Frederic C. Howe

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frederic C. Howe , portrait in a 1912 publication

Frederic Clemson Howe (* 21st November 1867 in Meadville , Pennsylvania , † 3. August 1940 in Oak Bluffs ( Martha's Vineyard , Massachusetts )) was an American specialist lawyer for tax law , politicians , political advisor , writer and reformer .

Life

Howe was born the son of furniture maker Andrew Jackson Howe and his wife Jane Clemson in a Methodist and Quaker -influenced milieu. As a child he aspired to be a journalist . He left Allegheny College in his hometown of Meadville in 1889 with a bachelor's degree. 1892 Howe doctorate with a thesis on History of the Internal Revenue System ( "History of the federal tax system") at the Johns Hopkins University for Ph.D. after studying there and for a short time at the University of Halle in Germany . When he failed to find a job with a newspaper, he began to study law at the New York Law School . A year later he became secretary of the Pennsylvania Tax Commission.

1894 Howe moved to Cleveland ( Ohio ), where he worked in the Chambers of Harry Garfield and James R. Garfield worked, the sons of former US President James A. Garfield . As a tax expert, he wrote the work Taxation and Taxes in the United States under the Internal Revenue System 1791–1895 until 1896 ("Taxation and taxes in the United States under the federal tax system 1791–1895"). At the same time, Howe was involved in the Municipal Association , a progressivism- inspired, non-profit organization in Cleveland. In 1901 Howe was elected as a Republican for two years to the city council, where he was promoted to lieutenant of the Democratic Mayor Tom L. Johnson . As an independent candidate, he ran for re-election, but lost it. In 1904 Howe married Marie H. Jenney (1870–1934), a pastor in a Unitarian congregation , later a prominent feminist ; the marriage remained childless.

Under Johnson's influence Howe turned to the thoughts of the economist Henry George (→ Georgism ) and the reform issues of urban development . He began studying cities in the US and Europe and writing a number of books and articles about them. The first book was The City: The Hope of Democracy in 1905 . In the interests of urban development, he advocated extensive urban planning activities in the cities and called for the development of infrastructure and public utilities . In other publications on this topic, he examined urban planning , local self-government and the budgets of large cities in the German Empire and compared them with their British and American counterparts. In 1913, in the work European Cities at Work, he described the governance of the aspiring city of Düsseldorf under Lord Mayor Wilhelm Marx as exemplary . The far-reaching from an American perspective system of charitable planning, public services and public infrastructure facilities in German cities characterized Howe as "municipal socialism" ( municipal socialism ) that the Wilhelmine German Reich as "state socialism" ( state socialism ).

Howe was a member of the Ohio Senate from 1906 to 1908 and a member of the Cleveland Board of Tax Assessors from 1909 to 1910 .

Financially independent Howe turned away from the legal profession and moved to New York City in 1910 . For three years he was director of the People's Institute , an adult education institution affiliated with the Cooper Union , which aimed at workers and immigrants in particular with a program of educational and cultural offers and was part of the artistic and political life in the Greenwich Village district . The German urban planner and publicist Werner Hegemann traveled to the USA in 1913 and 1916 to give lectures on urban planning through Howe and his institute arranged and prepared .

Ellis Island Immigration Office building , 1905

In 1911 Howe became secretary of the National Progressive Republican League , which supported the presidential candidacy of Robert M. La Follette senior . In 1912 he published in Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy a laudatory report on La Follette's work in the state of Wisconsin , but this did not prevent La Follette from failing his candidacy, whereupon Howe, who disliked Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft , Woodrow Wilson supported. In 1914, Wilson appointed him Commissioner of Immigration for the Port of New York on Ellis Island . In this position, Howe endeavored to improve the treatment of immigrants and their protection from exploitation.

During the presidency of Wilson (1913-1921) Howe's political views changed to the left. Howe considered the First World War to be economically justified and declared it to be an imperialist rivalry between European powers driven by their upper classes. Together with the social philosopher John Dewey and the George L. Record, he founded the Association for an Equitable Federal Income Tax ("Society for a just federal income tax"), which aimed to draw the wealthy more to finance the military budget. In 1919 Howe took part in the Paris Peace Conference as an advisor . Here he was disappointed by Wilson, whom he accused of betraying his anti-imperialist ideals; He described the League of Nations foreseen in the Versailles Treaty as an international sanction to secure war conquests ("an international sanction to make permanent the conquests of war"). In the same year he resigned from his position as Commissioner of Immigration in order not to be forced to expel “ hostile foreigners ” who were branded undesirable in the tense political atmosphere of the post-war period.

He then became executive director of the Conference on Democratic Railroad Control to support Glenn E. Plumb's plan to pool the private railroad companies. In 1921, in Denmark: A Cooperative Commonwealth , he highlighted Danish cooperative models as a democratic alternative to the system of wage labor . In 1922 he helped form the Conference for Progressive Political Action , the aim of which was to mobilize the votes of workers and farmers for the elections to the United States Congress . When this initiative led to the founding of the Progressive Party in 1924 , Howe was research assistant to her top candidate Robert M. La Follette senior.

