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Fascinating Politics

Clare Boothe Luce: From Playwright to Politics

Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) was a rather unique woman of many talents. She was a skilled playwright, writer, magazine editor, a politician, and a socialite. Although her life in many ways was that of a feminist, she didn’t always have such a mindset, and her life reflected what can be seen as positive and negative things that people attribute to feminism.

Born Ann Clare Boothe, she had something of a difficult childhood; she was the daughter of a showgirl and her father left the family when she was 8. Her mother had great ambitions for her, and pushed her to be an actress, and appeared in the Broadway play The Dummy in 1914 as well as had a bit part in the film The Heart of a Waif the following year. As a teenager, she gained some notoriety as a suffragist, working for the National Woman’s Party. Her mother, wanting her to climb the social ladder, had arranged her marriage to the clothing heir George Tuttle Brokaw in 1923, who was 24 years her senior. They had one daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw, in 1924. The marriage was, however, unhappy as Brokaw was a violent alcoholic. As she recalled later about the marriage to journalist Dominick Dunne, “I know all about violence and physical abuse because my first husband used to beat me severely when he got drunk. Once, I can remember coming home from a party and walking up our vast marble staircase at the Fifth Avenue house while he was striking me. I thought, if I just gave him one shove down the staircase I would be rid of him forever” (Brenner). Clare asked his mother for a divorce in 1929, and it was granted, with her getting a generous settlement that made her independently wealthy. However, she had to split custody of her daughter with Brokaw for half the year. He would die six years later in a sanitarium, a consequence of his alcoholism.

Clare Boothe would go on to be the caption writer for Vogue magazine in the early 1930s, then became the editor of Vanity Fair. She wrote profiles on people, one of the first being Time and Fortune Magazine’s Henry Luce. She initially despised him, writing, “He claims he has no other interest outside of his work, and that his work fills his waking hours” (Brenner). Nonetheless, in 1935 she would after only a few meetings with him, marry him. Luce had divorced his wife explicitly to marry her. He would subsequently establish Life magazine, reportedly at her suggestion (The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers). Their marriage was not an easy one, but one that lasted. However, it lasted through them having an open marriage, with her having numerous affairs with prominent figures, including Randolph Churchill (Morris, 2014). There was a mutual respect for each other and both elevated the other in different ways. In 1936, Luce wrote the all-female satire The Women in only three days, which became a hit on Broadway. She also wrote Abide with Me (1935), Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938), Margin for Error (1939), Child of the Morning (1951), and Slam the Door Softly (1970). Luce’s works also include three books, which were Stuffed Shirts (1931), Europe in the Spring (1940), and Saints for Now (1952) (editor). She was also known for her wit. Some quotes attributed to her include:

“Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable.”

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

“Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, ‘She doesn’t have what it takes.’ They will say, ‘Women don’t have what it takes.’”

“Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.”

“If God wanted us to think with our wombs, why did he give us a brain?”

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Nature abhors a virgin – a frozen asset.”

Luce would also be a war correspondent for Life magazine from 1939 to 1942, and her connections would result in her getting interviews with political and military leaders. She would not hesitate to issue criticism when she thought it worthy. However, Luce did get into some trouble after she mockingly likened RAF pilots to “flying fairies” in print (Morris, 1997, 458).

Politics

When Luce was in a relationship with Bernard Baruch, she, like him, supported FDR’s election in 1932. However, she became disillusioned with Roosevelt’s economic policies by his second term and switched from Democrat to Republican. In 1940, Luce endorsed and campaigned for Republican Wendell Willkie, opposing FDR not only out of ideological differences but out of a belief that the two-term tradition shouldn’t be broken. Her politics were at this point indeed similar to those of her husband. In 1942, she was recruited to run for Congress. She condemned incumbent Le Roy Downs, who had defeated her stepfather Albert Austin for reelection in 1940, as a “rubber stamp” for Roosevelt (U.S. House). Luce won in the Republican wave, but by a plurality. If the left had lined up behind incumbent Democrat Le Roy Downs, he would have won reelection; 11% of the vote had gone to the Socialist candidate. Luce’s platform was “One, to win the war. Two, to prosecute that war as loyally and effectively as we can as Republicans. Three, to bring about a better world and durable peace, with special attention to postwar security and employment here at home” (U.S. House).

Luce and FDR

Luce was publicly critical of President Roosevelt, and in the 1944 presidential campaign she charged that he was “the only American President who ever lied us into a war because he did not have the political courage to lead us into it” (U.S. House). He didn’t appreciate her barbs and was sure to campaign against her explicitly. Vice President Wallace dismissed her as a “sharp-tongued glamor girl of forty” who when running around the country without a mental protector, “put her dainty foot in her pretty mouth” (U.S. House). However, Luce and FDR were not as far apart on policy as their public relationship would suggest. While she supported overriding President Roosevelt’s vetoes of bills restraining subsidies and providing tax relief, she voted to sustain his veto of the Smith-Connally Act, which was designed to counter wartime strikes. Luce also supported retaining the National Youth Administration in 1943. She opposed increased funding for agricultural programs and supported minor restraints to price control while opposing strong efforts to hinder price controls. Luce was also an internationalist, supporting the creation of an international peacekeeping body after the war’s conclusion, an idea which would become the United Nations. Luce also was opposed to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, voting against funding it in 1943 and opposing making it a permanent committee in 1945. Her DW-Nominate score was a 0.07, making her one of the least conservative Republicans in Congress. In 1943, Luce supported repealing the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was signed into law. She was in favor of eliminating discrimination in immigration, supported desegregation of the army, and supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

Although President Roosevelt had much in good news that year with the defeats of bitter foes Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota and Representative Hamilton Fish of New York, Luce would win reelection by one point. Like in 1942, if the left had unified behind the Democratic candidate, Luce would have lost. That year, Luce suffered a terrible tragedy when her daughter was killed in a car accident at 19 while attending university. After her daughter’s death, she turned to faith and spiritualism and converted to Catholicism but was never able to persuade her husband to do so.

In 1946, Luce sponsored with Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.) a bill permitting naturalization of Indians and Filipinos and permitting a quota of 100 a year from each nation which was signed into law by President Truman. She was also consistently anti-communist in her foreign policy outlook. Luce argued that the Kremlin had “incorporated the Nazi technique of murder” and regarded postwar foreign policy surrounding Poland as “a partition of Poland and overthrow of its friendly, recognized constitutional Government” (U.S. House). In January 1946, she decided not to run for reelection. This farewell from politics would turn out to be temporary, as in 1952 Luce energetically campaigned for the election of Dwight Eisenhower. The following year, Eisenhower saw her as a perfect candidate to represent the United States in Italy, and nominated her ambassador. Although more conservative Italians were initially a bit put out that Eisenhower had picked a woman, in a week’s time she had won them over. This post was particularly important in the Cold War context as although Italy was on the Allied bloc, they had one of the strongest communist parties in Western Europe, and there was always a risk of a communist victory. During this time, Luce was able to negotiate a border dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia. She served in this capacity until 1956, by which time she had become very ill. This illness had started in 1954, and after she was taken back to the United States, it was found that she had been suffering from arsenic poisoning. It turned out that the arsenic paint on the ceiling of her bedroom was flaking off. By 1959, Luce had recovered and although she was confirmed Ambassador to Brazil, she miscalculated when she said just after her confirmation “my difficulties, of course, go some years back and began when Sen. Morse was kicked in the head by a horse” (McMillan). This referenced a 1951 incident in which a horse broke Morse’s jaw. The controversy that arose resulted in her resignation only three days later.

In 1964, Luce, who had become increasingly conservative over the years, briefly considered reentering politics to run for the Senate in 1964 as a member of New York’s Conservative Party, but dropped the idea. That election would be won by none other than Robert F. Kennedy. That year, Luce firmly backed Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) for the presidency. Her husband, Henry Luce, was increasingly in poor health, and on February 28, 1967, he died of a heart attack. Afterwards, Luce moved to Hawaii where she was a prominent socialite. In 1973, President Nixon appointed her to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where she served until 1977. President Reagan reappointed her in 1982, and she served until her death. In 1983, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Luce could be quite a story-teller, and this included some fiction. According to Marie Brenner (1988), she had told friends in the past that numerous prominent men had wanted to marry her and that she had slept with Strom Thurmond. Although many people would regard Clare Boothe Luce as having lived an incredible life, she reflected in her last weeks, “You know, I have had a terrible life. I married two men I really didn’t like. My only daughter was killed in a car accident. My brother committed suicide. Has my life been a life for anyone to envy?” (Brenner) Luce succumbed to brain cancer in Washington D.C. on October 9, 1987. The Washington Post eulogized her thusly, “She raised early feminist hell. To the end she said things others wouldn’t dare to – cleverly and wickedly – and seemed only to enjoy the resulting fracas…Unlike so many of her fellow Washingtonians she was neither fearful nor ashamed of what she meant to say” (U.S. House).  

References

Brenner, M. (1988, March). Fast and Luce. Vanity Fair.

Retrieved from

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1988/03/clare-boothe-luce-profile?srsltid=AfmBOootChiaA-gxz5sr7jZRalQRAxYTi2jnvtUrNotxxNAHCogjcg9r

Clare Boothe Luce – Quotes. Goodreads.

Retrieved from

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/332721.Clare_Boothe_Luce

Clare Boothe Luce. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers.

Retrieved from

https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=erpn-claluc

Luce, Clare Boothe. U.S. House of Representatives.

Retrieved from

https://history.house.gov/People/detail/17213

Luce, Clare Boothe. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/5827/clare-boothe-luce

McMillan, P. (1987, October 10). Clare Boothe Luce Dies of Cancer at 84. Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-10-10-mn-8556-story.html

Morris, S.J. (1997). Rage for fame: the ascent of Clare Boothe Luce. New York, NY: Random House.

Morris, S.J. (2014). Price of fame: the honorable Clare Boothe Luce. New York, NY: Random House.

Morris, S.J. (2014, June 19). Clare, in Love and War. Vanity Fair.

Retrieved from

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2014/07/clare-boothe-luce-marriage-ambassadorship?srsltid=AfmBOor-EjIsjqcp09puO6k0Ok83A2F-7jAD-fiQ28wvjyVT0fkywarj

Fascinating Politics

Frank Hague, The Dictator of Jersey City, Part III: The Decline

The 1940 Election: Less Than Stellar for Hague

The 1940 election was the first gubernatorial election that ended up having an outcome that was unfavorable to Hague. Although he had openly supported Republican Harold G. Hoffman winning the nomination, Hoffman lost the primary to good government Republican Robert C. Hendrickson. As previously mentioned, Roosevelt had Hague endorse his Secretary of the Navy, Charles Edison. There were a few problems with Thomas Edison’s son for Hague, but the most important one was that Edison didn’t owe his political career to him. Thus, Edison very well could be (and was) a governor who stood independent of him in his dispensing of patronage and selections for public office, and reduced patronage for Hudson County (Murray, 34). Edison was the first governor during Hague’s time as mayor to really take a stand against him, and it was the first major blow he experienced. Edison had hoped for history to repeat itself in him being Governor Wilson and Hague being Newark’s Boss Smith (Fleming). The problem here was that Edison did not have the political command or skill of Wilson and Hague was more powerful than Smith had been at that time. He attempted to get the New Jersey Constitution updated with changes that increased the power of the governor. As Time Magazine (1944) wrote on the situation, “The 100-year-old present constitution is tailor-made for men of bad will who would make themselves the law. Under it, a governor has so little power that he cannot appoint his own cabinet; he is subject to the will of boss-appointed “department heads.” A fabulous bureaucracy has arisen: 135 separate state departments, and an archaic, top-heavy judicial setup of 17 different state court systems – many controlled by Hague. The new constitution would give the governor his own cabinet and more power, would cut the departments to 20 and the court system to six, would replace the bulky 16-man Court of Errors and Appeals with a Supreme Court of seven. Worst of all for Boss Hague: a provision requiring public officials to answer legislative inquiries or lose their jobs”. However, Hague managed to get the constitution defeated in the public referendum. Interestingly, Edison would be among the founders of the conservative organization Americans for Constitutional Action, and would serve as its first vice chairman. Still, Edison’s time as governor was a significant blow for Hague. Perhaps Hague would have a better time of it in the 1943 election, perhaps he could get his venerable man A. Harry Moore back in.

