Josiah Quincy VI is elected mayor of Boston.

Quincy (D), with 40,300 votes, defeats Edwin Curtis (R), with 35,864, and others. The first mayor elected to a two-year term, he lives at 82 Charles Street. Quincy by implements numerous public works projects that require union labor, establishes public baths and playgrounds, a union-run city printing department, an eight-hour day with paid holidays for city workers, and the first municipal pension system, and attempts to provide more services for the poor. But according to Geoffrey Blodgett, he is criticized for promoting “municipal socialism” and “participatory bureaucracy,” and charged with “presiding over a “progressive but also expensive administration . . . [and an] “insolvent utopia.”