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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
For New York and Pennsylvania financiers and for corporation builders
generally New Jersey offered a special attraction. From the 1870's on, the
State's lax incorporation laws invited the formation of trusts and monopolies in hastily rented offices in Newark or Jersey City. When Lincoln Steffens and the other "muckrakers" began to investigate "big business" they
contemptuously labeled New Jersey "The Mother of Trusts."
New Jersey's role as a green pasture for foaling corporations illustrates
several important characteristics of the State at the turn of the century.
Mark Sullivan, in Our Times, has raised the question of why New Jersey
"voluntarily assumed a role which made it a subject of jeering for twenty
years," after New York and Ohio court decisions had killed the trusts in
those States. He cites the theory of Steffens that New Jersey's position as
the terminal of many great railroad systems made the State responsive to
corporate influence, and he suggests that nearness to Wall Street may also
have been a factor.
Another probable reason, Sullivan points out, was the fact that many of
the ablest New Jersey citizens were commuters who took little interest in
the State in which they merely slept. "In such a community," he concludes,
"it would be easy for politicians and lawyers representing financial interests to take possession of the machinery of the State and to use it to the
advantage of the interests they represented. The revenue accruing to the
State from the fees it received for providing a home for outside corporations lightened the burden of taxes on New Jersey voters and their property. Many New Jersey people frankly and publicly justified the laws favoring the trusts on that ground."
The nineteenth century revolt against railroad domination was soon
paralleled by an early twentieth century attack on the trusts and machine
politics. George L. Record, who had broken with the Hudson County
Democratic machine, was the leader of the "New Idea" movement that
carried the assault. Closely associated with him were Mark Fagan, who
repudiated his boss after being elected the first Republican mayor of Jersey City in many years; Austin Colgate, Frank Sommer, Everett Colby and
others. Their program called for election reforms, equal taxation of rail-
roads and utilities, and regulation of public utilities. Although the New
Idea men accomplished little during the terms of Governors Stokes and
Fort, they had their chance with Governor Woodrow Wilson.
Paradoxically, Wilson was nominated in 1900 by the Democratic leaders against the opposition of the young progressives in his party. Colonel
George Harvey was looking for a 1912 Presidential candidate. He induced James Smith Jr., titular Democratic chief, to select Wilson as a man
who would impart a respectable tone to the gubernatorial campaign. When
the "safe" professor from Princeton University repudiated the bosses during the campaign, they did not take him seriously. When, however, after
election, Wilson successfully supported James E. Martine against Smith
for United States Senator, the machine politicians realized that they had
unwittingly elected a champion of the progressives.
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