The 1943 Election: A Disaster for Hague

In 1943, Hague tried to recruit Moore for yet another term as governor, but Moore declined to continue running for public office, much to his dismay. Instead, Newark Mayor Vincent J. Murphy was the nominee, but he was up against someone who had done the job before: Walter Edge. Although Hudson County voted the strongest for Murphy of all counties, it was not enough, and Edge won the election by 11 points. Governor Edge proceeded to combat the Hague machine through his attorney general, Walter Van Riper, who initiated raids on a source of revenue for the Hague machine: protected horse race gambling establishments. Although Hague managed to get Van Riper indicted on trumped-up corruption charges, he was acquitted at trial, and some of the witnesses against him had probably committed perjury (Fleming). Furthermore, the Edge Administration got voting machines installed in Hudson County to crack down on fraud. However, Hague was, as mentioned in part I, quite skilled at getting turnout high without voter fraud, thus he and his machine were still able to win elections. However, a factor that had helped him win elections had started to chip away at his machine’s power: ethnicity. Hague’s rise was the rise of Irish Catholic voters, but Jersey City’s population was getting more and more Italian and Polish Catholics, and their general lack of representation in the machine was a sore spot. Another problem was that Hague was spending less time in Jersey City and more time in Florida, meaning that his deputy was increasingly serving as his mouthpiece; not quite the threat of Hague being there personally. Worse yet, the number of positions appointed by the governor that he had power over was declining since the longer he didn’t call the shots, the more people who were independent of him were appointed as the terms of his people expired. In 1946, yet another governor was elected who could not be counted on to supply patronage in Republican Alfred Driscoll, who would also succeed where Edison could not in getting the New Jersey Constitution updated, and this included replacing the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals with the New Jersey Supreme Court. On June 4, 1947, Hague resigned, having his nephew Frank Hague Eggers take his place. However, it was soon clear that Eggers was taking orders from Hague; Hague had racked up massive phone bills for his calls from Florida to New Jersey. Thus, he was still essentially acting as mayor, much of the time doing so from Florida.

1949: The Year of Hague’s Waterloo, and The End

In the mayoral election, it was former ally John V. Kenny, the son of saloon owner Nat Kenny who had loaned Hague money for his first ever campaign, against Frank Hague Eggers. As mentioned earlier, Italian and Polish Catholics were out in the cold from the Hague machine, and Kenny took advantage of this development as well as money he received from Republican sources. A sign of Hague’s waning power was when at a campaign event Hague, his nephew, and others in his entourage were pelted by eggs by the crowd and while the others retreated, Hague stood and stared down the crowd when a man screamed at him “G’wan back to Florida!” and he in turn pointed at the man and shouted “Arrest that man!” (Fleming) However, the police officers present were not supportive of Hague, and thus did nothing, a marked contrast to Hague’s days of power in which police would indeed arrest, and probably work over, that man.  Indeed, all those who had problems with Hague and his machine lined up behind Kenny, and he did win the election. Although you might think this a happy ending, it should also be noted that although the typical vote-buying practices were used by the Hague machine to try to hold on, the Kenny campaign also bribed voters, and crucially paid more per bribe at $15, $10 more than the going rate the Hague campaign was employing (Fleming). Kenny’s victory in truth was not one for good government, even if many of his supporters saw it that way, rather it replaced one corrupt regime for another. However, Hague still had numerous public officials behind him in Jersey City, thus he still had a lot of power behind the scenes. The best way Hague could reaffirm his power at this point was to secure the election of a Democratic governor.

Up for reelection in 1949 was Republican Alfred Driscoll, and Hague had found a candidate who was pretty good on paper to run against him in former Congressman Elmer Wene, who had represented the normally Republican 2nd district, which includes Atlantic City, in Congress for three terms. If Wene had been elected, Hague could count on him to appoint a prosecutor on his side, and with Hague still having control over grand jury selection, he could get convictions on Kenny officials (Fleming). However, the man who defeated Hague here was Hague himself. He made a fatal blunder when he declared, “We’ll be back in the driver’s seat in Trenton in January” (Fleming). Republicans were thus able to campaign against Hague yet again in this election, and Wene lost. Kenny had taken lessons from Hague here on what he did in the 1916 gubernatorial election by pulling back his political machine, and Hudson County delivered less for the Democrats than usual. The power of Hague in Jersey City was now completely broken, and he stepped down as the leader of the Democratic Party in New Jersey and in Hudson County. He would nonetheless retain his post as vice chairman of the DNC until 1952. In his twilight years, Hague seemed to have some remorse over his actions in office as he would call one of his old City Hall men in the middle of the night and ask him to see if the families of people he had ruined during his time in office needed assistance, but they would invariably either slam the door on the official or flatly refuse help (Fleming). Hague only returned to New Jersey in a casket after his death on January 1, 1956. Not many sent flowers on his departure, as he was a feared, not a loved figure. One elderly woman held up a sign at his funeral that read, “God have mercy on his sinful, greedy soul” (Time Magazine, 1956). Those who supported him did so out of a feeling that Jersey City, and particularly its majority Irish Catholic residents, had needed a fighter.

Was Hague Left or Right? Does it Matter?

There are several ways to interpret Frank Hague politically. There are numerous indicators that point him to the left, including his support for Wilsonian progressivism, his steep tax increases for corporations, his high tax and spend regime as mayor, his extremely high level of public employment, and his establishment of mostly socialized medicine at his hospitals. Furthermore, he was a strong booster of FDR and the New Deal. However, Hague supported people of numerous stripes for public office along with Roosevelt. He backed liberals such as Mary Norton for Congress but also more conservative types in the Democratic Party such as Edward Edwards and A. Harry Moore for governor. He also even supported Republican Harold Hoffman for governor, who had had a conservative record while in Congress. Hague’s campaign against the CIO and communism in 1938 can certainly not be called liberal, nor can his strong use of police or his crackdown on prostitution. Yet, what we can see in these endorsements and most of his actions are moves that increased or maintained his power. Supporting FDR was the smart thing for him to do and strongly contributed to him getting to the height of power, likewise the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations he certainly saw as a threat to his power. His support of Edwards, Moore, and Hoffman were for the purposes of getting his people in public positions, thereby maintaining and growing his power. He was willing to work with anyone who would elevate his power. How does one split the ideology from Hague and what fits into his overall schemes for power? There was, I think a certain authenticity on his anti-corporate pushes as well as his crackdown on prostitution. He was genuinely supportive of pushing back against big business and his crackdown on prostitution was in line with his Catholic morality. Frank Hague was the most powerful of all the city bosses, perhaps in US history, and unlike some others such as Jim Curley of Boston and Thomas Pendergast of Kansas City, he avoided jailtime.

References

Fleming, T. (1969, June). The Political Machine II: A Case History ‘I Am The Law”. American Heritage, 20(4).

Retrieved from

https://www.americanheritage.com/political-machine-ii-case-history-i-am-law

Johnson, N. Prologue: Power Doesn’t Corrupt: It Reveals. De Gruyter Brill.

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.36019/9780813569741-002/html?srsltid=AfmBOorktpqmTePqZK5isFRQQySLQ0ma2Wiu0T9qFjr0Yu9RIQcXJfoV

Murray, J.M. (2023). The Real “Stolen Election”: Frank Hague and New Jersey’s 1937 Race for Governor. NJS: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Retrieved from

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjD9cz7_OWMAxVlADQIHTazC8QQFnoECB8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnjs.libraries.rutgers.edu%2Findex.php%2Fnjs%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F353%2F420%2F779&usg=AOvVaw2UBoSE4-_ie9MeZyy_T5b3&opi=89978449

New Jersey: Edison’s Magna Carta. (1944, October 23). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6865584/new-jersey-edisons-magna-carta/

New Jersey: Hague’s End (1949, May 23). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,794736-2,00.html

New Jersey: When The Big Boy Goes… (1956, January 16). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6799264/new-jersey-when-the-big-boy-goes/

Fascinating Politics

Barney Jonkman: The Man Gerald Ford Had to Beat

Grand Rapids, Michigan, although currently represented by a Democrat due to the 2020 redistricting, has a long history of Republican representation in Congress with few Democratic breaks in between. Its most famous politician of all time of course is Gerald Ford, and as so many others who make it to the top, he had to overcome a hurdle to get his start. This hurdle was Bartel John “Barney” Jonkman (1884-1955). On December 12, 1939, Grand Rapids’ longtime Congressman Carl Mapes (R-Mich.), died, and elected in his place in 1940 was Jonkman, an attorney who had previously served as the prosecuting attorney of Kent County.   

Jonkman, much like Michigan’s senior senator Arthur Vandenberg was among the numerous Americans of Dutch heritage in the state; his father, Reverend John B. Jonkman, had immigrated to the US with his wife Sarah from the Netherlands in 1882. The district he represented even had a strongly Dutch portion known as “Little Netherlands”, which would regularly vote strongly for him (Time Magazine). On domestic issues, Jonkman was a strong Republican, staunchly opposing economic controls, New Deal programs, and seldom supporting significant liberal measures, with his vote for a school lunch program in 1946 being one of the few exceptions he made. On civil rights, Jonkman voted to ban the poll tax four times. As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he was before Pearl Harbor a voice for non-interventionism; indeed, Michiganders in general were against American involvement in World War II and the Republicans were unified against it. A competent partisan, his views were among the more relevant in Congress as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and he was the subject of an analysis by Isaiah Berlin in 1943 for the British Foreign Office, who described him as “ the fourth of the Republican Opposition group on the committee. An agreeable man, shrewd, capable and very determined in his opposition to the Administration in both its foreign and domestic policies. Pure Isolationist before Pearl Harbor, and, in fact, typical of the Michigan Republican Bloc (whose most notorious member is Clare Hoffman). Seems convinced America is playing Santa Claus again in this war, and is doing his best to obtain facts and figures which will show up this fact. A Methodist; age 59. Nationalist” (Hachey).

Although Jonkman did support the idea of an international peacekeeping body after World War II, supported aid to Greece and Turkey, and supported the Marshall Plan, he was opposed to anything further. In 1946, Jonkman voted against a loan to Great Britain and the following year when the Republicans were in the majority, he pushed a cut in postwar aid to Europe that passed the House. However, the Senate overwhelmingly turned it down, with even some who were normally critics of foreign aid going against the cut. The House then agreed to the Senate’s restoration. Jonkman also voted against a bill in December 1947 providing interim aid to Europe, which Congress commandingly voted for. Despite his vote for the Marshall Plan, he would criticize the European Recovery Program (ERP), frequently referring to it as “burp” (Time Magazine). Ideologically, he sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 12% of the time and his DW-Nominate score was a 0.394. While he was not a man of zero compromise like fellow Michigander Clare Hoffman, his foreign policy views attracted the opposition of 34-year old World War II veteran Gerald Ford.

