Lightning by Edison

Frank ("I-Am-the-Law") Hague, Boss-Mayor of Jersey City, loves to be dramatic. He is dramatic about motherhood (he has never been a mother), about Jersey City (a dreary spot), about collars (oldfashioned, stiff ones), about grammar (his is bad). Last week, with a loud, red face, he got dramatic about New Jersey's Governor Edison. For the Governor had signed a bill that hit Hague where it hurt most--the pocketbook.

First two-fisted assault on Hague's domination of the State government, the bill waived payment by railroads of $17,000,000 in interest and penalties on tax bills, settled a much-argued suit by accepting $34,000.000 in installments. Worse still, the bill poked at the shaky financial setup of Jersey City by providing that railroads shall hereafter pay taxes on a more flexible basis. Boss Hague's paternalistic government of Jersey City is the most expensive in the U.S., and he needs the heavy municipal taxes (three times higher per mile than in any other State) paid by railroads with terminals in his town.

Boss Hague has been accustomed to hand-pick New Jersey's Governors, but he did not hand-pick Edison. And the Boss is well aware that the Governor does not like the smell of Haguery in Jersey

City. With a deafening imitation of indignant innocence, Boss Hague let out a yell (in full-page advertisements, paid for by Jersey City) that could be heard for miles. Yelled Hague: "This will cost Jersey City $57,000,000 in twenty years."

What caused a really sincere note of alarm in Hague's indignation was the bill's provision that railroads should be reassessed, presumably at lower figures. Such a reassessment would force Hague to increase assessments on other Jersey City properties, already at the highest level in the U.S. An automatic lowering of the debt limit would follow, might bring Jersey City's fancy finances into the lurid red; for Hague has borrowed heavily in anticipation of railroad-tax collections.

The bill was only one phase of Governor Edison's adroit assault. Edison is well aware that a large part of Hague's power lies in control of New Jersey judges. The Governor showed his hand, a week after he took office, by appointing Republican Frederic R. Colie to the Supreme Bench. Hague's reaction: an hour of abuse and threats screamed into the Governor's ear by telephone from the Boss's winter den on Biscayne Bay.

Second point of attack is the primary in September, when the Governor will try for a knockout by backing anti-Hague candidates, men who supported the railroad-tax revision. If Edison's men win, their victory may imperil Boss Hague's grip on the State Democratic machine, which usually carries only two or three of the State's 21 counties but rolls up a majority of more than 100,000 in Hague's Hudson County--enough to insure the Boss' Statewide rule. Informed that Edison was already taking the field for a series of speeches, Hague tossed a grenade toward the State capitol: "He is thus attempting to becloud the issue. ... I am, therefore, handing over the State leadership of the Democratic Party to Governor Edison." By then he had hooked off to Arizona with Mrs. Hague, who, he said, was ailing.

His grenade was a dud. Edison's reply: the leadership was not in the gift of Hague, but lay with the people, from whom he was willing to receive it.

In a bad week for New Jersey bosses, Atlantic County's Republican Boss Enoch ("Nucky") Lewis Johnson took it on the double chin. Long a shameless devourer of graft, showgirls & champagne, Boss Johnson stood before a Federal bar, smiled blandly when a jury foreman said: "Not Guilty." Second later, Nucky's tough face turned an unbecoming yellow at: "Guilty!" and "Guilty!" He had been convicted of cheating the Government out of taxes on $124,800 in '36 and '37. He had escaped conviction on a charge of doing the same thing in '35. Useful witnesses: operators of a policy racket who testified they had paid him $1,200 a week for police protection.

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