gas monopolies through municipally owned competitors. His largest struggle, however, was with Tom L. Johnson, president of the Detroit City Railway, over lowering streetcar fares to three cents. Pingree again attempted to create a competing municipally owned company, but was barred from creating a railway by the Michigan Constitution. When the company sought a thirty-year contract with the city, Pingree opposed it, leading a major shareholder, James McMillan, to express vehement disapproval. During the severe nationwide depression of 1893, Pingree expanded the public welfare programs, initiated public works for the unemployed, built new schools, parks, and public baths. He gained national recognition through his "potato patch plan", which allowed poor people to use of vacant city land for growing food. He was also an advocate of economist Henry George's single tax. A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago saw Pingree ranked as the fourth-best American big-city mayor to serve between the years 1820 and 1993. Governor of Michigan In 1896 Pingree was nominated as the GOP candidate for Governor of Michigan. He campaigned on a platform of pluralism, inviting the Germans and other ethnics to join a grand coalition that would bring prosperity to everyone, unlike the false prosperity promised by the silverites. He carried the state both for himself and Republican presidential candidate William McKinley. After taking office on January 1, 1897, he intended to also fill the last year of his term as mayor of Detroit, which would have lasted until elections in November 1897. However, his right to hold the two offices simultaneously was contested, and after the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against him, Pingree resigned as mayor. During his four years in office, Pingree promoted the regulation of railroad rates, equal taxation, and municipal ownership of public utilities. He also supported the direct election of U.S. senators; an eight-hour workday; an income tax; primary elections; the power of "referendum", the abolition of child labor, and compulsory arbitration of labor disputes. Opposition from Democrats and business-oriented Republicans blocked most of his proposals. Pingree expressed the Progressive fear of corporate power, saying, "I do not condemn corporations and rich men", he said, "but I would keep them within their proper spheres. It is not safe to entrust the government of the country to the influence of Wall Street." Death Pingree did not run