In 1948, Ford, who had dropped his non-interventionist ways while serving in World War II, challenged Jonkman for renomination, running on an internationalist platform, much like his mentor and political hero Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Both Ford and Vandenberg had been on the same page as Jonkman before Pearl Harbor; Vandenberg was one of the most notable Senate spokesmen for the non-interventionist cause and Ford was a member of the America First Committee. They had changed, and while Jonkman had too, he had not done so nearly as much. He repeatedly refused calls by Ford to debate him on foreign policy and generally dismissed his campaign (Time Magazine). This turned out to be a catastrophic underestimation of the young man, as he ran a highly effective campaign of hundreds of volunteers canvassing neighborhoods to promote his candidacy. Ford won the Republican primary by a 2-1 margin. Times had changed in Michigan, once one of the most non-interventionist states in the nation. Jonkman returned to practicing law in Grand Rapids, doing so until his death on June 13, 1955. Jonkman would not be the only man Ford would topple in Republican politics; he would win a vote to supplant Congressman Charles Hoeven of Iowa for the post of chairman of the House Republican Conference (the third highest post in House Republican leadership) in 1963 and after the 1964 election he would win a vote to oust Minority Leader Charles Halleck of Indiana from his post. This put him in the leadership position necessary to be considered for vice president with the resignation of Spiro Agnew in 1973.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Armed Forces: In the Semi-Finals. (1948, September 27). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6776438/armed-forces-in-the-semi-finals/

Bartel J. Jonkman. Heritage Hall, Hekman Library (Calvin University).

Retrieved from

https://heritagehall.libraryhost.com/?p=creators/creator&id=210

Hachey, T.E. (Winter 1973-1974). American Profiles on Capitol Hill: A Confidential Study for the British Foreign Office, 1943. The Wisconsin Magazine of History, 57(2), pp. 141-153.

Retrieved from

Click to access bib139a.pdf

Jonkman, Bartel John. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/5072/bartel-john-jonkman

Fascinating Politics

Frank Hague, The Dictator of Jersey City, Part II: The Apex of Power

Although Hague had managed to get the lesser of the Republicans in his view, that Republican nonetheless won the gubernatorial election and indeed New Jersey had a Republican wave with Herbert Hoover winning the state by 20 points; only Hudson County voted for Democrat Al Smith. Hague had had a good run of the 1920s up to this point, having Democrats Edward I. Edwards and A. Harry Moore as governors, who could be counted on to do what Hague wanted. The same was not true for Republican Morgan F. Larson, even though Hague had collaborated with Republican Atlantic City boss Nucky Johnson to elevate him over Democrat William Dill (Murray, 26). The Republican-controlled legislature sought to take down Hague, and they focused on an area in which he was vulnerable – taxes.

Hague’s Trouble with Taxes

Frank Hague’s city government taxed quite high for the services it provided as well as for a bloated public payroll; not all “jobs” came with functions. Indeed, the cost to taxpayers for Jersey City’s government was over four times that of Kansas City and New Orleans, also ruled by bosses and both with about 100,000 more people (Life Magazine).

As mayor of Jersey City, Frank Hague’s annual salary did not exceed $8500 annually. Yet, Hague, who came from modest means, was worth millions now, and the only income he ever reported to the Treasury was his mayoral income. In addition to other sources I mentioned in my last post, he received protection money from horse gambling establishments that ran numbers rackets, and Jersey City got the reputation of being the “Horse Bourse” (Fleming). He also would receive bribes at his office. There was a desk in which the visitor would place cash on the drawer on his side, and it would come out on Hague’s side (Isherwood). Although he was compelled to answer questions about his taxes to the New Jersey legislature, he refused to answer, and they cited him for contempt. However, the Court of Errors and Appeals ruled that the legislature lacked the authority to probe an individual for felonies, only the courts did. Hague did end up having to pay $60,000 to settle with the Federal government, and his reputation as a reformer mayor was gone. In 1929, he would face his closest call as mayor against James F. Murray, a young reform Democrat, but prevailed in an election in which between 20-30% of signatures in the poll book were fraudulent and numerous people were paid to vote multiple times (Murray, 24). Throughout his career he continued to make millions while only paying the taxes on his mayoral salary. Perhaps this would have been the beginning of the end of his reign had it not been for the Great Depression, and Republicans became highly unpopular nationwide. The Great Depression also helped Hague as his machine kept on going and kept supplying public jobs, a source of relief for numerous Jersey City residents (Fleming). He might have run into more trouble with his taxes had he not gained a crucial partner in politics…Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR and Hague…a Quid Pro Quo Partnership

Hague, Roosevelt, and Governor A. Harry Moore, 1932

With the Great Depression in full swing, the Democrats were in the perfect position to win the next election, but who was the nominee going to be? Hague had a history of loyalty to New York’s Al Smith and indeed he initially endorsed Smith for the primary, even attacking Roosevelt by asserting that despite him being New York’s governor that he could not “carry a single state east of the Mississippi and very few in the Far West” (Fleming). However, New York City’s James A. Farley outmaneuvered him at the Democratic National Convention and FDR won the primary. Hague came around to FDR and he offered to host his first general election campaign rally. Roosevelt’s general election campaign kicked off in Sea Girt, New Jersey, on August 27, 1932, with Hague managing to get a turnout of 120,000, an incredible figure (Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library). Hague had also hosted a rally for Al Smith at Sea Girt in 1928. Although Democrats today are expected to win New Jersey in Federal elections, this was far from always the case; in 1930 Republican Dwight Morrow had won a Senate seat by nearly 20 points, and although Roosevelt’s win was a landslide in 1932, he only won New Jersey by 2 points, and that he won at all was thanks to Hudson County. Roosevelt was thankful for Hague’s help and directed Federal patronage in New Jersey to him; usually patronage went to a Democratic governor (at the start of the Roosevelt Administration it was Hague front man A. Harry Moore) or the leading Democratic senator in a state. This gave Hague all the more power, and he used the $47 million he would receive in Works Progress Administration funds for Jersey City to construct Roosevelt Stadium as well as finish the aforementioned Jersey City Medical Center. From 1936 to 1943, New Jersey would receive over $400 million in Works Progress Administration funds, one of the highest for a state (Murray, 23). Although Hague’s influence was already a bit national with his post as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, it was furthered now. Although Roosevelt is seen as an anti-machine politician and he denied patronage to New York City’s Tammany Hall, he let it flow to Hague’s machine. Hague also managed to get Moore elected to the Senate in 1934. In 1936, Roosevelt won reelection in New Jersey by 20 points, and Republican Senator Warren Barbour lost reelection. In 1940, Hague, along with Mayor Ed Kelly of Chicago (who ran his own corrupt machine), started up the push for Roosevelt to be nominated for a third term, which propelled him to win the primary and general election. Hague would also be of great help in the 1944 election. He was indispensable to Roosevelt, and both benefited from each other. However, this meant that sometimes Hague had to do things for Roosevelt that he’d rather not do, such as support Charles Edison for governor in 1940, but the full telling of that will be for part III.

Hague’s Other Pals

Hague managed to command many allies in New Jersey, including from both parties. Quick to court women voters once they gained suffrage, he got Mary Teresa Norton into politics, and got her elected to Congress representing Jersey City’s southern wards. Norton would be the sponsor of the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the law that established the Federal minimum wage. The first Democratic governor that he managed to get in, Edward I. Edwards, who served from 1920 to 1923, allowed Hague to raise taxes on corporations substantially, got him some allies on the public utility commission as well as on the Hudson County tax board and board of elections (Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library). He was allied to him until 1930, when he wanted to again be governor, but by this time Edwards’ career, finances, and general well-being were in free-fall, and after a skin cancer diagnosis the next year he took his own life. Hague’s success in electing Edwards in the 1919 election got him elected the chairman of the New Jersey Democratic Party, a position he would hold for 29 years. George Silzer was another who owed his career to Hague, serving from 1923 to 1926. He most importantly picked Hague’s choice for prosecutor of Hudson County (Frank J. Guarini Library). Hague’s greatest front man statewide, however, was A. Harry Moore, who served as governor from 1926 to 1929, 1931 to 1934, and 1937 to 1940. Hague had befriended Moore early in his career and the man had some advantages to him. First, Moore was Protestant (possibly the first Hague ever met), which made a difference in the minds of numerous voters back then as opposed to the majority Catholic population of Jersey City. Second, he had fiscally conservative tendencies (as a senator he was one of only three Democrats to oppose Social Security), which made him more palatable to Republican voters and let him get on fine with the Republican-controlled legislature. However, Moore most critically would be a party organization man up and down, meaning that he would support what Hague wanted in appointments, patronage, etc. This was especially vital when it came to getting a county prosecutor, thus Hague could direct prosecutions as he pleased. He liked Moore so much that he helped get him elected governor three times and tried to recruit him for a fourth time and got him a Senate seat. However, Moore’s credibility was damaged in his third term after he tapped Hague’s son, who had twice failed to get through law school yet passed the bar, to the Court of Errors and Appeals, the highest court in New Jersey at the time. When Moore exited the Senate in 1937 to serve again as governor, his temporary replacement, John Milton, was Hague’s longtime attorney. Speaking of the state’s highest court, he managed to get his crony, his corporate counsel Thomas J. Brogan, tapped by Governor Moore to be its chief justice, and he served from 1933 to 1946. Hague was able to get some Republican state senators to back him up, which helped him exert some influence over that legislative body, but he was never able to exert control over the Assembly, which was Republican and was just itching to find a way to get him out of office. As for his Republican friends…

“Hague Republicans”

Frank Hague not only managed to become the leading figure of the Democratic Party in Hudson County and New Jersey, he came to dominate the Hudson County Republican Party and command some statewide influence through some of his followers registering Republican in Hudson County. As I wrote in part one, 20,000 people who registered Republican in Hudson County were able to tip the results of the 1928 Republican gubernatorial primary. The Hudson County Board of Elections also had Hague Republicans at the helm, and he managed to turn Republican T. James Tumulty to supporting him (and switching parties) after offering him a job, but the most prominent Hague Republican was Harold G. Hoffman.

In 1934, Democrat William Dill was running for governor again, and although officially backed by Hague, he lost the election to Hoffman, a personally popular figure. Hague turned out to be pretty fine with Hoffman as governor as he likely knew that Hoffman had sticky fingers; per Hoffman’s confession letter revealed after his death he had throughout his political career embezzled over $300,000 from the government positions he had held (Murray, 2024, 58-60). Thus, he made deals with Hague and provided considerable patronage for his machine and came to him for support after Republicans soured on him for his backing of a sales tax. Hoffman also supported certifying the election before an investigation was done, did not support any investigations into Hudson County voting practices, and refused to back the recount of the 1937 election in which A. Harry Moore was once again elected governor (Murray, 2024, 58). Speaking of the 1937 election…

The Stolen Gubernatorial Election

In 1937, Hague faced yet another figure in the GOP he didn’t want to contend with in Lester H. Clee, who he hadn’t been able to prevent from winning the nomination. Clee was a strong opponent of the Hague machine and was eager to act against him. Hague had a lot to potentially lose, and on Election Night 1937 Clee was leading by 80,000 votes…at least until the results of Hudson County were tabulated, and Moore came out over 45,000 votes ahead statewide. The official tally had Moore leading Clee by 129,137 votes in Hudson County while Democrat William Dill had led Harold Hoffman by 89,127 votes in 1934 (Murray, 33).

