[6] Lapham championed the employers' position in the 1936 waterfront strike and was elevated as a "business" mayor by a member of the Police Commission, J.

Lapham presided over the formation of one of San Francisco's perennial Charter Review Commissions and the consolidation of the private street railway systems into municipal ownership.

Lapham was blamed for his plan of reducing the principal by spending the increased streetcar incomes during the war years and neglecting upkeep and maintenance of the rolling stock.

In 1945 Lapham stood firm in the face of a strike threat by a group of city employees protesting the hiring of a Nisei man named Takeo Miyama who had been interned at the Tule Lake Relocation Center.

This idea was abandoned in the face of protests, led by Friedel Klussmann, and the city retains the cable cars to this day.

Lapham encouraged the formation of the Council for Civic Unity and he appointed the first Asian to the Recreation Commission and the first African American to the Housing Authority.