with authority, because he was one of them himself. In Cleveland, he came into conflict early with Mark Hanna, the powerful local businessman who by 1894 would be the leading power broker of the Republican Party, the man credited with putting fellow Ohioan William McKinley in the White House. Johnson's streetcar fights with Hanna and his allies make a colorful part of Cleveland political folklore. In a time when companies with a monopoly of transport on a route were able to charge five cents for a ride, he made the 'three-cent fare' a cornerstone of his populist philosophy, and later he would come out in favor of complete public ownership. Through the 1890s Johnson gradually divested himself of most of his transit and steel holdings, to devote himself entirely to the politics of reform. In 1901, pressed on by influential citizens and a public petition, he decided to run for mayor of Cleveland. His campaign electrified the city. Johnson liked to rent large circus tents and set them up on neighborhood lots, attracting big crowds for whom he would deliver a powerful speech, banter cheerfully with hecklers, and finish with a stereopticon show with a political moral. On April 1, 1901, he was elected with 54% of the vote. Mayor of Cleveland Johnson's entry into office would prove just as dramatic as his campaign. One of the campaign issues had been a valuable piece of city-owned downtown lakefront property, which outgoing mayor John H. Farley and the council had agreed to hand over to the railroads without compensation. Johnson obtained a court injunction to stop the giveaway, but it was set to expire three days after the election. Taking advantage of a legal technicality to get the new mayor sworn in early, Johnson's men staged a surprise takeover of City Hall and saved the land for the city (today this land, with later landfill additions, holds Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center). Johnson's four terms in office transformed Cleveland. Securing a bipartisan reform majority in the city council allowed him to effect major changes in every department of city government. Some of his policies were true innovations, while others mirrored those of the two other notable Progressive Midwestern mayors of the era, Hazen S. Pingree of Detroit and Samuel 'Golden Rule' Jones of Toledo. In the judgement of one urban