The Hague machine went all out to prevent the election of Lester Clee, and the Republican legislature sought a recount. There was undoubtedly fraud that came out of the election results of Hudson County, as the number of people who were recorded as having voted exceeded the number of eligible people. Some examples of fraud included a rabbi who had moved to Massachusetts three years earlier was recorded as having voted in Hudson County, an institutionalized man was recorded as voting, and people who were confirmed dead were recorded as having voted (Johnson). The recount was performed, but Clee didn’t gain much. The case went up to the Court of Errors and Appeals, and Hague’s man, Brogan, was invaluable in defending the machine from judicial consequences, only permitting a retabulating of cast ballots, not an investigation into the integrity of the election itself (Murray, 38). The high court declined to investigate the election, thus the Assembly pursued the investigation. What the legislature needed was access to the registration list and poll books, and that was something the Hague forces blocked with numerous tactics, including a claim that Board of Elections Commissioner Charles Stoebling, a Republican tied to Harold Hoffman and had custody over the records, was desperately ill at home. Ultimately, the New Jersey legislature was unable to procure the books, as Jersey City police blocked access to the records (Murray, 53). Furthermore, the Hudson County Board of Elections stuck behind Hague (as they were wont to do) and outgoing Republican Governor Harold Hoffman, as mentioned earlier, was outspoken in his support of the election outcome, and his appointees, including the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, were not inclined to help with the investigation. Democratic Attorney General David Wilentz, another Hague man, went against the investigation. Hoffman’s allegiance with Hague permanently damaged his standing with New Jersey Republicans, and when he sought the nomination for governor in 1940, which was publicly supported by Hague, he was defeated, the nomination going to anti-Hague Republican and future Senator Robert Hendrickson. The investigation came to a screeching halt when the Court of Errors and Appeals ruled 12-3 that it was unconstitutional (Murray, 59).  In 1940, the Senate decided to investigate the 1937 gubernatorial election, but they found that when they asked for the voting books of that election that they had been burned. No, this was not customary; other voting books had not been burned.

Hague’s Quirks

Mayor Hague was eager to counter stereotypes about the Irish and drunkenness, thus he was a resolute teetotaler throughout his life. Although his political career had started out with a loan from a saloon owner, he didn’t come there to drink alcoholic beverages, rather because he had realized this was where local political discussions occurred and where the local political power was. This didn’t just apply to him, if you were seated at a table with Hague, you were not to order an alcoholic beverage, and it was known that at dinners in which Hague was in attendance that people could not start ordering alcoholic beverages until he left, which he would before everyone else (Fleming). He also did not smoke and was a hypochondriac. Although there was much vice in his political behavior, there was no evidence of him straying from his marriage. This is similar to fellow Irish Catholic boss Jim Curley of Boston, who was highly politically corrupt but faithful to his wife.   

Hague vs. the CIO and Communists

An anti-communist rally held by Mayor Hague

Frank Hague was initially a supporter of unions and could get along fine with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which represented skilled craft laborers. However, in the 1930s a new union arose in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). This union was more radical than the AFL and represented unskilled laborers, and when they tried to get into Jersey City, Hague was hostile. He already taxed high for his government, and he was eager to attract business to the city. One way he could do that was to block the CIO. Union organizers were arrested for handing out leaflets on the streets. Hague was once alleged to have said “I am the law”, and although the truth has a little more context to it than that, it is undoubtedly true that this was the reality in Jersey City. He also banned the CIO from conducting meetings and no establishment would risk hosting them lest a city inspector come along and inevitably find code “violations” (Fleming). Hague justified his actions on the grounds that he believed that the CIO organizers were communists. His understanding of communism, however, seemed a bit limited. He said in one speech to the Jersey City Chamber of Commerce, “We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, “That man is a Red, that man is a Communist” (Vernon, 96). Despite Hague’s stated opposition to communism, he had some similarities to them. His hospital and maternity were mostly funded with public money and his approach has even been called “municipal socialism” (Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library). During this time it was discovered that Mayor Hague was tapping phones, a part of the police state he ran. Hague used a Jersey City ordinance requiring permits from the chief of police for the leasing of any hall, which invariably would not be granted to the CIO thus preventing meetings of any substantive size, to justify his repression of the CIO. However, the case was brought to the Supreme Court, which struck down Jersey City’s ordinance as unconstitutional 5-2 in Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939). This whole affair presented a terrible difficulty for the Roosevelt Administration, which counted both Hague and the CIO as major supporters, and the Roosevelt Administration did not intervene despite calls from the CIO to do so. Hague was ultimately forced to let the CIO in. Although his understanding of communism was not impressive, it is nonetheless true that there was a significant communist presence in the CIO and some chapters were outright dominated by communists. Although Hague was brought to heel on this one by the Supreme Court, he was still in the heyday of his power. This would start to change in 1940, when Hague would have to contend with one of Thomas Edison’s sons, Charles Edison.

References

Fleming, T. (1969, June). The Political Machine II: A Case History “I Am The Law”. American Heritage, 20(4).

Retrieved from

https://www.americanheritage.com/political-machine-ii-case-history-i-am-law

Frank Hague. Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library.

Retrieved from

https://njcu.libguides.com/hague

Isherwood, D. (2013, December 2). More information surfaces on Jersey City “mystery safes”. NJ.com.

Retrieved from

https://www.nj.com/politics/2013/12/more_information_surfaces_on_jersey_city_mystery_safes.html

Jersey City’s Mayor Hague: Last of the Bosses, Not First Of The Dictators. (1938, February 7). Life Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.cityofjerseycity.org/hague/life/haguespeople.shtml

Murray, J.M. (2023). The Real “Stolen Election”: Frank Hague and New Jersey’s 1937 Race for Governor. NJS: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 20-67.

Retrieved from

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiu8_37ttOMAxVUITQIHX0LDycQFnoECBkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnjs.libraries.rutgers.edu%2Findex.php%2Fnjs%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F353%2F420%2F779&usg=AOvVaw2UBoSE4-_ie9MeZyy_T5b3&opi=89978449

Murray, J.M. (2024). Research Notes: The Real “Stolen Election”: Frank Hague and New Jersey’s 1937 Race for Governor. NJS: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 57-60.

Retrieved from

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiFmeWzqdSMAxXCMDQIHVjJFg0QFnoECCAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnjs.libraries.rutgers.edu%2Findex.php%2Fnjs%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F353%2F420%2F779&usg=AOvVaw2UBoSE4-_ie9MeZyy_T5b3&opi=89978449

Vernon, L.F. (2011). The life and times of Jersey City mayor Frank Hague: I am the law. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing.

Fascinating Politics

How They Voted: Prohibition

By 1917, the push for Prohibition was at its strongest. Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League, a pioneer of lobbying tactics used today, was able to score many election wins across the country. Party didn’t matter to him as long as the individual was for Prohibition, and this plus World War I set the nation for Prohibition and against that which was German. Sauerkraut became temporarily known as “liberty cabbage” and since beer drinking is a strong part of the German culture, that was set upon too. On August 1, 1917, the Senate voted for Senate Joint Resolution 17, sponsored by Senator Morris Sheppard (D-Tex.), proposing a Constitutional amendment to prohibit the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol. The amendment was adopted 65-20 (D 36-12, R 29-8). The House followed up on December 17th, with the House side of the resolution sponsored by Charles Carlin (D-Va.) The amendment was adopted 282-128 (D 140-64, R 138-62, Prog. 2-1; Soc. 0-1; IR 1-0, Proh. 1-0). The different parties listed are Progressive, Socialist, Independent Republican, and Prohibitionist.

There was a strong rural vs. urban character to the vote on Prohibition, with major cities overwhelmingly voting against it. Although many conservatives voted for, there were a significant number of dissenters. Rural liberals were easily in favor, while urban liberals were always against. A few interesting nay votes came from Alabama, including that of Tom Heflin, who was known to favor Prohibition. Some of the votes against came out of a sense of state’s rights rather than opposition to what Prohibition was aiming to achieve. Interestingly, the most notable progressive Republicans, such as Borah, Norris, and La Follette, were supportive. Prohibition stands as a bit of an issue that can be supported or opposed from the left and right for different reasons. Indeed, alcohol does have a cost to society and progressives of the time were committed to using the forces of government to improve society, but conservatives could see this as a moralistic issue and also as a means of improving efficiency. After all, a sober worker is a productive worker. Democrats of the Jeffersonian school could see this as both treading on the states and an intrusion upon personal liberty. To examine how the votes stack up with ideology, at least as defined by DW-Nominate scaling, click the documents below. A checkmark means paired for and an “X” means paired against, bold italics means Republican, and plain text means Democrat.

Senate Prohibition Vote, Details:

Prohibition Senate VoteDownload

House Prohibition Vote, Details:

Prohibition House VoteDownload
Fascinating Politics

Great Conservatives from American History #21: Jesse Wolcott – The GOP’s Economics Nerd

In 1930, the nation was entering an economic depression and Prohibition was increasingly unpopular. These developments were both bad news for Representative Louis Cramton of Michigan. Cramton, who had served since 1913, was a Republican and one of the most outspoken supporters of Prohibition in the House. Although the 7th district of Michigan was quite Republican, he was not safe from a primary challenge. Enter Jesse Paine Wolcott (1893-1969), a World War I veteran who had served as the prosecuting attorney of St. Clair County since 1927. The central issue of this campaign was Prohibition. He supported repealing it, while the bone-dry Cramton stayed the course. The primary was very close, but Wolcott came out ahead by 25 votes (Hill). A primary defeat would not be so significant in Michigan until Gerald Ford’s defeat of Bartel Jonkman in 1948.

Wolcott was initially regarded with suspicion and even hostility from some staunch conservatives. As he recalled, “I was called a radical when I first went to Congress. Some of my GOP colleagues would hardly speak to me” (Hill). Indeed, Wolcott did cast a few votes that were outside of the GOP orthodoxy in his first few years. He was always staunchly for veterans’ bonuses, going against Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt as well as many fiscal conservatives. Wolcott also supported additional funds for emergency highway construction for the purposes of increasing employment in 1932.  During the Roosevelt Administration, he largely opposed the New Deal, including voting against the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Gold Clause Resolution, the Reciprocal Trade Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, but voted for the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Gold Confiscation Act in 1934, and Social Security in 1935.

By 1944, Wolcott was the ranking Republican on the House Banking and Currency Committee, and as a result he was one of six members of Congress to serve as a delegate at the Bretton Woods Conference, which established the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. A non-interventionist before World War II, as were all Michigan Republicans of prominence, Wolcott did come to support some major measures after World War II, such as aid to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan in the name of countering communism. He was also sufficiently influential to sway 61 Republicans to vote for a loan to Great Britain in 1946 (Hill). However, Wolcott opposed foreign aid beyond what he saw as necessary to address communism, including voting against Point IV aid to poor nations in 1950. Although he was overall opposed to price controls, he did see some value in keeping them to a limited degree during World War II. In 1946, Wolcott sponsored four amendments that made it to a vote on price control; the first was reducing the extension of price control by three months, the second adjusting ceiling prices to costs of production plus reasonable profit, the third a gradual reduction of agricultural subsidies, and the fourth reducing funds for farm subsidies (CQ Almanac). All were passed. However, Wolcott believed that controls and subsidies should gradually be ended, and thus opposed the Wadsworth (R-N.Y.) and Flannagan (D-Va.) amendments. The former, which was voted down, promptly removed controls on livestock and its products, and the latter, which passed, promptly ended meat subsidies and adjusted the price ceiling from there. Wolcott’s stances were not always in line with many in his party, as many wanted the end to come quicker, but for this stance he was awarded the Collier Award for Distinguished Congressional Service with a reward of $10,000 in cash, which he donated to Michigan State University to fund scholarships (Hill). The 1946 elections produced the first Republican Congress since the Hoover Administration, and it propelled Wolcott to the chairmanship of the House Banking and Currency Committee.

