The Story of Hickory
As a Pioneer of the Council/Manager System

ABOUT THE SEAL

On St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1913, a steady stream of horse-drawn buggies and boxy-looking autos helped ensure that 97 percent of Hickory's 565 registered voters arrived at City Hall before the polls closed.  By day's end, 291 citizens had voted for a new city charter and 256 had voted against it.   It was the largest voter turnout ever in Hickory.  By a margin of only 35 votes, it made Hickory a pioneer in North Carolina and the nation in adoption of the council-manager form of government. 

Advocates of the new charter won an uphill battle for a largely untested system of city government.  They managed to sell it to a majority on grounds that the council-manager plan would be simpler and more efficient for Hickory.  Aiding them was the fact that Hickory's citizens had grown accustomed to seeing business and industry run by managers acting for owners and boards of directors.   Still, the change marked a radical shift in the power structure of city government.   Under the old system, Hickory's elected mayor had served as chief city policymaker and administrator.  He presided over the mayor's court as well. 

Under Hickory's 1889 charter, the mayor could even order that misdemeanants work out the amounts of judgements and costs of prosecution "on the public works and streets by ball and chain".  Hickory's chief of police, like the constables and sheriffs of the day, received his income fee related to enforcement of the laws.  With less power than the mayor, six aldermen had served on committees representing various city departments.  They were elected under a staggered-term arrangement, three going into office every two years.  Under the new system, the city would elect all council members at once.  The council as a whole would make policy, which would be carried out by a hired manager. 

Attorney Charles W. Bagby, a catalyst in drawing Hickory's attention to the manager plan, recalled later how thoroughly the St. Patrick's Day winners did their homework.  By election eve, the forces favoring the city manager system had checked every voter.  They figured they would win by exactly 36-not 35-votes.  Both sides had made sure that even the ill and the aged got to the polls.  When a voter was too infirm to climb the steps, doorkeeper George Seaboch sent the ballot upstairs.  Further, a local newspaper reported, it had not seen a single person under the influence of liquor on election day.  So what, or who, had gone amiss for the pro-charter forces?  Had one of their number simply failed to get to City Hall?  Had one changed his mind?  Or had they just miscounted?

The mystery of the missing voter soon cleared up.  Someone remembered that E. Bryan Jones had been in South Carolina on election day because of the death of a friend.  The thrill of victory was not to be diluted by the agony of miscalculation.  That evening 75 years ago, on the steps of the First National Bank, the victors held what the Hickory Democrat called a "jubilation meeting".  W.A. (Gus) Self, a young attorney described as a gigantic figure in pro-charter efforts, was one of the speakers.  Under the new system, Self predicted, Hickory would enjoy "wonderful growth and prosperity".  

In the wake of a heated election campaign, it was time for reconciliation as well as jubilation.  Master of ceremonies Z.B. Buchcanan quickly called on two of the staunchest foes of the new charter.  Cheers rang as former Mayor J. D. Ellliott and City Attorney A.A. Whitener graciously-and with good humor-accepted the result.  They also pledged their best efforts for Hickory under its new charter.  Responding was Bagby, who had headed the Chamber of Commerce committee that spent six months drafting the charter.  He said that he had more admiration for those who fought the new charter and voted against it than those who lacked the nerve to come out on either side. 

Indeed, almost a uear of debate over the city manager idea had divided Hickory's political and civic leadership sharply.  A principal argument against the change was that Hickory was too small for such an experiment.  Another was that the plan would give control of city government to a czar.  Although small, Hickory was growing vigorously.  The city was a successor to Hickory Tavern, which had begun as a simple lodging place on a stage road.  After the arrival of the Western North Carolina Railroad in Catawba County in 1855, Hickory Tavern began gradually to thrive as a trading center.  It was incorporated in 1869.   When a new charter was ratified in 1873, the town's name was shortened to Hickory.   Its location at the edge of the Piedmont and in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, plus the arrival in 1881 of a second railroad, the Chester and Lenoir Narrow Gauge Railroad, helped Hickory attract a wide variety of business enterprises.  Among the goods it produced in the early 1900s were wagons, harnesses, saddles, shoes, building materials, furniture, pumps, textiles, and hoisery. 

