reynders letter of May 3, 1901, the Harrisburg League for Municipal Improvements was organized.”
It’s obvious, when you read between the lines of the history books, that strings were being pulled behind-the-scenes by the city’s most influential and wealthy citizens.
Wilson, perhaps overstating things, writes, “Having raised the private fund, the elite were determined to control its disbursement. It careful arranged, however, for the appearance of increased citizen involvement.”
The “elites” invited the mayor, the city engineer, and representatives “of each house of city council” to join the Municipal Improvements committee. “The arrangement identified important city officials with planning but without compromising elite control,” notes Wilson.
City council in turn appointed a committee to work with the Municipal League.
In dispensing the $5,000 seed money, the Municipal League quickly hired two of the most respected men in their fields to offer recommendations.
To study the city’s water supply, drainage and sewage problems, the League hired John Fuertes, a civil engineer from New York City and author of the book Water and Public Health.
Also hired was a friend and acquaintance of Mira Lloyd Docks: landscape architect Warren Manning, of Boston.
Manning was a disciple and protégé of Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York City’s Central Park.
So the deck already had been stacked for Harrisburg’s City Beautiful campaign to compete with other American cities on a national footing, using Olmsted disciples.
Dock, who’d started all this with her slide show, played an important albeit shadow role in what was to follow with her role leading the Civic Club of Harrisburg. But once again, being a woman, she had to accept her place.
Wilson writes, “Dock contributed to the experts’ fund but neither she nor any other woman served on the selection committee. Nor did women address the capstone rally at the courthouse.”
Even before the expert reports were tendered, the League launched a wide-reaching publicity campaign, with the help of both city newspapers and up-and-coming ambitious young local politicians.
It would be a classic American city boosterism campaign. It was the sort of booster campaign, replete with bunting, articles and speeches that Sinclair Lewis would write about, and lampoon, in his 1921 novel Main Street.
“Soon the City of Harrisburg gave a banquet in honor of the Legislature in the Board of Trade auditorium. Congressman Marlin E. Olmsted was toastmaster. This meeting and banquet was a sort of ‘booster’ gathering for everything relating to the improvement of the city,” Dr. Donehoo writes.
“During the summer and fall (of 1901) a campaign was carried on through illuminations in the street cars, illustrated lectures, showing the coal-laden water which the people had to use, the filthy condition of the river front, etc. (City councilman) J. Horace McFarland was active in the business of the campaign publicity,” Dr. Donehoo continues.
“J. Horace McFarland, a nationally respected conservationist with a major printing business near 13th and Derry streets, was a genius of public relations,” Paul Beers adds.
Yet, Wilson writes, “The City Beautiful leaders’ carefully planned, thoroughly controlled campaign was of a piece with their backgrounds and attitudes.”
To its credit, The League, with politician Vance McCormick and publicist Horace McFarland at the helm, successfully began to whip up broad-based public support. Average townspeople soon found themselves genuinely inspired to improve their city.
In a letter to the Telegraph published around this time, Harrisburger A. Carson Stamm wrote, “The Telegraph is proposing to do impossible things, but those are really the things most worth doing –the things that at first blush seem impossible. It is the truth in the history of individuals and communities that as soon as they stop doing impossible things they stagnate, disintegrate and die.”
George Hartover, who’d later become mayor, encouraged everyone, “Make improvements a public issue — let everyone do his part!”
This was exactly the philosophy that would be missing a century later, when disenfranchised Harrisburgers would wake up to find themselves awash in hundred of millions of dollars of quietly created insider bond debt, borrowed for murky purposes, still unknown.
The expert reports commissioned by the League were tendered in November 1901, less than a year after Miss Dock’s slide show.
Water expert Fuertes, Wilson writes:
“urged a low dam in the non-navigable Susquehanna to raise the river above the sewer outfalls and to provide a wide expanse of water by the city for swimming and boating. He called for a water filtration plant with a capacity of ten million gallons per day and a new reservoir to solve the health problems posed by the culm, clay, and sewage in the Susquehanna.”
He also proposed a flood control system for Paxtang Creek.
Warren Manning, the protégé of Olmsted, “recommended a parked river front, expansion of Reservoir Park, the creation of a large landscape park in Wetzel’s Swamp north of the city (today’s Wildwood Park -ed.), playgrounds, and a ring boulevard connecting the large parks.
League president and city councilman Vance McCormick was so impressed with the recommendations that he upped the proposed bond issue to pay for all this from $525,000 to $1.1 million.
To be continued.
