Richardson Dilworth: Last of the Bare Knuckled Aristocrats

by Peter Binzen, Jonathan Binzen

In times of trouble, Theodore Roosevelt once said, the country needs not critics or complainers, but the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...who spends himself in a worthy cause.

Richardson Dilworth was such a man. At Belleau Wood and Guadalcanal, epic battles in World Wars I and II, he was there when courage counted. Years later, when the doomed luxury liner Andrea Doria was sinking at sea, Dilworth instinctively helped get other passengers into lifeboats and was among the last to leave the ship.

Born to a wealthy family in Pittsburgh, raised in New York and educated at Yale, Dilworth moved to Philadelphia to enter the practice of law in 1926, and he embarked on his political career a few years later. A liberal Democrat in a city totally dominated by Republicans and rife with corruption, he suffered defeat after defeat, exchanging insults with his opponents and gaining a reputation as a bare-knuckled aristocrat in American politics.

In 1951, Dilworth and Joseph S. Clark ended 67 years of boss-ridden, often corrupt rule by the GOP. Clark served one term as mayor and then went on to the U.S. Senate. Dilworth pulled off a singular trifecta, serving first as Philadelphia s district attorney, then as mayor, and finally as head of the city s embattled Board of Education during the tumultuous 1960s.

Richardson Dilworth emerges in this stirring biography as one of Philadelphia s great citizens, perhaps its greatest since Benjamin Franklin. He was a true inspiration to his adopted city, and since his death in 1974, Philadelphia has not seen his like. For those two reasons and for the multitude of contributions he made to the people of Philadelphia and their way of life, the mayor who was also a statesman will long be remembered.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 11, 2014

Reviews

[Jane Hanser · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book to read mostly because I wanted to know something about the man and the mayor for whom Dilworth Square was named. I lived in Philly on and off for many of the years over the course of which this book covers and finally I feel like I had a sense of what my city was about, in much of the 20th Century. The thugs, the corruption, the WASP culture (grew up in that too), the racism (despite Philly being a heavily black city), how it all played out, and the luck of Philadelphia to have Richardson Dilworth come along with his vision, and his integrity.

I absolutely recommend this book.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Binzen's biography is an accessible portrait of a giant of mid-century Philadelphia politics: Richard Dilworth. Dilworth, who had family ties to the region but was originally from Pittsburgh as a child of aristocratic conservative Republican steel barons, became a life-long liberal Democrat because of his Marine Corps service during WWI on the Western Front. Moving to Philadelphia with his wife, Anne (who was from Philly), he began a law career that breached into politics. Philadelphia was controlled by a notoriously corrupt WASP Republican machine since the Civil War, where nearly all city jobs were patronage jobs and ward politics dominated the one-party city.

As a Wilsonian liberal Democrat, Dilworth seemed out of place, but he slowly built his reputation for taking on powerful interests. He was known for being a brash talker, who ran for early campaigns by visiting working class Philadelphians as they sat on their steps after work (in the days before television) to attack the GOP machine for bungling relief efforts during the Depression. He was elected to city treasurer in 1947 as one of the first Democrats elected to city wide office in almost 60 years.

By the early 1950s, he was clearly the leader of the reform-minded Democratic Party, and surprisingly ran as the number two (district attorney) on the Democratic slate that brought down the Republican machine just as white flight was beginning to disrupt the city. Joseph Clark became Mayor, and Dilworth would succeed him four years later and hold office until 1962. 

Dilworth's legacy is impressive. Between Clark and Dilworth, the reformers resisted efforts to replace Republican patronage with Democratic patronage and instead filled civil servant positions with the highest means test scorers from nation wide searches. They quickly filled nearly 30 percent of those positions with African-Americans as the city became increasingly became nearly 40% black over the decade (white flight to the suburbs fueled by block busting and the Great Migration of African Americans to Northern and West Coast cities fueled this demographic change.)

When Dilworth became mayor, he took the same brawler mentality and aggressively worked to remake the city in a way that the conservative and cautious Republican machine never even approached. He ripped up the Pennsylvania Railroad that separated the city. He sought to bring back middle class people into Philadelphia by revitalizing Society Hill (quite personally leading the charge by moving himself and his wife into one of the homes), though by removing the poor residents. He extended the Broad Street line from Snyder to Pattison Avenue, which enabled the growth of the Sports Complex.

He also quickly gained a reputation of getting personally involved in "good government" by writing back to critical letters from constituents, and hosting a radio show where he personally fixed problems residents were having across the city. He floridized the water system and made it accessible to citizens. He helped create regional transportation entities that would bring together various private entities that ran the city's public transit, evethe various private entities that that ran the subway and el lines, along with setting the stage for eventually bringing the Philadelphia Transportation Company that operated much of the trolleys, buses, and some of the subway/el lines together that would later become SEPTA. 

Dilworth would make enemies with the political class, and more conservative Democrats would reinstate patronage politics, especially his immediate successors in Mayors James Tate and Frank Rizzo. After an unsuccessful run at governor of Pennsylvania versus Bill Scranton, he served as the chair of the city school board. He met with very mixed success in that roll, as integration of public schools and increasing militancy of student-led protest movements for Black Power in the schools met with brutal police tactics by the commissioner in Rizzo, largely pushing aside Dilworth's liberal impulses. Today, Philadelphia has sunk back into corrupt patronage politics after 70 years of the Democratic Party control with little interest by Republicans in challenging that power as national politics have eroded regional ideological differences. Still, Dilworth's efforts at good government reform are marked through much of the city. Binzen's work lays out Dilworth's career well, relying on archival research and interviews.

[Thomas Mosher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book, he seems like an honest politician and did some great things for the city. Effective in many aspects.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marine Corps veteran of both World Wars, and a force in Philadelphia politics for almost three decades. The most intriguing bits are the near misses and what ifs that could have placed him in the Governors chair or even the White House.

[George King · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for someone who grew up in Philadelphia when Richardson Dilworth was mayor. There has been nobody like him in Philadelphia since.

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great slice of Philadelphia political history.