As 1910
arrived, a new local publication (The Industrial Advocate) boasted: "On Union Square is the longest block of unbroken cement pavement and store buildings in the state".  Union Square had a political as well as a trading focus.  It was customary for townspeople to gather there for the election returns.  Following city elections, the winner of mayorality would speak to the crowd.  Then the soda fountains downtown would open to serve refreshments at the mayor's expense.  The Census of 1900 counted 2,535 persons in Hickory.  Because the corporate limits had been set at only one mile in all directions, the population of greater Hickory was considerably larger.  The official count inside Hickory had grown to 3,716 by the 1910 Census.  But with Brookford, Highland, Long View, and West Hickory included, there were 9,240 persons that year in the urban area. 

Advocates of the new charter first managed to get the council-manager issue before voters in the municipal election of May 1911.   At the urging of Bagby and a number of other young civic leaders, businessman-alderman J.A. Lentz ran for mayor, pledging to institute the manager form of government if elected.  Lentz proved a pivotal figure in that effort.  In the mayor's race against Elliott, he took on an extremely popular Hickory political figure.   Lentz won by five votes, but only after a recount.  Matters weren't to end there.  Their differing views on how Hickory should be governed in the future made an even larger contest certain.  Joseph Duckworth Elliott had already done much for Hickory.   As mayor in the early years of the new century, he had turned his experience as a general contractor for the Southern and Seaboard railroads to valuable city use.  He also built the Elliott Opera House, formed the Elliott Building Co., and got involved in numerous industrial and banking activities. 

In the early 1900s, in keeping with its slogan of "The City That Does Things," Hickory responded to its rapidly growing base of industry and commerce with an extensive program of public works.  As mayor, Elliott presided over the Board of Aldermen as the city began to build water and sewer systems, install concrete sidewalks, pave city streets, organize a fire department, and extend electric service.  (Under a city ordinance, every able-bodied Hickory male between 18 and 45 either had to devote four days a year to street work or provide the sum of $2 for a substitute.  The prospect of a more businesslike way of maintaining the streets undoubtedly became a selling point for the the council-manager system).  By the time of his death in 1930, Elliott had served a number of terms as mayor-both before and after adoption of the manager plan.  He was mayor on November 4, 1921, when Hickory dedicated a new Municipal Building and Auditorium.  He also had served as chairman of the Board of County Commissioners and as state senator from Catawba County for two terms.  

Thus, John Albert Lentz had a formidable opponent in the 1911 mayor's race.  But Lentz was a strong man in his own right.   Orphaned by the Civil War, he had come to Hickory from Rowan County in the 1870s to live with relatives.  A few of his close friends amiably called him "Groundhog" because he had been born on Groundhog Day, February 2, 1860.   Lentz operated sawmills, sold lumber, and headed the Hickory Novelty Co., which supplied finished materials to builders.  He was an officer of the First Building & Loan Association and several banks.  In addition to his service as mayor, he put in 18 years as a Hickory alderman and school board member.  He also became vice president of the Hickory Daily Record when it was founded in 1915.  Lentz won the mayor's race, but his five-vote victory was hardly the mandate sought by backers of the manager system.  They realized that the voters understood little about the plan.  Consequently, the Chamber of Commerce named a committee with two assignments in 1912:  to draft a proposed charter and to educate citizens about the council-manager form of government.

In addition to Bagby, the Chamber's vice president, the charter-drafting committee consisted of Charles H. Geitner, Jones W. Shuford, J.A. Moretz, and Walter J. Shuford.  Other Chamber officers involved were Dr. W.H. Nicholson, president, and A.K. Joy, secretary.  One fact dramatizes the significance of working for a city manager system in Hickory in 1912.  That was the year in which Sumter, SC, became the country's first municipality to adopt the mayor-council-manager plan so common in this country today.  Near the end of 1987, there were 2,581 council-manager cities in the United States.  Interest in the city manager system arose about the same time in Sumter and Hickory.  But the South Carolina Legislature acted in 1912 to permit a referendum in Sumter, which formally adopted the plan on June 11, 1912.  Hickory had to await an enabling act from the 1913 NC General Assembly to vote on its new charter.