In 1925 Howe published his autobiography Confessions of a Reformer ("Confessions of a Reformer"), in which he described the society of a typical American small town as a comfortable little world, Republican in political sentiment, cautious in behavior and Methodist in religion (" A comfortable little world, Republican in politics, careful in conduct, Methodist in religion ”), as well as his efforts to overcome their traditional values ​​and prejudices.

After 1924 Howe spent the winters traveling in Europe; In summer, from 1922 onwards, he ran what he himself called a School of Opinion on Nantucket Island , where he gathered reform-minded intellectuals and academics for informal discussions.

In 1932 Howe supported the Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt . In the same year he was recognized as an advisor to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) , a facility created as part of the New Deal . When it was reorganized in 1935, Howe was deported to the post of special advisor to the Minister of Agriculture. In 1937 he became an advisor to the government of the Philippines on agricultural lease and cooperative issues. On his return to the United States, he became an expert consultant on agricultural commodities of the Temporary National Economic Committee , which Roosevelt founded in 1938 to investigate the problem of monopolies .

Howe was buried in his native Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Publications

  • Taxation and Taxes in the United States (1896)
  • The City of Cleveland in Relation to the Street Railway Question (1897)
  • The City: The Hope of Democracy (1905)
  • Confessions of a Monopolist (1906)
  • The British City: The Beginnings of Democracy (1907)
  • Privilege and Democracy in America (1910)
  • City Building in Germany (1910)
  • Düsseldorf: A City of Tomorrow (1910)
  • A Way Toward the Model City (1910)
  • The German and the American City (1911)
  • Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy (1912)
  • The City as an Socializing Agency: The Physical Basis of a City: The City Plan (1912)
  • European Cities at Work (1913)
  • The Modern City and Its Problems (1914)
  • Socialized Germany (1915)
  • Why War (1916)
  • The High Cost of Living (1917)
  • The Land and the Soldier (1919)
  • The Only Possible Peace (1919)
  • Denmark: A Cooperative Commonwealth (1921)
  • Revolution and Democracy (1921)
  • The Confessions of a Reformer (1925)

literature

  • Robert H. Bremner: Honest Man's Story: Frederic C. Howe . In: The American Journal of Economics and Sociology , Vol. 8, No. 4, 1949, pp. 413-422.
  • Kenneth E. Miller: From Progressive to New Dealer: Frederic C. Howe and American Liberalism . Penn State University Press, 2010 ( online ), introduction .
  • LaVern J. Rippley: Charles McCarthy and Frederic C. Howe: Their Imperial German Sources for the Wisconsin Idea in Progressive Politics . In: Monthly Issues , Vol. 80, No. 1, 1988, pp. 67-81.
  • Nicholas J. Marantz, Eran Ben Joseph: The Business of Codes: Urban Design Regulation in an Entrepreneurial Society . In: Steve Tiesdell, David Adams: Urban Design in the Real Estate Development Process , Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester, 2011, p. 120, ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sandra Addickes: To Be Young Was Very Heaven. Women in New York before the First World War . St. Martin's Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-312-22335-8 , pp. 59 ff. ( Online )
  2. ^ Frederic C. Howe: Socialized Germany . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1915, pp. 80, 280 ( online )
  3. ^ Caroline Flick: Werner Hegemann (1881-1936). Urban planning, architecture, politics - a working life in Europe and the USA . Individual publications by the Historical Commission in Berlin, Volume 84, KG Saur Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-23228-4 (2 volumes), p. 362 ff. ( Online )
  4. ^ Axel R. Schäfer: American Progressives and German Social Reform, 1875-1920 . USA Studies, Volume 12, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-515-07461-9 , pp. 113–116, 123 ( online )
  5. ↑ Confessions of a Monopolist (with a foreword by Antony C. Sutton ), file in PDF, accessed on the direitasja.files.wordpress.com portal on April 7, 2014
  6. ↑ In: Sribner's Magazine , 47 (5), pp. 601-614.
  7. ↑ In: Hampton's Magazine , 25 (6), pp. 687-709.
  8. ↑ In: The World's Work , Dec., pp. 13794-13801.
  9. ↑ In: Scribner's Magazine , 49 (4), pp. 485-492.
  10. ^ The City as an Socializing Agency: The Physical Basis of a City: The City Plan . In: American Journal of Sociology , 17 (March 1912): pp. 590-601 , accessed on the urbanplanning.library.cornell.edu portal on April 7, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Howe, Frederic C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Howe, Frederic Clemson (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American specialist lawyer for tax law, politician, publicist and reformer
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Meadville , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1940
Place of death Oak Bluffs ( Martha's Vineyard , Massachusetts)