Walter Evans Edge

Edge's successful advertising and publishing businesses made him very wealthy. From the beginning, his ultimate goal was to use his success in business to build a political career and to devote his primary attention to politics after he had attained financial security.[2]

In 1894, Edge was elected to the executive committee of the Atlantic City Republican Party.[2] From 1897 until 1899 he served as journal clerk of the New Jersey Senate, a position that enabled him to meet state political figures and learn parliamentary procedures. In the 1890s Edge was a sergeant with the Morris Guards, a private military organization based in Atlantic City, and when the Spanish–American War began in 1898, he volunteered the company for service in the United States Army. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army during the war and served for a few months, but did not leave the United States. Between 1901 and 1904, Edge was appointed secretary of the state senate, another position that enabled him to cultivate relationships with state legislators.

In 1904, Edge ran as a reformer in the Republican primary for the Atlantic County state senate seat occupied by incumbent Edward S. Lee. Edge used his Atlantic City Daily Press to promote his candidacy against Lee, who was supported by the established local Republican machine. Edge lost to Lee.[2]

After his defeat, Edge's Daily Press became a faithful supporter of the local Republican organization,[5] and in 1909 he was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly. In 1910, Edge was elected to the New Jersey Senate where he served for two terms, becoming the senate president in 1915.

Although Edge served in the state legislature during the height of the Progressive Era, he tended to take moderate positions and was not considered a reformer. He supported the Republican leadership, although he did cooperate with reformers when their efforts appeared sure of success. Early in his legislative career, Edge worked extensively in developing a workers' compensation law for New Jersey, even traveling to Europe to study compensation systems there. The workers' compensation bill that he sponsored was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Woodrow Wilson. He also promoted legislation calling for a ten-hour day for women workers and safety laws protecting factory workers. He gained a reputation for concern with economic matters and the efficiency of state government.[1]

In early 1916 Edge announced his candidacy for governor. Edge's opponent for the Republican nomination was Austen Colgate.[2] Edge's campaign manager, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, the boss of the Atlantic County Republican machine, and Frank Hague, boss of the Hudson County Democratic machine, are widely credited with securing Edge's election as governor.[5] Johnson reached out to Hague, who feared the Democratic candidate, H. Otto Wittpenn, a reformer whose election would threaten Hague's control of Hudson County.[6][7] It is unclear whether Edge and Hague reached some agreement in exchange for Hague's assistance, with one authority concluding there was "[p]robably no outright deal",[7] another stating Edge provided Hague with "a pledge of cooperation",[6] and a third stating that Edge "had a working arrangement with Hague; the former to be left alone in South Jersey and Hague to be 'protected' in Hudson".[8] In any event, Hague instructed those in his Democratic organization to crossover and vote for Edge in the Republican primary, thereby securing Edge a narrow victory.[6] Thereafter, Hague did not support Wittpenn in the general election, and Edge was elected on a platform of making government more effective and efficient with the slogan "A Business Man with a Business Plan".[1][6]

As governor, Edge obtained legislation consolidating state boards, improving the civil service, imposing a franchise tax on public utilities, allowing greater home rule for cities, reforming corporation law, and improving state institutions, especially the prisons.[1][9] In 1917 the legislature also agreed to Edge's proposal to reorganize the state road department, and Edge won approval for legislation authorizing the construction of a bridge between southern New Jersey and Philadelphia and a tunnel between northern New Jersey and New York City.[1] The bridge had been sought for some time by South Jersey legislators, but had failed to gain the support of North Jersey legislators, who opposed spending state funds on a project that they felt would benefit only the southern part of the state.[2] Edge therefore combined the bridge proposal with plans for a tunnel to New York to win statewide support.[2] The bridge, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which spans the Delaware River between Camden and Philadelphia, opened in 1926, and the tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, which connects Jersey City and lower Manhattan, opened in 1927. It has been contended that the decision to place the terminus of the tunnel in Jersey City was the result of Frank Hague's support of Edge in the 1916 gubernatorial election.[10]

A considerable part of Edge's efforts as governor involved the mobilization for World War I and postwar planning.[1]

In 1918 Edge was elected to the United States Senate, defeating George L. Record and Edward W. Gray in the Republican primary and Democratic candidate George W. La Monte in the general election.[11][12] Although the term to which he had been elected began on March 4, 1919, the Senate was in recess at that time. In order to attend to remaining gubernatorial business, Edge did not resign as governor until May 16, 1919, and was sworn in as senator three days later.[13]

The most important and controversial vote held by the Senate during Edge's term involved the Treaty of Versailles, the ratification of which would have allowed the United States to join the League of Nations. As a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, Edge was a "mild reservationist" on the question. Although he appears to have genuinely wanted the United States to enter the League of Nations, he believed that reservations to the treaty were needed both to protect national sovereignty and to secure the votes needed for ratification by the Senate. In November 1919 and again in March 1920, he voted to ratify the treaty with the Lodge Reservations.[2][14]

Continuing his efforts to apply business management principles to government, in 1919 Edge introduced a joint resolution that led to the passage of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which established the Bureau of the Budget (now called the Office of Management and Budget) and the General Accounting Office.[2] Edge also sponsored the Edge Act, a 1919 Amendment to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which allowed National Banks (any banking institution chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) to engage in international banking through federally chartered subsidiaries.