Staunton, Virginia, shouldn't be overlooked when speaking of pioneers in the city manager movement.  As early as 1908, the two-house legislative body in Staunton (22 members in all) passed an ordinance that set up the office of "general manager".  This official was to have the "entire charge and control of all executive work of the city in its various departments".   The appointment of Charles E. Ashburner in 1908 gave Staunton reason to boast of having the first city manager in the nation.  (An earlier claimant of the honor was Ukiah, CA, which in 1904 created the post of chief executive officer to be selected by the city council.  But he was not explicitly called "manager").  Staunton hardly qualified at once as a model for the council-manager plan.  Its unwieldy council, 30 legislative committees, a mayor's veto, and lack of municipal employees gave Ashburner an unenviable task.  However, Staunton's experiment caught the eye of Richard S. Childs, secretary of the National Short Ballot Organization and a leading political reformer.  It thus played a part in Childs' new design for city government.

In his book, The Rise of the City Manager, Richard J. Stillman, II, writes:  "Staunton's was the first well-documented and well-publicized case where the various trends and influences of the period--the pressure of urbanization, the popularity of business and corporate ideas, the demand for progressive reforms--combined to produce the form of government later known as the council-manager plan".  Between 1903 and 1912, following the example of Galveston, TX and Des Moines, IA, a number of cities adopted what was known as the commission form of government.  This involved the election of a number of commissioners, usually five.  They set policy as a group but served individually as heads of city departments.  "One day," Childs wrote years later, "I read that the Galveston-Des Moines plan was like a business corporation in its structure.   I said to myself 'No'--to be like a business corporation it would have to have a manager responsible to a governing board to direct the department heads and employees.   So presently when I directed my assistant to draft a bill to make the commission plan available to the second and third class cities of New York State, I told him to put in a city manager."  Besides comparing the system with a business corporation, Childs also termed it similar to the burgomaster system used by cities in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands.  By 1915, he had helped persuade the National Municipal League to adopt the manager concept as part of a reform package in its Model City Charter.  

Nonetheless, Childs' plan initially was rejected in the proposed charter for Lockport, NY.  Thus, Sumter gained the honor of adopting it first.  Writing for the Nation Municipal League in 1963, Childs said he was drawing on his 50-year-old files to recognize Sumter as the earliest city to adopt and install the council-manger plan.  "Then in 1912," he wrote, "came a telegram from A.V. Snell of the Sumter Chamber of Commerce saying they had gotten a special act passed in the South Carolina Legislature making the commission plan and the short-ballot manager plan available.  First blood!  Then cames the news on June 12, 1912 that Sumter had chosen the manager option.  Forthwith the Lockport Plan became the Sumter Plan in our release."  Earlier, in Hickory, Bagby had been doing some wide reading on his own about municipal government.  One work that greatly influenced him was American Commonwealth, a severe criticism of city governments in the United States.  It was written by Lord James Bryce, British Ambassador to this country.  Bagby also read material citing the merits of the burgomaster system.  

Hickory's government didn't reflect the ills of machine politics and corruption that plagued many American cities of that day.  A large number of these cities had strong-mayor and ward systems that perpetuated themselves, creating a climate of bossism.  Further, some voters still elected such officials as the police chief and the street superintedent.  The basic impulse for change in Hickory didn't grow from dissatisfaction with the quality of past city leaders.   Rather, it was a desire to have a professional manager who could give the day-to-day business affairs of the city his undivided attention.  In turn, the manager would be directed by officials directly answerable to the voters.  It was a time in which the national Progressive Movement had its prime concern the power of big-city bosses and giant corporations--or "trusts".  One of the leading Progressive reformers was Woodrow Wilson, who had been president at Princeton University before becoming governor of New Jersey.  Wilson also had filled the presidency of the National Short Ballot Organization, which had been formed through the work of Childs.  