Robert La Follette Jr., Harry S. Truman and Jesse Wolcott.

Banking and Currency Chairman

The Banking and Currency Committee not only had jurisdiction over banking but also on economic controls and housing. Wolcott pushed an anti-inflation bill in 1947 that failed to pass under suspension of the rules that only extended economic controls over exports and rail transportation but left controls for the rest to voluntary agreements by industry as well as a housing bill in 1948 that had no public housing or slum clearance provisions but had provisions supported by the real estate industry (Americans for Democratic Action, 1948). Wolcott was opposed to the proposed Taft-Ellender-Wagner Act with public housing and although his committee voted to override him and report the bill, the House Rules Committee bottled it up. However, with the next Congress being Democratic, the bill would be signed into law by President Truman. During the 1948 presidential campaign, Truman condemned Wolcott as a “mossback Republican”, or an extreme conservative, as part of his campaigning against the 80th Congress (Hill). Although he was indeed a conservative, he was not a Clare Hoffman or Noah Mason, who were absolutely uncompromising in their views on economic controls and foreign aid, and most everything else. After the defeat of the Republican Congress and the election of Truman in 1948, Wolcott was once again in the minority, and he continued to vote against the Truman Administration on most issues. By 1952, he believed that economic controls had gone on long enough in the Korean War and voted to end both price and rent controls.

In the 83rd Congress, with Republicans again in control, Wolcott was once again chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee, but perhaps his most notable role was serving on the committee investigating tax-exempt institutions. This committee was controversial in its initiation and its implementation, and Wolcott signed onto to the majority report that accused the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations of funding “subversion”, charges which they strongly denied (Hill). This is a subject I have covered before, and I must note that subversion in this case did not necessarily have to mean “communism”. In 1956, Wolcott was one of 24 Republicans to vote against the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1956, backed by the Eisenhower Administration. This was rather unusual for him, as he had repeatedly supported other measures in the past, such as anti-lynching and anti-poll tax bills. In 1954, he faced a bit of a scare when he had his worst reelection performance, getting 52.8% of the vote. He had not fallen below 56% before and he usually won with at least 60%. Wolcott’s district, which included St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, and Macomb counties, had previously long been a bastion of Republicanism but was now moving to the Democrats. Perhaps not wanting to face another difficult campaign, Wolcott opted not to run another term. His protégé, Robert McIntosh, did win in 1956, but he lost reelection two years later to Democrat James O’Hara, who would be in Congress for twenty years in part thanks to redistricting that split up his old district. On ideology, DW-Nominate figured his score at 0.324, while he only agreed with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 10% of the time from 1947 to 1956. Most of Wolcott’s old territory is today back under Republican representation.

Although he thought he’d be retired with the end of his time in Congress, President Eisenhower called him back into service when he nominated him to be chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, an institution that he strongly supported, and it was a post for which he was supremely qualified. Although normally a proponent of limited government, Wolcott thought the government insuring of bank deposits to be a tremendous good, stating, “I like to think of FDIC as probably the greatest institution ever conceived by man for his own safety and protection, and the protection of bank depositors. I do not think there is any organization in the world which has done so much to establish and perpetuate and maintain an economy such as that which makes America the greatest nation in the world” (Hill). He capably served as chairman until the end of the Eisenhower Administration, and then continued to serve on the board until his retirement from public life in 1964. Sadly, Wolcott would not enjoy retirement long; in 1966 he suffered a stroke from which he never recovered (Hill). He died on January 28, 1969 at the age of 75.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

https://adaction.org/ada-voting-records/

Congressional Supplement (1948). Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

Click to access 1948.pdf

 Extension of Price Control. CQ Almanac 1946. CQ Press.

Retrieved from

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal46-1411558#_=_

Hill, R. Jesse Wolcott of Michigan. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved from

https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/jesse-wolcott-of-michigan/

Wolcott, Jesse Paine. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://www.voteview.com/person/10303/jesse-paine-wolcott

Fascinating Politics

Frank Hague, The Dictator of Jersey City, Part I

Frank Hague (1876-1956) is a forgotten name among many outside Jersey City today, but he was among the foremost political bosses of his time and the control he exerted over Jersey City was so extensive and the means he used to win were such that they surpassed election law. He had a strong quid pro quo relationship with FDR and used Hudson County to decide races for governor in New Jersey.

Early Life and Political Start

Born to a working class Irish family in the Horseshoe area of Jersey City, Frank Hague did not excel at school, in fact, he was expelled for his bad behavior at 13, thus he only had a sixth grade education. Indeed, some of Hague’s enemies would later swear that he was barely literate and could read no more than headlines in a newspaper (Fleming). Although school ended early for him, his political career started early too. At the age of 20, after securing a loan from bar owner Ned Kenny, he began his campaign for constable and won by 3 to 1 margin. Through his effectiveness at voter turnout for Boss Bob Davis, he was rewarded with the post of deputy sheriff and continued to rise in the political organization of Jersey City, including delivering his ward to the Democrats when Republican Mark Fagan won the mayoral election. Hague had an early scandal when in 1904 he and Deputy Sheriff Thomas “Skidder” Madigan covered for Red Dugan, a friend of his, who had been passing fraudulent checks in Boston by providing a false alibi under oath (Watkins). Dugan would subsequently admit he had done it, and the Boston court wanted to indict Hague for perjury but couldn’t extradite him. This didn’t hurt Hague with many working class Irish voters, as helping a friend, especially doing so at the behest of said friend’s mother, which Hague said was the case, was a sufficient excuse (Watkins). He made a break with Boss Davis in 1906 over an appointment and he sided with reformer H. Otto Wittpenn for mayor, who when he won in 1907 he appointed Hague city custodian. He also made an important connection with Wittpenn’s secretary, A. Harry Moore, who would become a close ally, as well as with John Milton, who would serve as his lawyer throughout his political career. After Davis died in 1911, Wittpenn sought to lead the Democratic Party in Hudson County only for Hague to turn on him and accuse him of bossism, yet Wittpenn would win. He would also critically back a new reform figure in New Jersey politics in Governor Woodrow Wilson, including his destruction of the machine of Boss Smith of Newark (Fleming). Indeed, in this time, Hague was thought of as a reformer or at least he put on the mask of one.

Hague: The Reformer?

In 1911, Hague won the post of street and water commissioner, in which he quickly cut the budget from $180,000 annually to $110,000 and fired half the staff, only to quietly bring in more than the number he fired with his own men after he won praise in the press (Watkins). He also quietly and with success requested the city council to reverse the budget cuts. Hague then set his eyes on the police department, which had become a bad joke under Boss Davis, who freely allowed all sorts of vice. Hague did so by ruthlessly enforcing regulations, including having 125 officers tried in a day for violating them, and ruthlessly demoted or fired police officers (Fleming). These men were replaced by men Hague could count on. These men would serve as a surveillance network within the police force, and soon petty bribery was stamped out. Laws against prostitution and after-hours drinking were enforced, and women were barred from saloons with legal (and possibly extralegal) punishments threatened for violations by saloon owners (Fleming). Streets were also literally cleaned. While previously the streets would have a fair amount of garbage at any one time, Hague mandated the spraying down of the streets with a fire hydrant every night (Watkins). In 1913, his efforts were crucial in netting the Democratic gubernatorial candidate James Fielder a victory. Hague managed to produce a 25,959 vote lead in Hudson County (Fleming). After this, he was widely acknowledged as the leader of the Hudson County Democratic Party. Despite being a Democratic leader, there were occasions in which he tacitly supported a Republican candidate. The first instance of this was to counter his chief rival, Otto Wittpenn.

The 1916 Election: Hague Makes a Deal

In the 1916 gubernatorial election, Hague got some bad news in the Democratic primary: Otto Wittpenn was the winner! Fearing that his influence would be countered if he managed to be elected governor, he got into contact with Republican candidate Walter Edge’s campaign manager, Nucky Johnson. Hague worked out a deal with Johnson to get Edge elected governor, and this would be done by Hague not pushing for Wittpenn’s election partly in exchange for the Holland Tunnel, to be constructed, to end in Jersey City (Murphy). Edge was elected governor with Hudson County reporting a mere 7,430 vote lead for Wittpenn, the worst for a Democratic nominee for governor in decades (Fleming). His electoral career was over, and in the following year’s municipal election, Hague won after Mark Fagan decided to step down.

Mayor Hague

Although Hague was now in power, he did not have some of the conventional skills of a leader. I mentioned earlier that his education was limited, and even though he got training for public speaking once mayor, he would still have problems. Hague was on record, for instance, saying that “One hundred ten thousand voters has endorsed my administration”, that Jersey City was “the most moralest city in America”, and once ended a speech with “And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the privilege of listening to me” (Fleming). Fortunately for Hague, he was not short of other means for power.

The source of Hague’s power as the mayor of Jersey City and the leader overall of Hudson County lay in the economic circumstances of Jersey City. All railroad lines that had terminals in Jersey City with cargo intended for New York City had to go through the Port of Jersey City to be shipped across the Hudson Bay, as no freight lines existed between the two cities. This gave Hague the power to control the conditions in which such goods would be transported out to New York City. This was a rich source for kickbacks and shakedowns that immensely profited Hague and others who wielded control over the Hudson Waterfront (Murphy). He also maintained his power through expanding the number of public employees. Jersey City had the highest number of public sector employees of any city of that size, some of these were rewards for help in political campaigns and some had no duties, rendering them welfare by another name (Watkins). This extensive public payroll had to be funded somehow. He did so through multiple means. One was requiring that public employees kick back 3% of their pay to fund the Hague machine. Another was through raising taxes. After 20 years of Hague’s rule of Jersey City, taxes had been increased threefold, property assessments had doubled, and the city’s debt was increased by 500% (Life Magazine). He also, popularly for many of his constituents, sought huge tax increases on major businesses. In 1917 and 1918, he dramatically increased annual tax assessments on Standard Oil (from $1.5 million to $14 million), the Public Service Corporation (from $3 million to $30 million), and railroads (from $67 million to $160 million), to which they promptly went to the State Board of Taxes and Assessments, which canceled all his increases (Fleming).

This State Board was a problem, and he needed it replaced, and to replace it, he needed an ally, not Walter Edge, as governor. Hague denounced the board as beholden to special interests and pushed for the election of Jersey City’s First National Bank president, Edward I. Edwards, an important ally (Fleming). Major turnout in Hudson County netted Edwards the governorship. Indeed, Hague’s turnout machine was unrivaled in its time; 92% of eligible voters in Hudson County were registered and 85% or more went to the polls (Murphy). However, Hague was able to secure even more votes than that. It was not legal for names to be removed from Hudson County’s voter registration rolls, thus deaths or moves had to be noted on the rolls, but the Hudson County Board of Elections was deliberately lax on doing this. After all, the appointees to this board were on paper Republicans but in truth, owed their jobs to Hague. This was a rich source of data to produce fraudulent ballots when they were needed (Murphy). Hague needed to use such trickery to the fullest when it came to the 1920 municipal election, in which Democrats were very unpopular with Irish voters given their anger at President Woodrow Wilson, and they were facing an electoral slaughter. Hague’s machine desperately wanted to elect Skidder Madigan to the post of sheriff of Hudson County. Madigan, Hague’s old pal when they were both deputy sheriffs, could be counted on to select grand juries that were to Hague’s liking, in other words, those who would not vote to convict on any activities of Hague’s machine or would vote to convict those that Hague needed convicted. However, Madigan had a problem that year aside from being a Democrat, and that was he couldn’t read or write (Fleming). The Hague machine went all out to get him elected sheriff while other candidates went down to defeat. Violence, fraud, every trick that needed to be pulled was pulled to elect Madigan (Fleming). He also appealed to the Irish voters of the city, capitalizing on their resentments of Republican WASPs and of big businesses.

