Businessman wielded power quietly

In the early years of the 20th century, Frank B. Johnson was known as a successful businessman and president of Omaha Printing Co. Few realized that he was also one of the three most influential people in Omaha politics.

Johnson was born in 1861 near Plattsmouth, Neb. His family moved to Council Bluffs, where his father produced a successful wholesale grocery business. The Johnsons moved to Omaha in 1874.

After graduation from Omaha High School (now Central High), Johnson found work as a messenger at the Omaha National Bank and was quickly promoted to bank teller. His father’s business connections gave him a social entrée to some of the most prominent families in the city. And Johnson’s love of gambling often placed him at a poker table with local business leaders, where he “won both their money and their respect,” according to his World-Herald obituary.

Johnson courted the daughter of Byron Reed, one of Omaha’s earliest and most successful real estate magnates. Johnson’s fondness for cigars and whiskey aroused suspicions in Mrs. Reed, who thought her daughter could find a more fitting husband. So Johnson and Maria Reed eloped.

Johnson’s early forays into banking and newspapers failed, but from the ashes of the Republican, an Omaha daily paper, he created a job printing company that became one of the most successful in the region.

The first decade of the 1900s saw the emergence of a political machine in Omaha similar to several other cities in the region. The machine operated under the control of a local triumvirate: a popular and acquiescent mayor; a powerful underworld boss who oversaw the gambling and vice trades and handed out political favors; and an intermediary to connect the underworld boss with the city’s legitimate business interests.

The year 1906 was pivotal for machine politics in Omaha. That year’s election put “Cowboy” Jim Dahlman in the mayor’s office, a position he held for all but three of the next 24 years. Dahlman’s good-natured pragmatism led to an arms-length relationship with Tom Dennison, the uncontested boss of Omaha’s underworld.

In the same year, Edward Rosewater died. Rosewater had been a major political force in the business community, as well as founder of the Omaha Bee newspaper. His death left a vacancy in the role of liaison between the underworld and the titans of local business. Frank Johnson stepped in to fill that void.

For more than two decades, he served as the unacknowledged counterpart to Dennison. They had a dedicated telephone line between their offices and talked frequently, if only briefly. Johnson loved the exercise of political power to help people and get things done, but he vehemently guarded his privacy. Strict secrecy was the only price for his assistance, and he helped thousands of people from all walks of life with their requests for his political influence.

Johnson was a complicated character. While he operated on the edge between acceptable and shady interests, he didn’t use his position to get rich or get ahead. He had already amassed wealth and a comfortable place in polite society. A quiet man who preferred compromise to confrontation, Johnson had no interest in fame or personal glory. His most important daily objective was to stay out of the newspapers, and he did a remarkable job in that respect.

One of his only news appearances came in a 1917 World-Herald editorial cartoon showing hard-luck characters lined up outside his door under the title “Frank Johnson’s ‘morning mail.’” An accompanying poem included this characterization: “In the gentle game of politics he is a submarine, Who shoots beneath the surface and is very seldom seen. And those whom he is boosting and others that he’s not, Are generally satisfied no matter what their lot.”

Mayor Dahlman died in office in 1930, and Dennison’s machine was dismantled by a trial a few years later. Johnson died in 1939.

Contact the writer:

402-321-4945, second.story@cox.net

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