NEW JERSEY
THE AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES
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NEW JERSEY
A Guide to Its Present and Past
OFTW/r
THE
NEW I ERSE Y
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A GUIDE TO ITS PRESENT AND PAST
Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers 7 Project of the
Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey
AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES
ILLUSTRATED
Sponsored by The Public Library of Newark
and The New Jersey Guild Associates
THE VIKING PRESS NEW YORK
MCMXXXIX
FIRST PUBLISHED IN JUNE 1939
NEW JERSEY GUILD ASSOCIATES, INC.
Louis Adamic Dr. Paul F. Lazarsfeld
Prof. John E. Bebout Dr. Eduard C. Lindeman
Franklin Conklin, 3rd. Mrs. William Milwitzky
Alexander L. Crosby Charles A. Philhower
Mrs. Arne Fisher Joseph Reilly
Louis Ginsberg Sylvia Smith
Dr. Milton R. Konvitz Michael A. Stavitzky
Dr. William Carlos Williams
COPYRIGHT 1939 BY THE NEW JERSEY GUILD ASSOCIATES, INC.
PRINTED IN U.S.A. BY THE STRATFORD PRESS
All rights are reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or parts thereof in any form.
Sponsors Forewords
This story of New Jersey is cause for pride to those who love the State,
but must also give pause to those who can be critical at the same time.
Its beauty and romance, its ugliness and the commonplace have been
preserved in an unusual balance by the collaborators in the evaluation of
the State.
The Editors are to be heartily congratulated upon an achievement of
note, as this Guide is a distinct contribution to a knowledge of the history
of New Jersey.
BEATRICE WINSER, Librarian
Newark Public Library
The New Jersey Guild Associates as co-sponsors with the Newark Pub
lic Library have a deep sense of satisfaction in bringing before the public
the New Jersey Guide. Here at last is an authentic story of our State that
will warm the hearts of the old residents and prove interesting reading for
anyone who may happen upon it.
Highways and wayside taverns are adequately described, but this new
kind of guide leads to strange and remote places. It undertakes excursions
into history and economics and the arts. Afield, it detours from the main
traveled roads for unexpected forays to spots that scarcely one tourist in a
thousand would find unaided places that are unknown even to the motor-
minded residents of New Jersey. In a very real sense the book lifts up fa
miliar, sun-baked stones to reveal the quiet life beneath.
Our hope is that publication of new and revised editions of the Guide
may become a New Jersey custom.
THE NEW JERSEY GUILD ASSOCIATES
WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION
F. C. HARRINGTON, Administrator
FLORENCE S. KERR, Assistant Administrator
HENRY G. ALSBERG, Director of the Federal Writers Project
Preface
NEW JERSEY: A Guide to Its Present and Past is an attempt to present
not only the background and development of old New Jersey, but also the
rapidly changing scene of the State today. If the book achieves its purpose
it will serve a contemporary need, and in addition it will preserve the flavor
of present-day New Jersey for scholars of the future.
The guide is a cooperative product, the work of field workers and re
search workers, of writers and editors, and of competent authorities in
every department of New Jersey life. Newspaper files, libraries, and many
other sources have been searched for information ; mechanics and farmers,
scholars and policemen, artists and aviators have been interviewed. Most
of the material, however, has been gathered first-hand: every major city
in the State has been studied by reporters, and field workers have traveled
every foot of the main highways from High Point Park to Cape May.
Checking and rechecking of these thousands of items have produced, it is
hoped, a minimum of error. We ask readers who find mistakes to write to
the publisher, so that future editions may be corrected.
In order to keep this one-volume guide within practical book length, it
has been necessary to abridge drastically the voluminous data assembled in
the course of the project. Much of this material, however, will be made
available in detailed studies or in encyclopedic form at a later time.
It would be an endless task to list all the consultants whose aid has
made the book possible. Special thanks are due, however, to Miss Beatrice
Winser for making available the facilities of the Newark Public Library
and for her valuable assistance; and to Dr. Milton R. Konvitz, who acted
as general consultant. Specialists in various fields have contributed ma
terially in the preparation of several of the introductory essays. Professor
John E. Bebout of the University of Newark directed the work on the
History essay and, in collaboration with Professor Fred Killian, also of
the University of Newark, contributed the section entitled Govern
ment. Professor Herbert Woodward of the University of Newark con
tributed the section on Geology, and together with Dr. Horace G. Rich
ards of the State Museum provided the material on Paleontology. Pro
fessor Carl Woodward of Rutgers University wrote most of the essay on
vii
viii PREFACE
Agriculture. The chapter entitled Archeology and Indians is the work of
Dr. Dorothy Cross of the Indian Sites Survey.