At the 1920 Republican National Convention that nominated Warren G. Harding for President, there was a movement to nominate Edge as candidate for Vice President. Convention rules required the vote of a candidate's state delegation as a unit in support of the nomination, which Edge could not secure. In 1917, while governor, Edge had made an enemy of William P. Verdon, Republican leader of Hudson County, when Edge refused to appoint the man Verdon wanted as Hudson County prosecutor, Richard Doherty. (Verdon had expected that Doherty would wage a campaign against election fraud in Hudson County if appointed prosecutor). At the convention, Verdon kept his delegates from voting for Edge, thereby blocking the attempt to nominate him, and Verdon backed the nomination of Calvin Coolidge, the successful candidate.[15][16]

Edge opposed prohibition and voted against the Volstead Act. In 1924, he ran for reelection advocating the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment,[2] which New Jersey had approved in 1922, after the end of his term as governor. He proposed a number of bills that would relax prohibition, including legislation authorizing the sale of alcoholic beverages with an alcohol content of 3%,[17] and another bill to legalize the sale of beer with alcohol content of 2.75%.[18] At some point he supported practically every anti-prohibition movement in the Senate.[2]

Edge was reelected to the Senate in 1924, defeating prohibition advocate Hamilton F. Kean in the Republican primary and Democratic candidate Frederick W. Donnelly in the general election.[2]

In April 1929, it was reported that President Herbert Hoover would appoint Edge United States Ambassador to France.[19] He did not resign from the Senate and take office as Ambassador, however, until November 21, 1929, a delay attributable to political issues involving the appointment of a Republican successor to fill his Senate seat and the desire to have his expertise in the Senate while tariff legislation was considered.[20] During the course of the tariff debates, Edge proved a protectionist who voted in favor of higher tariffs on imported goods.[21] The resulting tariff law, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, was not enacted until the spring of 1930, several months after Edge left the Senate.

During his tenure as ambassador, Edge spent considerable time dealing with Franco-American trade issues, which were strained by tariff policies and the contentious post-World War I questions of war debts, reparations and disarmament.[22]

After his ambassadorship ended in 1933, Edge spent most of the next decade living a life of retirement, traveling, and serving as an elder statesman for the New Jersey Republican party. With the outbreak of World War II, Edge was eager to return to public service. In 1943 he agreed to run for governor provided no one opposed him in the Republican primary and the party maintained strong discipline, and party leaders accepted those conditions. Following his nomination, Edge faced Democratic candidate Vincent J. Murphy, mayor of Newark and state leader of the American Federation of Labor, in the general election. By now, any assistance provided to him by Hudson County Democratic boss Frank Hague in the 1916 election was long forgotten, and Edge hammered on the theme of Hague's power, campaigning that a vote for Murphy was a vote for the domination of "labor leaders, communists and Hagueism". Edge also advocated streamlining state government, early postwar planning and the adoption of a new state constitution, which he considered essential to modernizing state government and which had been actively supported by the incumbent Democratic governor, Charles Edison. In the November 1943 election, Edge defeated Murphy by a comfortable margin.[1]

Edge's second term as governor was marked by numerous battles with Hague. In 1944, Edge and Hague fought over how certain railroad tax money should be allocated (with Hague's position ultimately prevailing), while Edge won the passage of legislation that required the use of voting machines in Hudson County to reduce the chance of electoral fraud.[1] Edge also obtained legislation authorizing the governor to appoint jury commissioners for each county, bypassing county sheriffs,[23] who had previously hand-picked grand jurors who they knew would refuse to indict those engaged in illegal activities protected by political bosses like Hague. The most important battle between Edge and Hague involved constitutional revision. In early 1944, Republican legislators drafted a new proposed constitution that would have, among other things, deprived Hague of a major source of patronage by restructuring the judiciary. Hague strongly opposed the revised constitution, and several weeks prior to the November 1944 election he launched a multi-pronged attack on it, charging that it would restrict the activities of labor unions, inhibit advancement opportunities for returning veterans, and subject all church owned property to taxation. Voters rejected the proposed constitution.[1]

The Edge administration battled Hague on other fronts as well. Walter D. Van Riper, whom Edge had appointed state attorney general, took over the Hudson County prosecutor's office and brought in outside investigators.[8] Van Riper aggressively prosecuted unlawful activities protected by the Hague organization. In June 1944, he led raids on Hudson County horse race betting rooms, later obtaining the indictments from newly constituted Hudson grand juries, the first indictments for such activities since Hague had come to power. In the process, gambling on horse racing in Hudson County was virtually eliminated.[24] In early 1945 Hague retaliated by having his hand-picked United States Attorney bring two federal indictments against Van Riper, one charging check kiting and the other related to the alleged sale of gasoline in the black market.[8] Van Riper went to trial on both indictments and was acquitted of all charges.[25][26] Edge and Van Riper were undeterred and continued to apply pressure on Hague. Major state jobs, which Hague once had controlled, now went to Republicans. The state civil service system was reformed and freed from Hague's domination.[8] The actions of the Edge administration took a heavy toll on Hague, who retired from active politics in 1947 during the administration of Edge's successor, Republican Alfred E. Driscoll.

Despite the defeat of constitutional revision, Edge was able to accomplish much of his program. A number of state boards and commissions were consolidated, and a Taxation and Finance Department was established to handle all fiscal matters. Legislation providing benefits to returning veterans was enacted, as was legislation intended to improve the living conditions of migrant workers.[1] In 1945, Edge signed a series of laws banning racial or religious discrimination in public accommodations, employment, public school admissions, jury service and hospital care.[1][27]

Much of Edge's last year in office was spent dealing with problems associated with the conversion to a peacetime economy and a wave of strikes.[1]