Daniel Hoan

Daniel Webster Hoan (March 12, 1881 – June 11, 1961) was an
Daniel Hoan
American politician who served as the 32nd Mayor of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1916 to 1940. A lawyer who had 32nd Mayor of Milwaukee
served as Milwaukee City Attorney from 1910 to 1916, Hoan was In office
a prominent figure in Socialist politics and Milwaukee's second 1916–1940
Socialist mayor. His 24-year administration remains the longest Preceded by Gerhard Adolph
continuous Socialist administration in United States history. Bading (Fusion)
Succeeded by Carl Zeidler (D)
Milwaukee City Attorney
Contents In office
1910–1916
Biography
Early years Personal details
Family Born Daniel Webster
Political career Hoan
Death March 12, 1881
Legacy Waukesha,
Wisconsin
See also
Died June 11, 1961
Works
(aged 80)
References Milwaukee
Further reading Political party Socialist (until
External links 1940)
Democratic (to
1961)
Biography Profession Labor attorney

Early years
Hoan was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on March 12, 1881 to Daniel Sr. and Margaret Augusta (née
Hood) Hoan. Hoan entered the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the fall of 1901.[1] He helped
organize the University of Wisconsin Socialist Club in November 1901, a group which consisted of just
four members during its first year.[1] Hoan served as secretary of that organization for the 1902/03
academic year.[1]

In 1908 Hoan passed the Wisconsin state bar exam and became a lawyer. A member of the Socialist
Party, Hoan moved to Milwaukee where he worked closely with Victor Berger, the editor of The
Milwaukee Leader, a socialist newspaper, in trying to persuade the city to adopt radical reforms. These
included municipal ownership of utilities, urban renewal programs, and free legal, medical and
educational services.
Family
On October 9, 1909, the non-religious Hoan, a member of the Knights of Pythias, married Agnes Bernice
Magner (1883 – December 28, 1941), a devout Catholic. She was active in her husband's political
campaigns and in women's organizations including the Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom.[2] They had two children:

Daniel Webster Hoan III (July 22, 1910 – April 26, 1988)
Agnes, later Mrs. Agnes B. Steininger (October 27, 1915 – March 1, 1993)
Daniel Hoan, a widower since December 28, 1941, married Gladys Arthur Townsend (March 17, 1901 –
July 16, 1952), a divorced Indiana schoolteacher two decades his junior,[3] on April 7, 1944 in Delaware,
Indiana. Gladys Hoan died in 1952, leaving him a widower once again. He did not remarry.[4]

Political career
Hoan began his political career with his election to city attorney for Milwaukee in 1910. He won the
election by a plurality of more than 7,300 votes out of about 59,000 votes cast over Democratic and
Republican opponents.[5] This was the same year Emil Seidel was elected mayor of Milwaukee as the
first socialist leader of a major city in the United States. Over the next six years, Hoan clamped down on
the corruption of public officials.

In 1916 Hoan was elected as mayor of Milwaukee. He remained mayor for 24 years, the longest
continuous Socialist administration in United States history. Part of the reason for Hoan's electoral
success was his break with the rest of the Socialist Party on the issue of United States entry into the First
World War. The Socialist Party opposed entry; Hoan did not. Instead, as mayor, he organized the
Milwaukee County Council of Defense on April 30, 1917.[6]

As mayor, Hoan developed a reputation for honest and efficient government.[7][8] He implemented
progressive reforms, including the country's first public housing project, Garden Homes, started in 1923.
He also led the successful drive towards municipal ownership of the stone quarry, street lighting, sewage
disposal, and water purification.

During Hoan's administration, Milwaukee implemented the first public bus system in the United States.
This was prompted by dangerous accidents: pedestrians were run over by street trolleys that ran down the
middle of the road. Among the victims of such streetcar accidents was Hoan's fellow Socialist, Victor L.
Berger, who was killed in 1929.

At the May 1932 convention of the Socialist Party, Hoan ran for national chairman of the party against
incumbent Morris Hillquit. In addition to the "constructive Socialists" from Wisconsin, Hoan garnered
the support of the young Marxist "militant" faction and the radicals around Norman Thomas, but this
bloc was insufficient to unseat Hillquit, who won reelection by a vote of 105-86.[9]

Hoan was defeated in the Milwaukee mayoral campaign of 1940 and the next year left the Socialist Party
and joined the Democratic Party. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1944 and 1946. In 1948 he was
unsuccessful in his attempt to once again become mayor of Milwaukee when he was defeated by the
Socialist Party's candidate, Frank P. Zeidler. Hoan remains the last sitting mayor of Milwaukee to be
defeated in a reelection bid.
A highway system was started under his administration, but federal funding was scarce. The system was
later expanded to include the Hoan Bridge, which was completed in 1972 but not opened to the public
until 1977.

