Albert Eugene Cobo

Background

Albert Eugene Cobo was born on October 2, 1893 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He was the son of August Cobo, a marine engineer, and Elizabeth Byrn.

Education

He attended elementary schools in Detroit and spent two years at Western High School. Thereafter he took night classes at the Detroit Business Institute (1912 - 1913) and later (1920 - 1922) a correspondence course at the Alexander Hamilton Institute.

Career

He went to work at the age of seventeen as an office boy, running errands for the Detroit Copper and Brass Rolling Mills. A year later, in 1911, he and his brother Edward began making candy and ice cream in a basement, and by World War I they were operating two confectionery stores. In 1918 Cobo became a junior salesman with the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. After his first year, he was promoted to senior salesman in charge of a district. In 1925 he left Burroughs to accept a position with the Sundstrand Adding Machine Company as a manager in the Detroit area. The next year he was placed in charge of establishing new factory branches for that company. When Sundstrand merged with the Elliot-Fisher bookkeeping machine company, Cobo was promoted to assistant manager for the central district. He remained with the consolidated firm until 1928 and then returned to Burroughs as a salesman. The following year he was made a sales executive in charge of governmental and utility accounts. In the spring of 1933, when Detroit's financial affairs were in perilous condition as a result of the Great Depression, Burroughs lent Cobo to the city for six months. Cobo never returned to private business. He replaced the deputy treasurer of Detroit when he resigned in July 1933 and, upon the death of the city treasurer in April 1935, was appointed to complete a term that expired the following year. Beginning in 1937, Cobo was reelected biennially for seven consecutive terms, each time by overwhelming majorities. His political popularity was such that both the Democratic and Republican parties sought unsuccessfully to nominate him for state treasurer. In 1949 Cobo entered Detroit's nonpartisan election as a candidate for mayor. He campaigned on the issues of the interests of the homeowner; the economies that he had practiced in the treasurer's office; and the savings realized through his judicious management of the city's bonded indebtedness. Backed by business and civic groups and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Cobo was elected mayor in November by a landslide margin over George Edwards, who was supported by the United Auto Workers-CIO. Later, as mayor, Cobo would declare July 4, 1951, "Taxpayers Day. " Cobo promised an "efficient, businesslike government" and sought top business leaders to solve the problem of the city-owned street railway system. He also authorized the expansion of Detroit's municipal hospital and pressed for slum clearance and urban renewal through the Federal Housing Act of 1949. In August 1950, during his first year in office, Cobo was confronted by a strike of the city's sanitation workers. He resolved the conflict by invoking the state's Hutchinson Act, which prohibited walkouts by public employees and under which strikers could be discharged with a loss of seniority and pension rights. In the fall of the same year, Cobo resorted to the courts to stop a strike threat by the AFL's Streetcar and Bus Operators Union, and again in April 1951, he took court action when transit employees conducted an unscheduled strike. Cobo's use of the Hutchinson Act did him surprisingly little damage politically, even in labor-oriented Detroit. He was reelected by a comfortable margin in 1951. The city voters also approved a charter amendment that lengthened the mayor's term of office from two to four years. Cobo was again reelected in 1953. During his almost eight years as mayor, Cobo used his financial acumen and administrative talent to change the face of downtown Detroit. He played a major role in the construction of Detroit's modern expressway system and in the development at Detroit's core of a modern civic center, which included the Veterans' Building, the City-County Building, the Ford Auditorium, and the Exhibition and Convention Hall. In 1956 Cobo entered his first partisan election as the Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, opposing the incumbent, G. Mennen Williams. Cobo was defeated. He did not plan to seek reelection to the mayor's office. Cobo died in Detroit less than four months before his last term would have ended.

Achievements

• Cobo helped to avert a threatened bankruptcy by establishing policies for redeeming the scrip then paid to municipal employees and by helping to trim the city's annual budget. He also initiated a deferred tax-payment plan enabling thousands of Detroiters to retain their homes that otherwise would have been lost for nonpayment of taxes. One of his proudest achievements was the revenue bond financing plan, which made it possible to construct twenty miles of expressways in seven years instead of the fifteen it would have taken under a pay-as-you-go plan. Cobo accomplished this by borrowing against future motor vehicle tax receipts.

Connections

On June 3, 1914, he married Ethel Logan Christie; they had two daughters.

Father:

August Cobo

He was a marine engineer

Mother:

Elizabeth Byrn

Spouse:

Ethel Logan Christie