per house, in 1906, was 1165. The municipal street cleaning department cleans all streets by the wet process. To do this the city maintained (1906) 24 flushing wagons working 2 shifts of 8 hours each per day. A new street car company began operations on the 1st of November 1906, charging a 3 cent fare. The grants of this company were owned by the Forest City Railway Company and the property was leased to the Municipal Traction Company (on behalf of the public—the city itself not being empowered to own and operate street railways). In 1908 the Cleveland Electric Street Railway Corporation (capital $23,000,000), which owned most of the electric lines in the city, was forced to lease its property to the municipality’s holding company, receiving a “security franchise,” providing that under certain circumstances (e.g. if the holding company should default in its payment of interest) the property was to revert to the corporation, which was then to charge not more than twenty-five cents for six tickets. In October 1908, at a special election, the security franchise was invalidated, and the entire railway system was put in the hands of receivers. In 1909 Johnson was defeated. In 1910 a 25-year franchise was granted to the Cleveland Railway Company, under which a 3-cent fare is required if the company can earn 6% on that basis, and 4 cents (7 tickets for 25 cents) is the maximum fare, with a cent transfer charge, returned when the transfer is used.
Commerce.—To meet the demands of the rapidly increasing commerce the harbour has been steadily improved. In 1908 it consisted of two distinct parts, the outer harbour being the work of the federal government, and the inner harbour being under the control of the city. The outer harbour was formed by two breakwaters enclosing an area of 2 m. long and 1700 ft. wide; the main entrance, 500 ft. wide, lying opposite the mouth of the Cuyahoga river, 1350 ft. distant. The depth of the harbour ranges from 21 to 26 ft.; and by improving this entrance, so as to make it 700 ft. wide, and 1000 ft. farther from the shore, and extending the east breakwater 3 m., the capacity of the outer harbour has been doubled. The inner harbour comprises the Cuyahoga, the old river bed, and connecting slips. The channel at the mouth of the river (325 ft. wide) is lined on the W. side by a concrete jetty 1054 ft. long, and on the E. side by commercial docks. The river and old river bed furnish about 13 m. of safe dock frontage, the channel having been dredged for 6 m. to a depth of 21 ft. The commerce of the harbour of Cleveland in 1907 was 12,872,448 tons.
Cleveland’s rapid growth both as a commercial and as a manufacturing city is due largely to its situation between the iron regions of Lake Superior and the coal and oil regions of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Cleveland is a great railway centre and is one of the most important ports on the Great Lakes. The city is served by the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern; the New York, Chicago & St Louis; the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis; the Pennsylvania; the Erie; the Baltimore & Ohio; and the Wheeling & Lake Erie railways; by steamboat lines to the principal ports on the Great Lakes; and by an extensive system of inter-urban electric lines. Cleveland is the largest ore market in the world, and its huge ore docks are among its most interesting features; the annual receipts and shipments of coal and iron ore are enormous. It is also the largest market for fresh-water fish in America, and handles large quantities of lumber and grain. The most important manufactures are iron and steel, carriage hardware, electrical supplies, bridges, boilers, engines, car wheels, sewing machines, printing presses, agricultural implements, and various other commodities made wholly or chiefly from iron and steel. Other important manufactures are automobiles (value, 1905, $4,256,979) and telescopes. More steel wire, wire nails, and bolts and nuts are made here than in any other city in the world (the total value for iron and steel products as classified by the census was, in 1905, $42,930,995, and the value of foundry and machine-shop products in the same year was $18,832,487), and more merchant vessels than in any other American city. Cleveland is the headquarters of the largest shoddy mills in the country (value of product, 1905, $1,084,594), makes much clothing (1905, $10,426,535), manufactures a large portion of the chewing gum made in the United States, and is the site of one of the largest refineries of the Standard Oil Company. The product of Cleveland breweries in 1905 was valued at $3,986,059, and of slaughtering and meat-packing houses in the same year at $10,426,535. The total value of factory products in 1905 was $172,115,101, an increase of 36.4% since 1900; and between 1900 and 1905 Cleveland became the first manufacturing city in the state.
Government.—Since Cleveland became a city in 1836 it has undergone several important changes in government. The charter of that year placed the balance of power in a council composed of three members chosen from each ward and as many aldermen as there were wards, elected on a general ticket. From 1852 to 1891 the city was governed under general laws of the state which entrusted the more important powers to several administrative boards. Then, from 1891 to 1903, by what was practically a new charter, that which is known as the “federal plan” of government was tried; this centred power in the mayor by making him almost the only elective officer, by giving to him the appointment of his cabinet of directors—one for the head of each of the six municipal departments—and to each director the appointment of his subordinates. The federal plan was abandoned in 1903, when a new municipal code went into effect, which was in operation until 1909, when the Paine Law established a board of control, under a government resembling the old federal plan. (For laws of 1903 and 1909 see Ohio.) Few if any cities in the Union have, in recent years, been better governed than Cleveland, and this seems to be due largely to the keen interest in municipal affairs which has been shown by her citizens. Especially has this been manifested by the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and by the Municipal Association, an organization of influential professional and business men, which, by issuing bulletins concerning candidates at the primaries and at election time, has done much for the betterment of local politics. The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, an organization of 1600 leading business men, is a power for varied good in the city; besides its constant and aggressive work in promoting the commercial interests of the city, it was largely influential in the federal reform of the consular service; it studied the question of overcrowded tenements and secured the passage of a new tenement law with important sanitary provisions and a set minimum of air space; it urges and promotes home-gardening, public baths and play-grounds, and lunch-rooms, &c., for employés in factories; and it was largely instrumental in devising and carrying out the so-called “Group Plan” described above.
History.—A trading post was established at the mouth of the Cuyahoga river as early as 1786, but the place was not permanently settled until 1796, when it was laid out as a town by Moses Cleaveland (1754–1806), who was then acting as the agent of the Connecticut Land Company, which in the year before had purchased from the state of Connecticut a large portion of the Western Reserve. In 1800 the entire Western Reserve was erected into the county of Trumbull and a township government was given to Cleveland; ten years later Cleveland was made the seat of government of the new county of Cuyahoga, and in 1814 it was incorporated as a village. Cleveland’s growth was, however, very slow until the opening of the Ohio canal as far as Akron in 1827; about the same time the improvement of the harbour was begun, and by 1832 the canal was opened to the Ohio river. Cleveland thus was connected with the interior of the state, for whose mineral and agricultural products it became the lake outlet. The discovery of iron ore in the Lake Superior region made Cleveland the natural meeting-point of the iron ore and the coal from the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia mines; and it is from this that the city’s great commercial importance dates. The building of railways during the decade 1850–1860 greatly increased this importance, and the city grew with great rapidity. The growth during the Civil War was partly due to the rapid development of the manufacturing interests of the city, which supplied large quantities of iron products and of clothing to the Federal government.