Hague’s regime, however, did come with its benefits. The poor were assisted in finding jobs and given free food, clothing, and coal (Watkins). The city streets were, as mentioned before, literally clean. Prostitution was no longer a significant presence in Jersey City, and the mob was kept out. Police, fire, and emergency services were pushed to efficiency, and Hague would sometimes personally test this efficiency by making emergency calls from a public phone booth at night. If the responding people did not come in a timely manner that satisfied Hague, he would berate them and occasionally even punch them in the face (Watkins). One example was when he was angered that an ambulance he called had taken 15 minutes to arrive. When he began berating the head intern, the young man responded, “It took me a while to wake up”, to which Hague answered by knocking him down into the gutter (Fleming). It was also due to Hague that Journal Square, the Pulaski Skyway, and the Jersey City Medical Center and a maternity hospital named after Hague’s mother, Margaret were constructed. A major benefit of living in Hague’s Jersey City was that medical care could be obtained by a fee of $35 but it would be waived if you said you couldn’t pay for it, and some of the best doctors in the nation were employed at the Jersey City Medical Center. This resulted in a hospital that cost $3 million to operate annually and received only $15,000 in revenue (Watkins). Public funds made up for the rest.  

Don’t Mess With Hague

The consequences for challenging Hague could be quite serious. In 1937, a man named John Longo sought to challenge Hague from within the Democratic Party and formed an anti-Hague slate, but this was met with arrest and a Hague judge sentenced him to nine months imprisonment on fabricated charges (Watkins). He would be screwed over again by Hague after getting an appointment as deputy clerk in 1943 for Hudson County. He would once again be arrested, and six witnesses committed perjury against him, resulting in another Hague judge sentencing Longo to prison between 18 months and 3 years (Watkins). Hague also employed violence to keep power; he had campaign workers and police beat up people who opposed him. This included one particularly notorious incident in which 245 Princeton students were sent by the Honest Ballot Association to monitor a 1920s election, which resulted in all students being blocked from the polling places and five were beaten so badly they had to be hospitalized (Watkins). Hague’s use of police to violently enforce his will was reinforced with incentives. The police force of Jersey City was the highest paid and most staffed of any police force of a city that size (Fleming). As previously mentioned, Hague could engage in physical violence himself. In one incident, he knocked out cold one of Jersey City’s commissioners, Michael Fagen (Fleming).

Further Rise to Power

In 1924, Hague’s power grew when Al Smith, thankful for his efforts on his behalf to secure the Democratic nomination (albeit unsuccessfully), managed to get him the vice chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, and he would remain in this position until 1952. This gave Hague considerable influence over who the Democrats would select for president, and he certainly played his part in getting Al Smith the nomination in 1928.

Hague Fixes the 1928 Republican Gubernatorial Primary

Frank Hague’s influence did not exist only within the Democratic Party…he extended his grip to the Republican Party in a number of ways as well. A particularly notable event was the 1928 Republican primary, in which the favorite was widely regarded as former judge Robert Carey, who was a prominent critic of Hague and promised to take on his machine. He didn’t want to risk this man winning the election, thus he managed to get 20,000 of his supporters registered as Republicans to vote in the primary, resulting in the victor being State Senator Morgan F. Larson, a mild presence. As it turns out, Hague’s scheme was 100% legal, as New Jersey law permitted a person who had not voted in the last primary to switch party registration without penalty, thus Hague, anticipating 1928 as an important election, had 20,000 of his followers not vote in the preceding primary (Fleming). It was a good thing for Hague that he had done so, as Larson won the election.

More will come on Hague in a follow-up post, as he is a considerable subject.

References

Fleming, T. (1969). The Political Machine II: A Case History “I Am the Law”. American Heritage, 20(4).

Retrieved from

https://www.americanheritage.com/political-machine-ii-case-history-i-am-law

Jersey City’s Mayor Hague: The Last of the Dictators. (1938, February 7). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.cityofjerseycity.org/hague/life/life020738.shtml

Murray, J.M. (2022, November 2). The Real Stolen Election – Frank Hague and the NJ Governor’s Race of 1937. YouTube.

Watkins, T. The Political Machine of Frank Hague of Jersey City, New Jersey. San Jose State University.

Retrieved from

https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/bosses.htm#HAGUE

Fascinating Politics

Great Conservatives from American History #20: Noah Mason – The Amiable No-Man of Illinois

When it comes to conservatism, one state we don’t think of so much these days is Illinois. It is difficult for Republicans to win statewide thanks to Chicago, which has been unshakably Democratic since the days of Mayor Richard Daley, and Democratic politics seem to have, at least at the moment, an iron-clad grip. One figure who would be tremendously out of place in the modern politics of Illinois was Noah Morgan Mason (1882-1965).

The 12th of 13 children of a working-class family in Glamorganshire, Wales, the family immigrated to the United States when Mason was 6. Although he had to drop out of school to work on the family farm at 14, his mother saw something in the young boy that told her that he was destined for a greater future than his father, and thus she pushed him to go to college, and he did, graduating from Illinois State Normal University. Mason would dedicate himself to education, and at 22 he was the principal of Jones School in Oglesby, serving for five years, after which he became the city’s school superintendent (Hill). This prominent role led him to politics, and in 1919 he ran for and won the post of city commissioner for Oglesby. In 1926, Mason tried for the first time to win a seat in the Illinois State Senate but lost. However, this would be the only race he ever lost, and he would be elected to the State Senate in 1930.

As a state senator, Mason voted to repeal Prohibition. Although he had time and again expressed his personal opposition to drinking, he recognized that a majority of his district had voted for a referendum to repeal Prohibition, and he believed that he should abide by the wishes of his constituents in what he regarded as the Jeffersonian and Lincolnian tradition (Hill). Indeed, Mason was attentive to the wants and interests of his conservative constituency, and it kept him in office, but higher office was on his mind.

His opportunity for higher office came in 1936, as Congressman John T. Buckbee was ailing. When talk of Mason running to succeed him came about, he denied that he would seek the office unless Buckbee decided to retire due to ill health (Hill). This showed respect for the ill incumbent, and Mason would win the nomination to succeed him after he died in office. Although the 1936 election would elevate Democrats to the height of their power, Mason won his election too, and he presented quite an alternative.

Mason vs. The New Deal

From the very start of his Congressional career, he made his position clear as a committed conservative with his maiden speech to the House focusing against the expansion of the Federal government and in opposition to President Roosevelt’s “court packing plan” (Samosky, 36). Although solidly conservative in his record from the start, he was not necessarily averse to compromise. For instance, Mason, along with all but one of Illinois’ representatives, voted for the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act in 1937 while a majority of House Republicans voted against. He also voted for the original House passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act while opposing the final version. Mason would oppose work relief measures as well, and saw the work relief program as a corrupt way to strengthen the power of the Democratic Party. He accused its director, Harry Hopkins, of having transformed the program into “the most powerful political instrument of partisan advantage ever devised in the United States of America” and would in 1944 accuse him of condoning or encouraging “intimidation, bribery, and wanton violation of the Corrupt Practices Act” (Hill). Mason also condemned numerous Brain Trusters for radical backgrounds and statements. He regarded guaranteed minimum income, employment for all by the government, and confiscation of all property except houses and subsistence farms as “State socialism”, comparing such ideas to the practices of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia (Samosky, 41). Although Mason represented a rural district, he stood opposed to New Deal agricultural policy, which he saw as heavy on government control. He instead advocated the adoption of the McNary-Haugen measure that the farm bloc had attempted to pass in the 1920s over the opposition of President Calvin Coolidge (Samosky, 36).

Although strongly opposed to the New Deal’s political machinery, domestic spending, strong hand on businesses, ever-expanding Federal government, the infiltration of the government by Communists, and organized labor policies, he did not only see the bad in the New Deal. In January 1944, he stated that he considered the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Social Security, and the Fair Labor Standards Act to have been overall positive albeit flawed (Samosky, 42). Mason was, however, unconditionally opposed the Office of Price Administration during World War II and was against the price, wage, and rent controls established. He held that “Rationing merely distributes scarcity” and opposed economic controls as he saw them as hindering personal initiative (Samosky, 36). Mason would be similarly opposed to President Truman’s Fair Deal as he was Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Mason vs. Foreign Aid

Noah Mason’s stances on foreign policy would strike many as parochial. He was not only opposed, as were a majority of Republicans, to FDR’s foreign policy before World War II, he also opposed the bipartisan foreign policy consensus after World War II. Although Mason seemed to support the idea of an international peacekeeping body in theory given his vote for the 1943 Fulbright Resolution, in practice he was against, as he was one of 15 representatives to vote against the United Nations Participation Act in 1945. Given this vote, he certainly could not have been counted on to vote for aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947 or the Marshall Plan in 1948, and he didn’t. Mason did not ease up on his opposition to foreign aid during the Eisenhower Administration, and if anything, his opposition got stronger. He could not be counted on to support any elements of Eisenhower’s agenda that were moderate or liberal. Mason considered foreign aid to be a grand giveaway that added to the national debt and thus added to how much Americans would have to be taxed in the future, stating that it “shunted off upon our children a debt of $300 billion – a greater debt than all the other countries in the world combined” (Samosky, 48).  Despite Mason being an outsider on many issues, his Illinois constituency appeared to be content with his stances, as they kept reelecting him.

Mason vs. Subversion

Noah Mason was a strong foe of radical forces that pushed discordance in society and government. In 1938, he made a speech to La Salle, Illinois’ Elks Club in which he condemned organizations such as the Silver Shirts, the Ku Klux Klan, and the German American Bund for stirring up racial and religious hatred as well as Communists and individuals in government he regarded as pushing class hatred (Samosky, 44). Fittingly, Mason was placed on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) in that year, serving in this post until 1943, and he would vote to make the committee permanent in 1945. He was a reliable vote for most measures intended to curb subversion. However, Mason made an interesting exception when on April 8, 1954 he voted to require a Federal court order for a wiretap in national security cases, contrary to the position of the Eisenhower Administration. He also praised Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) as a “fighting Irishman” and a “red-blooded, two fisted American” (Samosky, 45).

Mason: For and vs. Eisenhower

President Eisenhower and his greatest backers were what were known as “modern Republicans”, in other words, accepting of the continuance of much of the New Deal with more fiscal discipline, for foreign aid, and easing up on protectionism. Mason was no such figure. He consistently opposed foreign aid bills, opposed federal aid to education, was one of 35 representatives to oppose a reciprocal trade bill in 1953, and opposed a bipartisan bill that year admitting more European refugees. Although born in Wales into a working-class family, Mason was for strong immigration limits, stating, “We’ve got to keep America American” (Alsop, J. & Alsop, S.). He saw restricting immigration as a way of protecting American values from potentially subversive influences, and saw his role as one of a preserver of the values that resulted in the flourishing of the United States. As a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Mason sought to overhaul the tax code. As journalists Joseph and Stewart Alsop (1953) reported, he said that he wanted to “relieve the overtaxed by taxing the untaxed”, which meant per the Alsops “reducing income and corporate taxes, while levying a manufacturer’s sales tax, taxing co-operatives, and depriving the churches, charitable foundations and universities of most of their existing exemptions”. Eisenhower by contrast wanted an extension of the excess profits tax, which of course Mason was completely opposed to.

