Milwaukee Recallers

STATES & CITIES

When the Depression was young, Milwaukee used to boast that it was the most solvent city in the U. S. At the end of 1931 it had a $4,000,000 surplus while all other large municipalities were wallowing in deficits. Since then, however, Milwaukee's finances and fame have gone steadily downhill until last week some 46,000 of its citizens were on record for the recall of their longtime Mayor, Socialist Daniel Webster Hoan. So unconcerned was Mayor Hoan with the fight on him and his policies that he went off fishing in northern Wisconsin.

Dan Hoan, protege of the late great Socialist Victor Berger, was elected Mayor of Milwaukee in 1916 at the age of 35, has held the job ever since. Before that he served six years as City Attorney and before that he worked his way through the University of Wisconsin as a cook, ran a restaurant in Chicago while studying law. Today with a salary of $12,300 he lives in the same cheap little house he occupied when first chosen mayor. When Woodrow Wilson died in 1924 the City Council drew up a resolution of condolence to the widow of a "great American," asked Mayor Hoan to sign. He refused: "I never did think Wilson was a great American and I won't be a hypocrite by subscribing to such a resolution." For four years he loudly mocked Herbert Hoover's attempt to bring back prosperity. A regular attendant at the annual conferences of U. S. mayors, he was in Washington last May vainly trying to beg, borrow or steal some Federal cash to help Milwaukee's unemployed. Though he talks much about the efficiency and cheapness of his city services, non-Socialists have kept him from making Milwaukee a model Socialist municipality.

Milwaukee's troubles stemmed largely from Mayor Hoan's refusal to cut city salaries beyond the voluntary 10% deduction set aside for relief. Taxpayers had to resort to the initiative & referendum to chip $7,000,000 off the 1933 budget. Municipal employes went unpaid during April, May and June while, the city hoarded cash to meet its bond interest payments. A grand jury, discovering a $500,000 embezzlement of city funds, indicted Comptroller Louis M. Kotecki for failing to discover the loss in his treasury audits. One day two months ago Kotecki shot himself dead after wounding an assistant. Delinquent taxes exceed $20,000,000.

A Recall Council, made up of taxpayers, real estate dealers, small merchants and a good slice of the local press, directed the fight on Mayor Hoan. Put up to oppose him in the recall election was 25- year-old Fortney Stark, onetime secretary of the Real Estate Board. Said he: "This recall movement is the culmination of three years' steadfast refusal to adjust the expenditures of the city government to meet declining revenues." The recallers favored a 25% wage cut for teachers, firemen, policemen.

A recall requires a petition signed by 25% of the electorate--42,697 voters. Fortnight ago the Recall Council filed with the local court petitions signed with 46,100 names. Socialist attorneys immediately challenged the petitions on the ground that 10% of them were forged, that nonvoters had signed, that fictitious addresses had been given, etc., etc. At Brisbane Hall,* Socialist headquarters, the charge was made that the recall was being sponsored by wealthy property owners whose tax delinquencies created the very situation for which Mayor Hoan was being blamed.

*Named for Socialist Albert Brisbane, father of Journalist Arthur Brisbane.

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