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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002
Except for the electoral split in 1186o and a shift to Grant in 1872, New
Jersey gave a majority to every Democratic Presidential candidate between
1852 and 1896. In the latter year Mark Hanna himself was astounded
when New Jersey gave McKinley a plurality of 87,692 over Bryan, and
elected John W. Griggs as its first Republican Governor in 30 years.
Several factors were responsible for the Republican ascendancy. As the
pseudo-agricultural party, the Democrats lost relative strength because the
number of farms decreased after 188o. At the same time, the commuter
vote, composed largely of Republicans from New York and Philadelphia,
increased. Finally, the economic eye of the State was becoming more and
more sensitive to the high-tariff button eternally pinned on the Republican
lapel.
In that era of seemingly limitless national expansion -- when the value
of manufactured products in New Jersey rose from $169,237,600 in 1870
to $611,748,000 in 1900 -- the State began to assume its present leadership
in industry. To man the prospering factories and mills, thousands of immigrants, chiefly from southern and eastern Europe, poured into the industrial cities where they quickly established lasting foreign quarters. In the
brick and terra cotta works around Perth Amboy, in the heavy industries
of Newark, in the woolen mills of Passaic, in the shipyards of Camden,
and in the ceramic plants of Trenton, European skills joined with native
enterprise to further New Jersey industry.
The State, which had grown from a population of 373,306 in 1840 to
1,883,669 in 1900, was becoming a more integral part of the economic
and cultural life of the Atlantic seaboard. Much of the spirit of speed and
efficiency of New York and Philadelphia business life flowed across the
Hudson and Delaware, quickening the tempo of New Jersey's cities and
suburbs. In the same way, important cultural threads of the two metropolises were spun across, drawing up New Jersey in the weave.
The State's educational facilities were strengthened by the founding of
Rutgers Scientific School in 1863 and by the opening of Stevens Institute
of Technology in 1871. In the latter year a free school system was established and in 1874 a compulsory education law was passed. To Princeton
College many of the well-to-do families of New York and Philadelphia
sent their sons.
As early as the 1840's Cape May was a summer social capital, and after
the Civil War Long Branch became the vacation choice of Presidents-as
well as the playground for the Astors and Fishes of New York, the Biddles and Drexels of Philadelphia. A quarter of a century later Atlantic
City and Asbury Park were performing the same service for many thousands of Philadelphia and New York vacationers. New Jersey's oyster and
cranberry industries catered to the national appetite, while its truck gardens and dairy farms supplied a large portion of the produce sold in
metropolitan markets.
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