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

In the political field, the blurring of party labels in the 1880's became almost a total effacement by the 1920's. Although New Jersey remained Republican in national politics from 1896 to 1932, except when Wilson won in 1912, it has been much more inclined to elect Democratic Governors. Since Wilson's term, the Republicans have elected only three Governors, Walter Edge in 1916, Morgan Larson in 1928, and Hold G. Hoffman in 1934. The former two derived great strength from concurrent Presidential tickets; while Hoffman's stormy administration demonstrated the candor with which Frank Hague, Mayor of Jersey City and the State's most powerful Democrat, harmonized the theoretical differences of the two major parties to obtain quick unchallenged action for his conservative supporters. This unusual cooperation between Democratic and Republican chieftains moved the New York Timer to exclaim editorially, "If most politics is queer, New Jersey politics is queerer."

Both Hoffman and Hague have made official efforts to check the growth of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in mass industries. Although locally the Democratic Party had for years advocated legislation to curb injunctions in labor disputes, it reversed its position in 1937. Mayor Hague explained that he felt the shift was necessary to avoid frightening employers or prospective employers from the State.

The responsibility for piloting the State through the depression fell on both the Democratic and Republican Parties. The administration of relief was handled by the State until 1936, when the legislature turned it back to the municipalities. Although the change was hailed by some as a step toward economy and common sense, searching and severe criticism soon came from experts of the State and Federal Governments. In 1937, a study for the Social Science Research Council showed that the average New Jersey family on relief lived 40 percent below the minimum subsistence standard, and that it was practically impossible for many of the smaller communities to give adequate aid.

In the 1937 gubernatorial campaign the Democratic candidate, Senator A. Harry Moore, defeated the Reverend Lester H. Clee by the slender margin of 43,600 votes, as compared with a Moore plurality of 230,053 in the 1931 election. Dissatisfied with the results of the election of 1937, representatives of a large portion of the 425,000 New Jersey members of the Committee for Industrial Organization and the American Federation of Labor held a preliminary convention in the fall of 1937, looking toward the formation of an independent Labor Party in New Jersey.

Despite population growth and industrial changes undreamed of in Colonial days, the essential pattern of New Jersey history remains inseparable from that of her neighbors across the Hudson and Delaware Rivers.

Concrete highways, steel rails and air lanes have made New Jersey more than ever the corridor between New York and Philadelphia. The State's factories and farms help to sustain the economy of the neighboring metropolises; its homes and apartment houses shelter many thousands of New York and Pennsylvania workers; its industrial and labor policies, its corporation laws and its tax system are determined always with an eye to their effect upon competition with the neighboring States.

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