As journalists Joseph and Stewart Alsop (1953) noted in their article on him as an example of difficulties President Eisenhower was having with the conservative wing of the GOP, “President Eisenhower’s problem with his own party is agreeably symbolized by Noah Mason…” and concluded with, “…the question remains – and it is pressing question – whose party is it, Noah Mason’s or Dwight Eisenhower’s?” He would, however, vote to sustain Eisenhower’s cost-conscious vetoes. Mason also maintained a strong devotion to a conservative view of Federalism. This meant that the Federal role was to be as limited as he saw fit under the Constitution, and this perspective translated into his positions on civil rights.

Mason vs. Civil Rights

Among House Republicans, by the Eisenhower Administration he was one of the most unbending opponents of civil rights legislation. Mason voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, which were watered-down, and no Senate Republicans had opposed, and was one of nine Republicans to vote against even considering the latter bill. He hadn’t opposed all civil rights proposals in the past, indeed in 1937 and 1940 he had voted for anti-lynching legislation, and he had voted for unsuccessful Powell Amendments in 1946 and 1956 to counter segregation in public education. He also had accepted the premise that non-discrimination by government and in societal opportunities was a good as posited by President Truman (Samosky, 39). However, what he opposed outweighed what he supported considerably. Mason opposed four of five measures against the poll tax he registered a vote or opinion on. This included the 1962 CQ Almanac recording that he had either announced or answered a CQ poll that he was against the 24th Amendment. He also opposed Fair Employment Practices legislation and opposed the 1960 Powell Amendment to counter segregation in education. During the debate over the 1957 Civil Rights Act, Mason contended that “each and every” right was “a State function, a State responsibility, a State obligation” and was “definitely left to the States by the Constitution” (Samosky, 39). He further delivered a speech before Congress in which he connected Federal civil rights legislation to the New Deal’s Federal intervention into the business of States. He painted a happy picture of the United States in this speech, that is, until in “…came our New Dealers, our Fair Dealers and our Modern Republicans with ideas and proposals to change our constitutional form of government into a welfare state, a centralized Socialist-Labor government, without our sovereign States relegated to a subservient position, exercising only those powers and duties that might be assigned them by an all-powerful, arrogant, dictatorial, centralized Federal Government – divorced from those powers, duties, and privileges guaranteed to the State by Our Federal Constitution” (Mason). Mason had no personal love for segregation, but he saw civil rights legislation as supported by the Eisenhower Administration as yet another manifestation of this trend he speaks against. This was not the only way that he could be in the minority of his party. He was also one of 24 House Republicans to vote against the admission of Hawaii in 1959. Although not a civil rights measure itself, the admission of Hawaii as well as Alaska added four pro-civil rights senators, thus many Southerners were in opposition. Indeed, if a bill was passed with but a small contingent of opposition from the right, Mason was likely to be among the dissenters.

Mason vs. the Majority

Image from Chronicling Illinois, citation in References.

Given that he rarely compromised in his views, especially in his later years, Mason could often be found against the majority on legislation, especially since he was one of the most conservative people in the Republican Party, which during his time in Congress only had a majority in two sessions. Some votes in which Mason was desperately in the minority aside from previously mentioned legislation included:

. On April 19, 1944 he voted against extending the Lend-Lease Act one year, which was passed 334-21.

. He voted for the Rankin (D-Miss.) motion to defeat the entire bill extending the Office of Price Administration, which would have killed all controls, and was defeated 20-370 on April 18, 1946.

. On July 18, 1955, he voted against an expansion of Social Security benefits, which passed 372-31.

. On July 20, 1955, he voted against increasing the minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 an hour with no coverage expansions, which passed 362-54.

. On August 26, 1960, he paired against the Kerr-Mills Act, a popular substitute for proposed Medicare legislation which provided Federal funds to States for medical costs of poor elderly people, which passed 369-17.

. On April 20, 1961, he paired against increasing Social Security benefits, the measure passing the House 400-14 on April 20, 1961.

. On June 6, 1962, he voted against a school lunch bill that passed 370-11.

. On September 24, 1962, he voted against authorizing President Kennedy to mobilize 150,000 reserve troops in response to increasing Soviet presence and armaments in Cuba, which passed 342-13.

However, something that should be noted about Mason was that despite his extreme views, he was a personable communicator of them and liked by his colleagues. Indeed, he was known to be a good-natured and friendly figure. Perhaps you could call him a happy warrior. In 1955, the New York Times characterized him as a “white-haired, genial battler” (Samosky, 39). Indeed, given how much Noah Mason opposed legislation just generally, I think an appropriate characterization for him is the “Amiable No-Man”. And he would be saying no a lot to the last president he served with.

Mason vs. The Kennedy Administration

Unsurprisingly, Noah Mason was opposed to almost every aspect of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, from public works legislation to the Peace Corps. However, he made one notable exception, and it was perhaps based on his background as an educator. Mason voted for the bill providing a five-year program for Federal aid to States for educational television in 1962. His most notable and final battle was that year and it was on a subject that he never compromised on…trade.

Noah Mason was consistently and unalterably protectionist in his views on trade, and expressed such views on the House Ways and Means Committee and cast such votes. In 1962, he waged his last major battle in Congress against the Kennedy Administration’s Trade Expansion Act, which granted the president more authority to negotiate mutual tariff reductions of up to 50% and to aid workers harmed by such reductions by more generous unemployment benefits among other measures (CQ Almanac). He motioned to recommit the bill to substitute it with a one-year extension of the existing Trade Agreements Act, which was defeated 171-253 on June 28th, and the Trade Expansion Act was signed into law. That year, Mason announced that he would not be up for another term, and told the House in his speech that “I plan to become a missionary to the liberal heathen on the Hill…preaching the gospel of conservatism to those who will listen. They may yet be saved to a happier future in which taxes will go down and not always up; in which the national debt will grow smaller and not bigger, in which the army of bureaucrats will get their proper comeuppance” (Hill).  The latter part of this statement makes me think he would have certainly approved of the discharges of Federal employees that have occurred lately. Mason’s career, at least the last six years of it, was seen as incredibly positive by conservatives, with him agreeing with Americans for Constitutional Action 97% of the time, only differing with them on a vote to retain the Soil Bank Program in 1957 and on the aforementioned educational television legislation. By contrast, he only agreed with Americans for Democratic Action, which judged his record from 1947 to 1962, 7% of the time. Mason’s DW-Nominate score was a 0.63, which placed him consistently among the top ten most conservative members of the House in his time.

The conservative revival that Mason had been hopeful for would have to wait until after his death, as he lived only two years after his retirement, dying on March 29, 1965, of heart failure, a year that perhaps was the apex of American liberalism in the 20th century. I cannot imagine that he would have supported the legislation enacted later in the year, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare. Surely, he would have been heartened had he lived to see the rise of Reagan, even if he probably would have been disappointed with the budget deficits. Perhaps Mason is from the great beyond disappointed in where Illinois has gone, with a mere 3 of 17 representatives being Republicans thanks to redistricting, and even his old district is now represented by Democrat Lauren Underwood. He would certainly, however, be more heartened by the Republicans are they are today, as the party, 72 years after the Alsop brothers asked the critical question of whose party it was, it is clearly more of Mason’s today than Eisenhower’s.  

References

Alsop, J., & Alsop, S. (1953, June 30).  Mason Symbolizes Ike’s Problem. St. Petersburg Times.

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Hill, R. Noah Mason of Illinois. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved from

https://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/noah-mason-of-illinois/

House Increases Bank Building Fund;  Approves Constitutional Amendment Banning Poll Tax; Clears Satellite Corporation Bill. (1962). 1962 CQ Almanac, 630-631. Congressional Quarterly.

Retrieved from

Click to access file.php

Howard Mullins, Noah M. Mason, and Fred Dickey. Chronicling Illinois.

Retrieved from

https://www.chroniclingillinois.org/items/show/29748

Mason, Noah Morgan. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/6061/noah-morgan-mason

Mason Offers Valedictory To Congress. (1962, July 18). Belleville News-Democrat, 13.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/766382976/

Northerner Backs the South – States’ Rights and the U.S. Constitution Versus Civil Rights and the Court. (1957, June 7). The Times (Shreveport, LA), p. 15.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/211437254/

Samosky, J.A. (1983). Congressman Noah Morgan Mason, Illinois’ Conservative Spokesman. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 76(1), 35-48.

Retrieved from

http://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/eiu02/id/1216/

The Trade Expansion Act. CQ Almanac.

Retrieved from

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal62-1326212#_=_

Fascinating Politics

Big Ed Mechem: The Land of Enchantment’s Conservative Reformer

The New Mexico territory began as a conservative Republican stronghold and this was reflected in the first senators the state elected in Thomas B. Catron and Albert B. Fall. However, over time the state’s politics were increasingly inclined towards the Democrats, with the only Republican elected to Congress after the onset of the Great Depression being the progressive Senator Bronson Cutting, who would die in an airplane crash in 1935. From then on it was Democrats all the way, including in gubernatorial races. That was, until the election of Edwin Leard Mechem (1912-2002) as governor.

New Mexico in 1950 was considered quite Democratic, and at that point Republicans often had trouble recruiting candidates for major public offices. However, “Big Ed” (he was a large man) Mechem, a 38-year-old Las Cruces lawyer, stepped up to the plate against Democratic Congressman John E. Miles. Miles, who had had a long career in New Mexico politics, had good reason to think that he was going to win this one, and it didn’t hurt that he was politically moderate, potentially offsetting him being tied closely with the increasingly unpopular Truman Administration. However, Mechem delivered a powerful message against corruption in New Mexico politics and proposed reforms to the structure of the state’s government. New Mexico had had a long history of corruption in state politics, with money often having a strong influence on elections and charges of voter fraud were frequent; Senator Dennis Chavez may have won reelection in 1946 due to voter fraud (Hill). The climate of 1950 was decidedly conservative, and although New Mexico Democrats defeated Republican challengers for Congress (the two Democratic candidates were far from liberal stalwarts), Mechem won the 1950 election with 54% of the vote in an upset. Despite Mechem being quite conservative and the state of New Mexico being Democratic, he proved the state’s biggest vote-getter for the Republicans. He was not the first member of his family to serve as the state’s governor, as his uncle Merritt had done so from 1921 to 1923, also as a Republican.

As governor, Mechem proved a reformer, restructuring New Mexico government and standing independent of political machines. He also was quite politically savvy, and journalist James B. Barber of the Carlsbad Current-Argus noted that he was “a politician who can stumble into a vat of limburger cheese and come up reeking of [Chanel] No. 5. Some of it is luck, maybe, but there’s a lot of political savvy, too, in this big stubborn Las Cruces lawyer, who seldom takes advice from anyone” (28). He won reelection in 1952, running only two points behind Dwight Eisenhower. Mechem had a rather amusing tendency, as Barber noted, to issue forth a deep laugh from his chest that came out “ho ho ho” when he was dodging an inconvenient question (24). However, Mechem was term-limited, and instead of running for governor again, he tried to win a seat in the Senate. His opponent was Senator Clinton Anderson, a shrewd politician who was considered the foremost figure of the state’s Democratic Party. This would produce for him the worst defeat of his career, as the 1954 midterms resulted in the loss of control of Congress for the Republicans, and he would only net 43% of the vote. Mechem was not out of the game for long, and in 1956 he was again elected governor, defeating incumbent John F. Simms with 52% of the vote.