As Hickory's charter-drafting committee neared the end of its work in 1912, Wilson won the presidency of the United States over President William H. Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, who had run as a third-party candidate.  It was the year the Titanic sank off the coast of Newfoundland with a loss of more than 1,500 lives.  Construction on the Panama Canal was under way.  World War I was foreshadowed by reports on the front pages of the Balkan Wars.  In January 1912, the weekly Hickory Democrat had urged adoption of government by commission.   Another of its goals was to achieve a school term of at least six months.   North Carolina, with 93.3 days of school, ranked ahead of no state except New Mexico in length of school term.  In November 1912, nine years after the Wright Brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, bold headlines in Hickory proclaimed:   "FLYING MACHINE CIRCLED OVER TOWN 6000 FEET HIGH.  Aviator J.B. McCalley Made a Spectacular Flight Saturday.  Man and Machine Rose Like a Bird.   Thousands Saw the Heavier Than Air Machine Leave the Ground".  Witnessing the first "aeroplane" flight to take off from a Hickory site were 2,000 persons who paid 25 cents each for the privilege.  But about 4,000 freeloaders used rooftops or trees. 

Like the Age of Flight, the mayor-council-manager system in 1912 was in its infancy.  By legislative act, Fredericksburg, VA, followed Sumter that year in adopting the plan.  In Hickory, Mayor Lentz and the Board of Aldermen cooperated in the Chamber committee's work on a new charter.  The proposed plan called for the nonpartisan election of a mayor and four aldermen--one from each ward.  Voting, however, would be at large.  A city manager would be elected and made responsible to the council.  Although the manager's authority in hiring and fiscal matters was to be more limited than is the case today, the duties planned for him under the charter represented a historic step.  Included in the charter were three reforms--the recall, referendum, and initiative--then being promoted nationwide for local government.  These ensured the voters the right to recall local officials, to require a referendum on local ordinance provisions that were received unfavorably, and to introduce and vote on measures the council had not seen fit to pass.  The proposed charter was printed and distributed throughout Hickory.   The drafting committee then called a number of public meetings to hear citizen comments and answer questions.  Heavy coverage and editorial comment in the major weekly newspapers, the Hickory Democrat and the Times-Mercury, contributed to the dialogue.  So a lively community debate took place. 

The Democrat, whose name reflected its political party preference, supported the proposed charter in a series of five editorials.   The Times-Mercury (slogan:  "Hustling Hickory") leaned to the Republican Party.  Edited by J.F. Click, a former city clerk who doubted the wisdom of the change, the Times-Mercury raised numerous questions about the charter.  Both papers gave generous space to letters on the issue.  Debate remained civil for the most part.  But it had become heated enough by January 30, 1913, that it moved Howard Banks, editor of the Democrat, to call for people to cool off a bit.  He wrote that the charter debate was "not a big enough thing to divide families and come between lifelong friends".  Writing in the Democrat February 6, 1913, was Col. Marcellus E. Thornton, a colorful local figure who operated the Thorton Light and Power Company.  Thornton was strongly opposed to the manager plan.   "Blam, splam! or Rotterdam!" he fumed.  "I started out to write an analysis of this utopian charter business, but have grown so disgusted with the preposterousness, absurdandum, and rediculandum of such a condition as any proposed that I cut it short and let it go at what it is." 

At one mass meeting, the new charter's advocates beat back a proposal that a clause be included that would prohibit the manufacture and sale of "all spirituous liquors, wines, etc."  After Nicholson, the Chamber president, argued that Prohibition already exisited and that adding this amendment would hurt the charter's chances of passing, the motion was withdrawn.  One of the liveliest debates occurred at the Thornton Opera House.  Former Mayor Elliott twice took the floor to voice his fears that the charter gave too much power to the city manager.  According to a newpaper report, Elliott "came to the front crying out that the new charter was a dangerous document, waving it in the air and holding it off from him, as if he feared it was a stick of dynamite that might go off in his hands".   Gus Self replied with a spirited defense of the charter, section by section.   Self was an actor and musician as well as a lawyer.  He was a founder of the Little Theatre movement and headed the "Hickory Amateurs".  When Self had finished, Elliott commended his speech and added, "Gus, almost thou persuadest me." 

After all the public scrutiny of the charter, the drafters decided to change only one provision.  They struck a clause that provided for the automatic service of former mayors as aldermen for two years after their mayoral terms ended.  At the request of the committee, Judge W.B. Councill, state senator from Hickory, introduced in the 1913 General Assembly a special act calling for a March 17 vote on the new charter, which included the city manager plan.  Bagby credited the suggestion of the March 17 election date to James (Jim) Espey, bookkeeper at the Hickory Tannery.  This enterprise was run by brothers Charles and G.H. Geitner, both civic leaders.  Espey, a staunch Irishman and supporter of the city manager plan, said nothing could beat St. Patrick's Day for luck at the polls.  Good fortune indeed smiled on the charter's proponents that day.  Even so, Hickory almost lost to neighboring Morganton the honor or becoming the first city in North Carolina to employ a city manager.  On February 17, 1913, the General Assembly approved a vote on the revised Hickory charter.  Only a week later, it enacted for Morganton a new charter providing that its council appoint a manager. 

