HUNT OF CINCINNATI WHO VANQUISHED "BOSS" COX
Whitlock, Brand
Hunt of Cincinnati Who Vanquished "Boss" Cox By BRAND WHITLOCK (From the American Magazine.) henry t. hunt THERE developed in Cincinnati what has developed in most cities: a few tried to rule it...
...He didn't believe the railroads could operate under it...
...now he tried to use the machinery of the Prosecuting Attorney's office to do what the legislature had failed to do...
...And so there was...
...It was difficult to get halls to speak in, hard to get money to meet the expenses of a campaign against Cox in those days...
...He had drawn, while in the legislature, and tried to have passed, a number of bills covering serious defects in the election laws...
...And when he went back home, he went on fighting...
...He had made a hard campaign...
...and he was re-elected Prosecuting Attorney in 1910 by a plurality of 6,800...
...But they kept up hope and awaited a personality, feeling that some day he would appear, one who could lead...
...There were fitful revolutions against the regime (Boss Cox and his followers), and sometimes the men of vision in Cincinnati, the men who loved Cincinnati for her traditions, and who knew that her government was not representative of the real Cincinnati, sometimes despaired...
...he was wrong, of course, but it was a matter of principle with him, and so he defied his party and public sentiment and voted against the bill...
...the only man in the house to do so, and everybody respected him, everybody saw that he had nerve...
...that is, there was the combination, now pretty well understood and pretty well unmasked in most cities by which a few men use the local organizations of the two political parties to procure franchises and other privileges, and thus absorb to themselves all the communal values of the town...
...He spent months of time and $1,300 of his own money in an unpopular effort to rid the city of public gambling...
...He believes in the new and free Cincinnati, and that, of course, is the real Cincinnati...
...But this was only the beginning...
...In that election there were a good many irregularities— lodging-house votes and all that—but when this young chap got up to the State capital he introduced a number of bills to purify the elections, or, at least, to make it possible to purify them...
...trousers turned up over low tan shoes in the dead of winter, and all that...
...He killed the bucket shop business in Cincinnati...
...henry t. hunt THERE developed in Cincinnati what has developed in most cities: a few tried to rule it and govern it for their own benefit...
...it took an unusual quality of nerve, but Henry T. Hunt has just that quality...
...and while he is not radical, as radicalism expresses itself in these days, he is liberal and progressive, and that is radical in Cincinnati...
...it was momentarily successful, and as a result of it this young chap went to the legislature as a Representative from Hamilton County...
...He finally had Cox himself indicted, and though the indictment was not sustained ultimately by the courts, that process broke Cox's power in the Cincinnati he had so long controlled...
...He compelled the removal of slot machines from the county...
...He fought a long battle against the machine through the courts it controlled...
...It looked as if Cincinnati had found its man, as if the leader had appeared, and last fall Henry T. Hunt was elected Mayor of Cincinnati by a plurality of 4,000...
...During his first term in the Prosecuting Attorney's office he had shown again his qualities...
...The seed he had -own, however, came to its fruition in this Legislature, and everybody was in favor of the two cent a mile railroad bill—except this young chap from Cincinnati...
...Business men were afraid, but this young chap used to stand on a store box on the corner talking to the people about Cincinnati, about what it used to be, and what it was going to be...
...A few years ago a young chap got home from Yale—a typical college man...
...He graduated from Yale in 1900, and he was admitted to the bar in 1903...
...He began to practice law...
...He was born in Cincinnati, April 29, 1878, the son of Samuel T. Hunt...
...It took nerve to fight the regime in Cincinnati...
...He had made a splendid fight against desperate odds...
...Some years before, Tom Johnson campaigning for Governor of Ohio had urged the enactment of two cent a mile rate for railroad fares, and was defeated because this and other proposals he made—such as equitable taxation, for instance—were in Ohio considered anarchistic...
...A little later one of those fitful revolutions occurred in Cincinnati...
...It was in 1905 that he was elected to the legislature on the Democratic ticket, and in 1908 he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Hamilton County on the Democratic ticket by a plurality of 3,200...
...And he did another thing...
Vol. 4 • November 1912 • No. 48