The 1958 election was particularly bad for Republicans, with Mechem losing by only a point to Democrat John Burroughs, but in a rematch in 1960 he campaigned against Burroughs’ forming his own political machine and came out ahead by less than a point. The Gallup Daily Independent had endorsed his bid for a comeback, citing his record as an efficient governor without ties to political machines (4). Although a victory, voters were less enthused about Mechem than in the past, and in 1962 Democrats managed to get New Mexico Representative Jack Campbell, a man known for being free of the control and influence of machines, to run against him. Campbell defeated him by 6 points. However, fate granted him an opportunity. On November 18th, the long-ailing Senator Chavez died, and Mechem pulled a maneuver that seldom works out in the long-run for politicians: resigning the governorship and having his successor appoint him to the Senate. This move was highly controversial in New Mexico as the voters had just rejected him for another term in public office only for him to move into the Senate.

Senator Mechem aligned himself closely with the staunchly conservative Barry Goldwater and his record proved among the most conservative in the Senate, opposing all major New Frontier and Great Society measures considered in his time in office as well as the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action rated him zeroes in both 1963 and 1964, not an easy feat to accomplish. He sided with Americans for Constitutional Action (Mechem would later serve on its Board of Trustees) 98% of the time by contrast, with the only position he had taken they considered liberal being voting against Senator Proxmire’s (D-Wis.) proposal to cut to Labor-HEW Appropriations in 1963. This meant, rather controversially for his state in which there were many Latinos, that he was one of six Republican senators to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mechem also opposed most sections of the bill and was the only Republican to vote in favor of Senator Gore’s (D-Tenn.) motion to recommit the bill to ease the provision cutting off aid to segregated schools. Mechem’s DW-Nominate score was a 0.585, placing him as the fourth most conservative senator in the 88th Congress. Although he had voted his conscience as his voting was far from tailored to win reelection in New Mexico at the time, this was politically tough as he was up for election to a full term in 1964, and that year was worse for the average Republican candidate than 1962 had been.

The 1964 Election: “Big Ed” vs. “Little Joe”

The 1964 election was one of great contrasts, both in the presidential election and in the New Mexico Senate election. “Big Ed” was facing a challenge from Joseph “Little Joe” Montoya, who represented one of New Mexico’s two At-Large districts. Little Joe supported JFK’s New Frontier legislation and LBJ’s Great Society, Big Ed did not. Little Joe supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Big Ed did not. A lot of support for Mechem’s campaign likely came from people remembering him as a good and effective governor of the state, but the candidacy of Barry Goldwater was tough for him to work with, especially since he voted with him on almost all key issues.

Although Mechem tried his best, he was defeated by nine points in 1964, with Montoya getting excellent results in Spanish-American areas. Mechem’s move to the Senate had only temporarily stayed the execution of his political career, and he demonstrated that he was the rule and not the exception when it came to governors getting themselves appointed to the Senate. As a side note, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin is an example of how to do it right; after Senator Robert Byrd died in 2009, he appointed an interim successor and ran in a proper election to finish the late Byrd’s term in 2010 and won despite West Virginia no longer being competitive for Democrats in presidential elections and the 2010 midterms being what President Obama called a “shellacking” for the Democrats. Journalist Will Harrison (1964) wrote of the outcome for Mechem, “The Nov. 3 election was very likely the end of Ed Mechem’s political career. It is possible that he might have beaten Montoya in a head-to-head run without the presidential influence, but the writing was on the wall for Mechem in 1962 when Jack Campbell demonstrated that a clean, aggressive Democrat could beat him without outside influence. Mechem’s 1962 loss of Albuquerque and his home county of Dona Ana, and the loss of such formerly reliable areas as San Juan and Santa Fe were signals that he had reached the end of his string” (4). Harrison was right; the New Mexico voters had tired of “Big Ed” Mechem, and he would never again be elected to public office. However, one important person had not tired of “Big Ed”, and that was Richard Nixon.

Judge Mechem

In 1970, President Nixon nominated Mechem, who he dubbed “Mr. Republican” as a Federal court judge for the district of New Mexico, and he was confirmed. While a judge, Mechem’s judicial record was not influenced by his political leanings; he ruled that age discrimination was occurring at Sandia National Labs, that sex discrimination was occurring in the Albuquerque police department, that the Socorro County jail had been indifferent to the medical needs of a prisoner who died, and made several rulings favorable to American Indians (Hill). Mechem assumed senior status (a state of semi-retirement for judges) in 1982 but would continue to work as much as he could for the last twenty years of his life. He died on November 27, 2002, at the age of 90 from his longtime heart condition.

Future of New Mexico Politics

Interestingly, not too long after Mechem’s 1964 defeat, the politics of New Mexico improved considerably for Republicans and conservatives, with Richard Nixon winning the state in 1968, two Republicans being elected to Congress that year, and the 1972 election resulting in the election of Republican Pete Domenici to the Senate, who represented the state for 36 years. New Mexico today is now politically what it was during the time of FDR, Democratic all around for major offices, and the last Republican the state voted for in a presidential election was George W. Bush in 2004. Is a comeback in store for the Republicans in New Mexico? Undoubtedly at some point, but when that’s going to be is anyone’s guess.

Correction, 3/4/25: I had originally written of Joe Manchin’s election in 2010 to the Senate as for a full term, but it was actually to complete the late Senator Byrd’s term. Manchin ran for a full term in 2012. My thanks to Daniel Fox for spotting this.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Barber, J.B. (1953, May 10). If It’s Politics, Big Ed’s Coming Out Ahead. Carlsbad Current-Argus, 28.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/504660962/

Barber, J.B. (1953, March 29). Will Mechem Try For Senate Seat? Ho Ho Ho. Carlsbad Current-Argus, 24.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/504706110/

Harrison, W. (1964, November 8). Perfect Drive For Little Joe. Carlsbad Current-Argus, 4.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/504842775/

Hill, R. E.L. Mechem of New Mexico: BIG ED. The Knoxville Focus.

Retrieved fromhttps://www.knoxfocus.com/archives/this-weeks-focus/e-l-mechem-new-mexico-big-ed/

Mechem, Edwin Leard. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/10811/edwin-leard-mechem

Fascinating Politics

“Smiling Bill” Miller: He Had No Legs But Ran Six Times

Like many men of his generation, William Jennings Miller (1899-1950) was a veteran of the first World War. Unlike many men of his generation, his injuries occurred shortly after the war’s conclusion. Miller was test-flying a plane and it crashed. He suffered a broken back as well as the loss of both of his legs, and spent four years in the hospital. Despite this crushing loss, Miller proceeded with life after being released. He got married and launched a successful insurance career in Hartford, Connecticut. Miller also was active in the American Legion, becoming Connecticut’s commander in the 1930s. In this position, he simultaneously fought for generous benefits for disabled veterans while taking a fiscally conservative stance in opposing adjusted compensation certificates, and during his tenure membership reached record levels (Congressional Record, 16000). Miller’s success in insurance as well as in the American Legion put him in a good position to run for public office, and in 1938 he challenged Democrat Herman P. Kopplemann for reelection. This was a good time to run as it was the first election since 1928 that went in a Republican direction, and he was among the winners. This election started a ten-year cycle of boom and bust for the parties in Connecticut.

Congressman Miller

Miller was a happy warrior while in Congress, persistently cheerful despite his disability and known as “Smiling Bill”. His attendance record was solid and as an active member of the American Legion he specialized in veterans’ affairs. Miller encouraged veterans, injured and not injured alike, to not rely on the government whilst advocating for them. He proved fiscally conservative, voting against work relief appropriations in 1939. However, on social issues he proved liberal. Miller was one of less than ten Republicans to oppose the Hobbs bill in 1939 that would have provided for detention facilities for illegal immigrants. Miller also supported anti-lynching legislation, which while you might think this would be a given in Connecticut, his Republican colleague, Thomas Ball of the 2nd district, voted against. He was also opposed to the US getting involved in World War II, voting against the Neutrality Act Amendments in 1939 and against the peacetime draft in 1940. 1940 was a good year for the Democrats in Connecticut, and all House Republican incumbents lost reelection, with Kopplemann returning to office. However, in 1942, Miller ran again and defeated Kopplemann a second time.

During the 78th Congress, Miller was staunchly independent in his voting. He voted against appropriations for the Dies Committee, for income tax relief, against further funds for the National Youth Administration, and against the Smith-Connally Act. The latter provided a mechanism for stopping wartime strikes and it was enacted in 1943 over President Roosevelt’s veto. Miller further voted against multiple efforts to weaken wartime price control, voted against soldier voting bills that placed the criterion of who would get mailed a ballot with the States as opposed to the Federal government, voted to ban the poll tax in Federal elections, supported generous benefits for defense workers, supported legislation curbing subsidies, and supported freezing the Social Security tax at 1%. 1944 was, although not the blowout year for Connecticut Democrats that 1940 was, still a good year as four of six of the Republican representatives were not returned to office, with Miller again losing to Kopplemann. In 1946, however, Republicans again had a clean sweep of the Connecticut delegation, with Kopplemann losing reelection for the last time to Miller. During the Republican 80th Congress, he supported income tax reduction over President Truman’s veto, the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman’s veto, banning the poll tax for Federal elections, the Reed-Bulwinkle bill easing anti-trust laws on railroads, budget cuts to multiple departments, and the Marshall Plan. However, he demonstrated his independence and his general aversion to anti-subversion measures in being one of only eight House Republicans to vote against the Mundt-Nixon bill for the registration of Communists with the Attorney General. Although Miller opposed cuts to aid to Europe, he nonetheless voted against aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947. I have not been able to find out the why but his voting on other foreign aid measures suggests that his rationale may have been similar to that of a small group of Democratic liberals who opposed such aid as the two nations fell short of being democracies.

Miller’s independence did not save him from another defeat in 1948, this time by future Connecticut Governor, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and Senator Abe Ribicoff. Despite his record of being in and out of Congress, Miller ran ahead of most Republicans (Congressional Record, 16000). This highlighted both how difficult his district had become for Republicans but also to Miller’s appeal. Ideologically, his DW-Nominate score was a 0.062, highlighting his strong independence from party line and his score from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, which accounted for his last term, was a 32%.

Perhaps had his health allowed it, he would have made another go for Congress. However, Miller developed a kidney ailment in March 1949 that resulted in him being bedridden for a year (The Hartford Courant). Although it looked like earlier in the year he might have been on the mend, he died only weeks after the 1950 election on November 22nd. The Hartford Courant memorialized him thusly, “Former Congressman William J. Miller attained a remarkable degree of success despite a physical handicap that would have discouraged a less courageous man…Bill Miller wore nobody’s collar when he was in Congress. When he thought his party’s leadership was wrong, he voted as his conscience dictated” (Congressional Record, 16000). Despite living a physically difficult and short life, Miller made the best of it that he could and did so with a smile on his face. Republicans didn’t fare well in the Hartford-based district after Miller’s exit, with the Republicans only winning back the district one more time; in 1956, when President Eisenhower was overwhelmingly reelected and the seat was open. It also happened to be the last time Connecticut elected an entirely Republican delegation to Congress. The 1958 midterms resulted in a full switch of the House delegation from Republican to Democrat and saw Republican Senator William Purtell’s reelection loss to Thomas J. Dodd. Could a Republican like Miller be elected in any district in Connecticut today? Perhaps in the 4th or 5th districts, but Connecticut hasn’t sent a Republican to Congress since 2006, and that was Chris Shays, considered one of the most liberal Republicans in his day who fell in 2008 to the district’s current representative, Jim Himes.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Congressional Record. (1950, November 30). U.S. Government Publishing Office.

Retrieved from

Click to access GPO-CRECB-1950-pt12-4-2.pdf

Miller, Recovering From Illness, Is Allowed Outdoors. (1950, March 14). The Hartford Courant.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/369901384/

Miller, William Jennings. Voteview.

Retrieved fromhttps://voteview.com/person/6518/william-jennings-miller