Mark Matthew Fagan was an Irish Catholic mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, United States, from 1902 to 1907 and 1913 to 1917.
Background
He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of Michael Fagan and Mary McNulty Fagan. His father, a Catholic who had immigrated to the United States from Ireland, was poor and in his search for work took his family from New Jersey to New York City.
Education
Mark briefly attended public school in New York City.
Career
When his father died in 1878 Mark Fagan was forced to abandon his studies and work at a variety of jobs in order to help support the family.
In 1890 Fagan returned to Jersey City, where he worked for his uncle as an undertaker's assistant in the impoverished, Italian Fifth Ward.
His concern, dedication, and sincerity soon attracted attention, and he emerged as a community leader. But Fagan had returned with attitudes antithetical to the accepted norms in Jersey City.
His years in New York had engendered a distaste for Tammany (Democratic) politics, prompting him to join the local Republican party; and his religiosity had diminished after his excommunication for participating in the single-tax Anti-Poverty League.
In his initial campaign for public office, in 1896, Fagan capitalized on the local Democrats' lukewarm support of presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and won election to the Hudson County Board of Chosen Freeholders. Although defeated for reelection in 1898 and in a bid for the state senate two years later, Fagan was popular among the working-class, ethnic voters of the city and thus was the Republican party's strongest choice for the mayoralty in 1901. Under the tutelage of his corporation counsel, George L. Record, Fagan fought to eliminate corporate tax dodging by pursuing the equal taxation of railroad property and the regulation and franchise limitation of public utilities.
He also sought to maintain support among working-class voters by introducing government programs that provided free milk and medical care, evening concerts in the parks, public baths, public playgrounds, and the creation of the city's first juvenile court.
His reelection in 1903 reflected the success of his program. But Fagan's adoption of such "radical" policies brought him into conflict with his party's old guard. He learned, as had progressive mayors Hazen S. Pingree of Detroit and Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland, that reformers could compete with disciplined party machines only by developing equally competitive political organizations.
Jersey City progressive Republicans responded with the formation of the "New Idea" movement, which emphasized equal taxation, utility regulation, and election reform. One week after his victory in the 1905 mayoralty election (won without GOP support).
In 1906 the muckraker Lincoln Steffens published a portrait of Fagan entitled "A Servant of God and the People, " in McClure's Magazine. Steffens' unabashed, reverential view failed, however, to portray Fagan as a reform boss whose progressive achievements were the result of an effective organization as well as an intimate knowledge of urban politics.
In 1907, after six years in office, Fagan was decisively defeated in his bid for a fourth term.
During the next six years Fagan remained active in reform politics as an unsuccessful "New Idea" candidate for mayor (1909) and county sheriff (1911), and as a member of the Hudson County Tax Commission (1910 - 1913).
His political career seemed doomed. But in 1913 the voters of Jersey City adopted the structural reform of commission government, and Fagan emerged as the leading vote getter. His colleagues appointed him honorary mayor and director of public affairs, with responsibility for the city's medical, educational, and welfare activities.
He promptly initiated programs to improve the distribution of municipal relief, purify the city's milk and water supply, and provide a seat for every child in the public schools. Politically Fagan found it difficult to adjust to the decentralization of executive authority among five commissioners. Impatient with conventional political solutions, he proposed a revised single tax, the conversion of private utilities to municipal ownership, and the creation of a national third party.
Fagan's fellow commissioners did not share these views, and thus he was completely isolated from them.
In 1917 a ticket led by Commissioner of Public Safety Frank Hague swept into office while Fagan finished a disappointing seventh. His career had come full circle: Fagan started as a regular Republican, became a reform mayor, evolved into an insurgent single taxer, and ended as a disillusioned progressive.
Although prominently mentioned by reformers as a fusion candidate against the Hague machine in 1928, he was never again a candidate for public office.
He continued in business as a funeral director until his retirement in 1945. He died in Jersey City.
Achievements
Religion
Opposition came from the Catholic Church, which denounced his failure to enforce the Sunday saloon-closing laws; from taxpayers who found the equal-tax laws sadly deficient; and from the city's working-class voters, who now found it difficult to distinguish the mayor from the bosses he had replaced.
Politics
Running as a "good government" candidate, he became the third Republican and the youngest man to hold the office of mayor in Jersey City.
Connections
Fagan married Mary Grimes; they chose to reside in the Fifth Ward, and had one son.