Background
He was born on August 30, 1840 at Denmark, Maine, United States, the fourth child of Jasper and Adeline (Bryant) Pingree. His father, a farmer, was a descendant of an old New England family.
manufacturer politician statesman
He was born on August 30, 1840 at Denmark, Maine, United States, the fourth child of Jasper and Adeline (Bryant) Pingree. His father, a farmer, was a descendant of an old New England family.
At the age of fourteen he left school to work.
Initially he worked in a cotton mill and later went into a shoe factory.
During the Civil War he enlisted and was mustered into service at Boston on August 2, 1862, as private in Company F, 14th Massachusetts Infantry, subsequently the 16t Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. He served for two years and reenlisted for the balance of the war. In May 1864 he was captured and was paroled the following November. He was mustered out as a private on August 16, 1865.
Soon after his discharge he went to Detroit, Michigan, where he secured employment in a shoe factory. In December 1866 he entered a partnership in a shoe-manufacturing enterprise, which subsequently became one of the largest in the West, employing about seven hundred men.
In 1889 Pingree was offered the Republican nomination for mayor of Detroit, then normally Democratic, and was elected in a "reform" campaign. His administration was tempestuous. He found the city paying a private utility for street lighting at a rate which seemed to him excessive and after a bitter fight established a municipal electric plant. He boasted of the low cost of his new system, but seems not to have advocated extending the benefits to private users of electricity.
Perhaps the most bitter controversy was with the local street railway company. The earlier single-line street railways had been consolidated into a monopoly which gave indifferent service at rates which were said to be excessive. The fight at first centered about an extension of a franchise, which yet had years to run. Pingree proposed to grant extension only on concessions. He then tried to introduce competition by securing a franchise for a second company, only to have the two lines combine. He waged an attack on the toll gates which still cumbered every important road to the city and secured their abolishment. He forced price reductions by gas and telephone companies.
In 1896 he accepted the Republican nomination for governor and was elected. Made governor while still mayor of Detroit, he tried to hold both offices, but the state supreme court ruled that the city office had been vacated. He made an effort to dramatize his part and Michigan's contribution to the Spanish-American War, but a scandal concerning the supplies for the Michigan militia marred his administration and the war diverted public attention from state politics. He served two terms as governor.
Once more a private citizen, he traveled in Europe and Africa. His interest in the Boers and his prejudice against England led him to begin a history of the Boer War, which his death interrupted.
He died in England.
Hazen Stuart Pingree served as mayor of Detroit and was ranked as the fourth best mayor in all of American history. As governor of Michigan his chief attack was on the railroads and on the legal difficulty in collecting just taxes, growing out of early and incautious charters. He was best when combating special privilege and corruption, though his controversies were marred by invective and personal reflections. He was constantly at odds with the Republican organization under Senator McMillan, yet his personal popularity made him indispensable. Pingree must be listed as one of the important pre-Roosevelt reformers who awakened public conscience. The people of Michigan, by public subscription, erected a statue to his memory in Grand Circus Park, Detroit.
Relatively inexperienced in politics, he was apparently shocked at the situation he found, though the Detroit government was far from notorious in that day of municipal scandals. A group of private vested interests were controlling politics in self-protection. Pingree had voiced only mild objection to the system in his campaign but his utterances rapidly became more radical and specific. To national politics Pingree paid slight attention.
He married Frances A. Gilbert in February 1872. They had three children – Joe, Hazel, and Gertrude, who died in 1894 of tuberculosis at age 19.
