Hudson County Facts

Dictator – American Style
The political boss who is convinced that his own righteousness places him above the law

Condensed from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 20, 1938
By Marquis W. Childs, Author of “Sweden – The Middle Way”

Originally appeared in The Reader’s Digest of August 1938

More about Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague

WHAT HAS happened in Jersey City may be dictatorship. There is considerable proof that Mayor Frank Hague rules his community of 350,000 with a tyrant’s disregard for the law. But one thing is certain: the circum stances that created Hague, the boss, could hardly have occurred any where else in the world. If this is Fascism, it’s the American brand.

Hague himself is as American as a hot-dog stand. This comes out in his talk about his city, and the picture he has of himself in relation to it.

“I made the city,” he says. “Nobody cared a damn about it before I came along.” He tells you about the free service in the Jersey City Medical Center, the psychiatric clinic for maladjusted children, the abolition of prostitution. He has taken care of his people, after his fashion.

“You take that time of the big coal strike,” he says. “Why, the Chief of Police came to me and said people can’t get coal, schools are shutting down. I said to him, I said, `You go and find out whether there’s any coal in town.’

“Well, he came back and said Burns Brothers had some coal, but they were shipping it to New England. I said to him, `You go down to the ferries and stop that coal.’ Then I told the head man at Burns, `You’re going to sell us coal.’ He didn’t like it but finally agreed. Say, we sold 5000 tons to the people for five cents a scuttle.”

Aggressiveness marks Hague’s manner. Holding an ordinary conversation, he thumps his listener’s chest for vigorous emphasis. No orator, he roars through a speech. Hague didn’t go much beyond the sixth grade in school; his speech, except when polished for state occasions, is devoid of grammatical pretensions.
There is little sham about the man. In his own eyes he is armored in righteousness – no drinking, no smoking; a sound family man. A devout churchman, he gave a resplendent $50,000 altar to St. Aedan’s Church in Jersey City.

And what of all this money which his critics intimate he has taken from somewhere? They say he lives like a millionaire, and owns a summer home for which he paid $125,000. He goes to Europe in de luxe suites on de luxe liners. For years this has been going on, while Hague has never made more than $8000 annually in public office. Hague frankly admits he has made money, although he refuses to go into details. A successful man, he says, is always in a position to make money, he is put in the way of making money
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Boss Hague, King Hanky-Panky of Jersey

By Jack Alexander

Originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on October 26, 1940

The Honorable Frank Hague, the perpetual mayor of Jersey City, is perhaps the most eminent mugg in the United States. Hague was a mugg when he was expelled from the sixth grade at thirteen as a truant and dullard, and be was a mugg when he started learning politics the bare-knuckles way in the tough Horseshoe district of Jersey City in the 1890′s. He was still a mugg when he was elected mayor of that dreary human hive in 1917, in which capacity he has held the center of the stage ever since with the grim determination of a bad violinist. Hague will probably he known to history as a strong character who, despite all temptations to belong to other classifications, loyally remained a mugg to the end. This is a remarkable achievement when you analyze it, for Hanky-Panky, as his admirers sometimes call him, has walked with the great and good, and their only noticeable effect on him has been to give him a taste for expensive haberdashery. At heart and in practice, he is a strong-arm man today, tricked out by a clever tailor to look like a statesman.

As a wood carver fashions puppets, Hague has created governors, United States senators, and judges of high and low degree. He has been backslapped cordially by the President and by men who wanted to be President. He has bossed the state of New Jersey almost as long as he has ruled Jersey City. He has mingled intimately with leaders of medicine and the clergy and, in a famous civil-liberties case, was firmly kneaded and processed by the august Supreme Court of the United States. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and, as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he is a leader in the Party of Humanity.

From time to time, in his twenty-three years as mayor, he has enjoyed the investigative attentions of committees sent by the United States Senate and the New Jersey legislature and of agents of the Justice and Treasury departments. He has been a frequent guest at the baronial Duke Farms in Somerville, New Jersey, and he has dandled a teacup in the parlor of Mrs E. T. Stotesbury, the widow of a famous Morgan partner. Yet, in spite of all these softening influences, he persists in saying, “I have went,” and in using singular subjects with plural verbs, and vice versa. In conversation he bellows oracularly and jabs a long finger into his listener’s clavicle to emphasize his points, most of which boil down to his favorite argumentative phrase, “You know I’m right about that!” His language, when he is aroused, is that of the gin mill. He rules his city by the nightstick and the state by crass political barter. He is loud and vulgar and given to public displays of phony piety during which his enemies are dismissed as “Red,” or worse.

At sixty-four, he is still erect and muscular, and he is not above physically assaulting a quailing civil employee whom he has called on the carpet. None dares to hit back, for fear of being harassed by Hague’s police or being held up to public disgrace in some devious way.

A legislative committee once determined that during a seven-year period when Hague’s salary, admittedly his only source of income, totaled $56,000, he purchased real estate and other property for a total outlay of nearly $400,000. This was done through dummies, and payment was made in cash. Hague has always shied from bank accounts. Although his salary as mayor is only $8000, has never exceeded $8500 and has been as low as $6520, Hague lives like a millionaire. He keeps a fourteen-room duplex apartment in Jersey City and a suite in a plushy Manhattan hotel. He owns a palatial summer home in Deal, New Jersey, for which he paid $125,120 – in cash – and he gambles regularly on the horse races. Before the present war began he went to Europe every year, traveling in the royal suites of the best liners. Now he spends more time in Florida and at Saratoga Springs, where he flashes a bank roll, held together by a wide rubber hand, which always contains a few $1000 notes, a denomination of which Hague is childishly fond. Hague’s public squanderings have brought Jersey City’s municipal finances to a dangerous pass. Wholly dominated by Hague, Jersey City is the worst mess of unpunished civic corruption in the forty-eight states.

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