Although, Morganton didn't have to vote on the issue, the chronology favored Hickory from that point on.  Hickory named its first city manager on May 5, 1913.  The Morganton council appointed its first manager the following week.  The successful candidate for mayor under the 1913 charter was Charles H. Geitner, a strong charter proponent.  Geitner resisted efforts to draft him as the first city manager.  The council members, all backers of the manager plan, were J.W. Shuford, C.C. Bost, Joseph L. Abernathy, and J.L. Cilley.  Hickory's first city manager was George R. Wootten.  He had been acting city clerk under the Lentz council and had filled the positions of secretary-treasurer and tax collector as well.   Wootten was educated as both a pharmacist and a certified public accountant.   He reluctantly agreed to take the post of manager on a temporary basis.  He continued as city treasurer when his successor was elected one month later.  Wootten later entered the wholesale grocery business, sold pharmaceuticals, and served as an officer in a savings and loan association. 

Succeeding Wootten as city manager was C. Marvin Sherrill.  This was an ironic footnote to the charter selection.  Sherrill was the son-in-law of former Mayor J.D. Elliott and had been manager of the old Elliott Opera House.  He filled the city manager job for eight months.  His brother, C.O. Sherrill, later became a nationally recognized manager in Chincinnati.  (There's another interesting footnote to history indicating the degree of reconcilation among Hickory's leaders after the 1911-13 battle.  When former Mayor John A. Lentz died in a fall while inspecting a house for a loan in April 1926, his pallbearers were George R. Wootten, G.H. Geitner, Charles H. Geitner, W.B. Menzies, A.B. Hutton, and Joseph D. Elliott. 

Hickory received much publicity as one of the first small cities in the country to activate the new system.  After Sumter and Fredericksburg, the plan went into effect by ordinance in Clarinda, Iowa, with the hiring of a manager there in April 1913.  Hickory followed in May, a step ahead of Morganton.  Fifteen managers have served the people of Hickory in the three-quarters of a century since then.  After some difficulty with the transition in 1913-14, the system was firmly rooted by the time Hickory had its fourth manager, S.C. Cornwell.  Listed as Hickory's city manager in an audit report for the fiscal year ending April 30, 1914, was John M. Mitchell, later to become chief state bank examiner.   Among city assets listed were two fire department mules valued at $550.  The street department's inventory also included one 50-cent pair of sheep shears.  In 1913-14, total ordinary revenues of the city amounted to less than $37,000.   Day-to-day city expenses would have left a surplus of income over expenses of about $9,000.  But there was almost $34,000 in "extraordinary" expense for permanent street improvements and extensions to the water system.  The auditors strongly urged that Hickory change its bookkeeping system from a cash to an accrual basis.  

By way of contrast, in Hickory's annual report for fiscal 1986, revenues of more than $21 million were recorded.  Spending in a like amount included $3.5 million for capital projects.  In addition, Hickory--a city that had grown in population of 26,500--held $5 million in reserves for capital projects.   If March 17, 1913, had been a time of jubilation over the charter victory, it also had been a time of prophecy.  Some 75 years later, the "wonderful growth and prosperity" that Gus Self had predicted that night for Hickory have come to pass.   That can't be attributed solely to the luck of the Irish, of course.  It has come from the labors of Hickory's citizens and from the hard work of a long and faithful line of elected and appointed officials. 

Such dedication has its rewards.  On August 27, 1987, another "jubiliation meeting" was held in Hickory.  When Mayor William R. McDonald, III, and the City Council proudly accepted a National Civic League award, it was the second time in 20 years that Hickory had been declared an All-American City.

Photos of Hickory's Mayors

Photos of Hickory's City Managers

This article was taken from a booklet entitled A Time of Jubilation:  The story of Hickory as a Pioneer of the Council/Manager System by David E. Gillespie--Copyright 1988.