John Gurda

The Democrats are coming, the Democrats are coming. Sixteen months from now, the party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ will convene in Milwaukee to choose its standard-bearer for the 2020 presidential race. The gathering is expected to attract 50,000 people who will leave behind something approaching $200 million.

The convention is being hailed as a breakthrough event, Milwaukee’s chance, after years in the shadows, to finally bask in the national spotlight. The excitement is understandable, but some historical context is in order. Two facts stand out: Milwaukee is no stranger to political gatherings, and our ancestors successfully hosted events much larger than the upcoming convention.

The political parleys were largely Socialist in nature — no surprise for a town that elected three Socialist mayors between 1910 and 1960. The movement’s first national convention was held here in 1932 and the most recent in 1975 when the Socialist Party USA made former Milwaukee mayor Frank Zeidler its presidential nominee.

Republicans are trying to somehow discredit the Democrats by linking them with Milwaukee’s Socialist heritage. Their efforts are misplaced. The local party had no interest in taking over Milwaukee’s factories, swelling its welfare rolls, or doing anything else associated with the bogeyman conservatives have conjured up to represent socialism.

Although their ultimate goal was indeed a “cooperative commonwealth,” Milwaukee’s Socialists (Social Democrats, actually) were, above all, a party of public enterprise. They invested tax dollars, frugally and efficiently, in public parks, public schools, public libraries, public natatoria, a public port, a public sewage plant, public housing, public health, and anything else that would improve the lives of working men and women. They pursued these goals with a visionary zeal that Henry Ford or Andrew Carnegie would have recognized, but their Holy Grail was the public good, not private gain.

The direct result was exemplary government. In 1936 Time Magazine put Socialist stalwart Daniel Hoan, the city’s mayor from 1916 to 1940, on its cover and called Milwaukee “perhaps the best-governed city in the U.S.”

Instead of distancing ourselves from that heritage, Milwaukee should stand proudly on a record that most other American cities envied.

Free beer for Civil War vets

As important as their movement was, the Socialist conventions didn’t generate much foot traffic. The 1975 gathering attracted only “80 or so” delegates, according to a reporter on the scene, and Frank Zeidler’s showing in the presidential race was just as underwhelming — 6,000 votes, nearly half of them from Milwaukee.

Far more impressive were the military gatherings that Milwaukee hosted over the years. For a number of reasons, including its prodigal abundance of beer, the city was a perennial favorite of veterans’ groups. In June 1880, for instance, nearly 100,000 people descended on Milwaukee for an encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, whose members were all Union veterans of the Civil War.

“Encampment” was the right word. With a population of only 115,000 — about equal to the GAR hordes — Milwaukee couldn’t begin to house them all. The greatest number stayed in what is now Lake Park, where an instant city of government-issued tents provided room for 25,000 veterans. They were fed in 10 hastily erected mess halls, and “beer flowed constantly from hundreds of spigots,” reported the Milwaukee Journal. Trailing the veterans was a small army of gamblers and “gay ladies” — a term with a different meaning in those days.

The highlight of the GAR event was a parade headed by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant himself. Nearly 40,000 veterans marched with Grant, many wearing hot, itchy woolen uniforms they had outgrown in the 15 years since Appomattox. Some passed out in the heat, even though the Pabst (then Best) brewery kept them well-fortified with free beer. When the GAR troops limped home with their hangovers, one Milwaukee newspaper editor declared the event “an unbounded success” and congratulated Milwaukeeans on their hospitality.

In '41, 'four New Year's Eves in a row'

The GAR encampment proved to be a distant warm-up for an even larger gathering. For four nights and five days in September 1941, members of the American Legion, nearly all of them World War I veterans, held their annual convention in Milwaukee. Nearly 60,000 officially registered, but actual attendance was probably two or three times that number.

The Legion was determined to keep its members occupied. There was a packed schedule of band contests, promenades, dinners, drill team exhibitions, carnivals, and reunions for individual units. The event attracted Hollywood royalty — Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, Darryl Zanuck — and there were probably enough U.S. senators and representatives present for a congressional quorum. This being Milwaukee, there were also fireworks. One lakefront display promised “a pyrotechnic history of the first World war, depicting famous battles.”

Then as now, the number of hotel rooms was a concern, but Milwaukee handled the masses. “The town is sleeping the legionnaires everywhere,” reported the Milwaukee Journal, “in fire stations, school gymnasiums, clubs, factory offices, park lodges, private homes and even in an embalming school.”

Although the town was crowded, few veterans seemed to mind.

“I don’t expect to be doing much sleeping,” one confessed. The 1941 convention was, in fact, a nonstop party — “four New Year’s Eves in a row,” as a Journal reporter put it. The entire downtown was closed to traffic and became “the legion’s playground.” The Journal called Wisconsin Ave., in particular, “an undulating river of people, in which no holds were barred and inhibitions died by the thousands.” Toy cannons, men in drag, firecrackers, ear-piercing whistles, and squirt guns (often aimed at the legs of passing women) were everywhere.

The convention was beer-soaked from first to last. Milwaukee’s breweries opened their taps to the veterans; Schlitz hired 100 bartenders to pour free glasses of its finest from 48 stations outside company headquarters. Some of those who overindulged spent the night in local jails, where they were allowed to sleep it off “with not a charge against them.” There were hangovers of “mastodonic proportions” in the aftermath. “These legionnaires,” marveled one local druggist, “man, can they take it.”

In a throwback to the GAR encampment of 1880, the 1941 convention’s highlight was a parade. On Tuesday, Sept. 16, schools were closed and public employees furloughed to enjoy what the Journal called “the biggest show in Milwaukee history.” An estimated 900,000 people — 300,000 more than the city’s entire population — watched 100,000 veterans from every state in the Union process through the heart of town to the accompaniment of 400 marching bands and drum and bugle corps. The Legion parade lasted a jaw-dropping 12 hours. Not even the Great Circus Parade, in all its colossal, stupendous glory, could top that.

There was a serious side to all the revelry. World War II had been raging in Europe for more than two years by the time the American Legion convened. As bottle-scarred veterans partied in the streets outside, some of their sober compatriots met in the Auditorium (now the Miller High Life Theatre) to pass resolutions endorsing aid to the Soviet Union (despite its Communist leadership) and greater material support for the Allies.

On Dec. 7, less than three months after Milwaukee’s sanitation crews swept up the last piece of parade trash, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor pulled America into the conflict. Middle-aged men who had cut loose in Milwaukee found themselves, for the second time, engaged in the grim business of war.

The Democratic convention of 2020 will be different in kind from the gatherings of years past. The delegates will assemble to choose a new candidate and look forward, not to reconnect with old buddies and look back. There will be no tent cities, and the prospect of a 12-hour parade is highly unlikely. But history, as always, offers an important lesson: Milwaukee has hosted major gatherings in the past. There’s no doubt that we can do it again.

John Gurda, a Milwaukee historian, writes for the Crossroads section on the first Sunday of each month (www.johngurda.com).