Today, Hoan is remembered as one of the best mayors in Milwaukee's history. In 1999, author Melvin
Holli and a group of experts on local government, voted Hoan as the eighth best mayor in United States
history. Holli wrote:

"Although this self-identified socialist had difficulty pushing progressive legislation through
a nonpartisan city council, he experimented with the municipal marketing of food, backed
city-built housing, and in providing public markets, city harbor improvements, and purging
graft from Milwaukee politics. Perhaps Hoan's most important legacy was cleaning up the
free-and-easy corruption that prevailed before he took office."[8]

Death
Hoan died on June 11, 1961, at 80 years old, from a heart ailment, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[10][11]

Legacy
The Hoan papers reside with the Milwaukee County Historical Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[12] The
Hoan Bridge on Milwaukee's lakefront is the most visible monument that bears his name.[13]

See also
List of mayors of Milwaukee
Sewer socialism
Emil Seidel
Frank P. Zeidler
Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin

Works
The Failure of Regulation. (http://debs.indstate.edu/h678f3_1914.pdf) Chicago: Socialist
Party of the United States, 1914.
Lincoln, the Commoner: Helped in Fight for Education for Workers. Saginaw, MI: Saginaw
County Socialist Party, n.d. [192-].
Socialism and the City: How to Remove Chaos and Put Order and Beauty into American
Cities. Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1931.
Taxes and Tax Dodgers. Chicago: Committee on Education and Research, Socialist Party
of America, 1933.
Abraham Lincoln: A Real American. (https://archive.org/details/AbrahamLincolnARealAmeri
can) Chicago: Socialist Party of the USA, n.d. [c. 1936].
City Government: The record of the Milwaukee Experiment. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Co., 1936.
Why a Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation? : Address Delivered to the Convention on
Saturday, May 21, 1938, at Madison. Milwaukee: The Federation, 1938.
 Dollars vs. The People. Milwaukee: Milwaukee County Central Campaign Committee, n.d.
[1940].
The St. Lawrence Seaway: Navigation Aspects. n.c.: Great Lakes Harbors Association n.d,
[1948?].

References
1. Daniel W. Hoan, "Socialism at the Wisconsin Capital," Social Democratic Herald
[Milwaukee], vol. 5, no. 43, whole no. 246 (April 18, 1903), pg. 2.
2. Michael E. Stevens (ed.). The Family Letters of Victor and Meta Berger, 1894-1929.
Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1999, p. 389.
3. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20171015064653/http://death-records.mooser
oots.com/). Archived from the original (http://death-records.mooseroots.com/) on 2017-10-
15. Retrieved 2017-09-06.
4. Milwaukee County Historical Society. Daniel Webster Hoan, 1889-1966 (http://milwaukeehis
tory.beta04.ascedia.com/manuscript/hoan-daniel-webster-1889-1966).
5. "The Official Figures", Social-Democratic Herald [Milwaukee], vol. 12, no. 51, whole no. 611
(April 16, 1910), p. 6.
6. Leslie Midkiff DeBauche. Reel Patriotism: The Movies and World War I (https://books.googl
e.com/books?id=riLkBJfBDHkC&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91#v=onepage&q&f=false), pg. 91.
7. James Myers. Do You Know Labor? New York: John Day, 1945, p. 149.
8. Melvin G. Holli. The American Mayor: The Best & The Worst Big-City Leaders. University
Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, p. 75.
9. Anna Bercowitz, "The Milwaukee Convention". The American Socialist Quarterly, v. 1, no. 3
(Summer 1932), p. 53.
10. 'Had heart ailment-Daniel Hoan, Socialist Milwaukee Mayor for Twenty-Four Years, Dies at
80,' Madison Capital Times, June 12, 1961, pg. 1, 4
11. 'Volatile Ex-Mayor Dan Hoan Dies After Long Illness,' Wisconsin State Journal, June 12,
1961, pg. 1
12. Daniel Webster Hoan Collection-Milwaukee Public Library (http://content.mpl.org/cdm/single
item/collection/mplafa/id/3241)
13. Wisconsin Highways-Highways and Byways of The Badger State-Hoan Bridge (http://www.
wisconsinhighways.org/indepth/hoan_bridge.html)

Further reading
Benoit, Edward A., A Democracy of Its Own: Milwaukee's Socialisms, Difference and
Pragmatism. (https://web.archive.org/web/20130921053955/http://www.edbenoit.com/sites/
default/files/Benoit_Final_Thesis.pdf) MA thesis. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2009.
Kerstein, Edward S. Milwaukee's All-American Mayor: Portrait of Daniel Webster Hoan.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966.
Reinders, Robert C. "Daniel W. Hoan and the Milwaukee Socialist Party during the First
World War (http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/wmh/id/19444)," Wisconsin
Magazine of History, vol. 36, no. 1 (Autumn 1952), pp. 48–55.
Stevens, Michael E. Give 'em Hell, Dan! How Daniel Webster Hoan Changed Wisconsin
Politics (http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/ref/collection/wmh/id/51962)", Wisconsin
Magazine of History, vol. 98, no. 1 (Autumn 2014), pp. 16–27.

External links
 Works by or about Daniel Hoan (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3
A%22Hoan%2C%20Daniel%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Daniel%20Hoan%22%20OR%
20creator%3A%22Hoan%2C%20Daniel%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Daniel%20Hoan%
22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Hoan%2C%20D%2E%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Daniel%2
0Hoan%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Hoan%2C%20Daniel%22%20OR%20descriptio
n%3A%22Daniel%20Hoan%22%29%20OR%20%28%221881-1961%22%20AND%20Hoa
n%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at Internet Archive
Mayor Daniel Hoan of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Historical Society (http://www.wisconsinhistor
y.org/wlhba/searchResults.asp?adv=yes&Ln=Hoan&fn=Daniel&q=mayor)
Daniel Hoan on the cover of Time magazine (http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,193
60406,00.html)
Daniel Hoan (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13723971) at Find a Grave

Political offices
Preceded by Mayor of Milwaukee Succeeded by
Gerhard A. Bading 1916–1940 Carl Zeidler

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