(Redirected from Carter Henry Harrison, Jr.)
'Carter Henry Harrison, Jr.' (
April 23 1860,
Chicago,
Illinois -
December 25 1953; buried in
Graceland Cemetery) served as
Mayor of
Chicago (
1897-
1905 and
1911-
1915). The City's 30th mayor, he was the first actually born in Chicago.
Like his father,
Carter Harrison, Sr., Carter Harrison, Jr. gained election to five terms as Chicago's mayor. Educated in
Saxe-Altenburg,
Germany, Harrison returned to Chicago to help his brother run the ''
Chicago Times'', which their father bought in
1891. Under the Harrisons the paper became a resolute supporter of the Democratic Party, and was the only local newspaper to support the
Pullman strikers in the mid-1890s.
Like his father, Harrison did not believe in trying to legislate morality. As mayor, Harrison believed that Chicagoans' two major desires were to make money and to spend it. During his administrations, Chicago's vice districts blossomed, and special maps were printed to enable tourists to find their way from
brothel to brothel. The name of one Chicago saloon-keeper of the time supposedly entered the English language as a term for a strong or laced drink intended to render unconsciousness:
Mickey Finn.
However, Harrison was seen as more of a reformer than his father, which helped him garner the
middle class votes his father had lacked. One of Harrison's biggest enemies was
Charles Yerkes, whose plans to monopolize Chicago's
streetcar lines were vigorously attacked by the mayor. During his final term in
office, Harrison established the Chicago Vice Commission and worked to close down
the Levee district, starting with the
Everleigh Club brothel on October 24, 1911.
[1]
Harrison was a hopeful for the
1904 Democratic nomination for
President, but was unable to negotiate his way through a tangle of conflicting loyalies to different Party bosses; the nomination went to
Alton B. Parker, who was soundly defeated by
Theodore Roosevelt.

Carter Harrison Crib
In 1915, when Harrison left office, Chicago had essentially reached its modern size, and had a population of 2,400,000; the city was moving inexorably into its status as a major modern metropolis. He and his father had collectively been mayor of the city for 21 of the previous 36 years. Harrison wrote his autobiography, not once but twice; his wife
Edith Ogden Harrison was a well-known writer of children's books and fairy tales in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
References
1. Starts Vice War; Mayor in Fight to Clean Up City