Among others who gave valuable criticism are: Sarah B. Askew, secre
tary and librarian of the State Public Library Commission ; Professor Rob
ert G. Albion of Princeton University; Theodosia Bates, director of the
New Jersey Gallery of Kresge department store, Newark; Mary Boggan,
Hackensack librarian; Henry Reed Bowen, general secretary of the New
Jersey Council of Religious Education; Van Wyck Brooks; Professor J.
Douglas Brown of Princeton University; Professor L. H. Buckingham of
Newark University ; the Reverend Ellis B. Burgess of the United Lutheran
Synod of New York; Elizabeth V. Colville, editor of Musical New Jersey;
J. Hallam Conover of Freehold; Royal Cortissoz, art editor of the New
York Herald Tribune; Elbert Cox, superintendent of Morristown National
Historical Park; Phoebe Crosby of Philadelphia; Kenneth W. Dalzell of
the American Institute of Architects; George de Cou of Moorestown ;
Professor Frank de Vyver of Duke University ; Professor Norman Foerster,
director of the School of Letters at the University of Iowa; the Reverend
William Hiram Foulkes, of Old First Presbyterian Church of Newark;
Lewis Gannett of the New York Herald Tribune; the Reverend L. Hamilton
Garner of Newark ; Marguerite L. Gates, assistant librarian, Newark ; C. A.
George, Elizabeth librarian ; Louis Ginsberg of Paterson ; Nathan L. Gold
berg, assistant editor of the Guild Reporter; Abe J. Greene, city editor of
the Paterson Evening News; the Reverend R. D. Gribbon, Archdeacon of
the New Jersey Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church ; Stephen Haif
Jr., trustee of the Jersey City Museum Association; Edward Sothern
Hipp, dramatic editor of the Newark Sunday Call; William S. Hunt, pub
lisher of the Newark Sunday Call; Edward Alden Jewell, art editor of the
New York Times; Laurence B. Johnson, managing editor of the New Jer
sey Educational Review ; Professor Wheaton J. Lane of Princeton Univer
sity; Frank Jewett Mather, director of the Princeton Museum of Historic
Art; Nell L. Meyers, Freehold librarian; George Miller, regional director
of the Historical Records Survey ; William Milwitzky of Newark ; Professor
Sherley Morgan, director of Princeton University School of Architecture;
Lewis Mumford ; Grace D. McKinney, religion editor of the Newark Eve
ning News; Howard D. McKinney, director of Rutgers University School
of Music; Maurice F. Neufeld, acting secretary of the New Jersey State
Planning Board; George A. Osborne, Rutgers University librarian; Fred
erick S. Osborne, director of public information at Princeton University;
William J. Pickersgill of Perth Amboy; Charles A. Philhower, superin
tendent of Westfield Junior High School; Corliss Fitz Randolph, presi-
PREFACE ix
dent and librarian of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society; Vergil
D. Reed, assistant director of the Bureau of the Census ; Leonard H. Rob-
bins of the New York Times; Grace D. Rose, Morristown librarian;
Joseph S. Sickler, postmaster of Salem, New Jersey ; Samuel Slaff of Passaic ;
Professor James G. Smith of Princeton University ; Mary Cook Swartwout,
director of the Montclair Art Museum; Cornelia B. Thompson, principal
of Asbury Park High School ; Professor Willard Thorp of Princeton Uni
versity; Norman F. Titus, secretary of the State Chamber of Commerce;
Lydia Weston, Burlington librarian; A. Edmund Williamson, executive
secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of the Oranges and Maplewood;
and Edmund Wilson.
This book was prepared under the supervision of Mrs. Irene Fuhl-
bruegge, State Director, and Alexander L. Crosby, State Editor, both of
whom resigned before publication.
VIOLA L. HUTCHINSON \ ^ . . . c . ^.
SAMUEL EPSTEIN / Asmtmt State Dlrectors
JOSEPH SUGARMAN, JR. ~|
IRVING D. SiJss I M
BENJAMIN GOLDENBERG
FRED EPPELSHEIMER J
_ #
Contents
SPONSORS FOREWORDS v
PREFACE vii
GENERAL INFORMATION Xxiii
CALENDAR OF EVENTS Xxix
/. New Jersey: The General View
A NEW JERSEY SILHOUETTE 3
NATURAL SETTING: 7
Geography, Topography, and Climate; Geology and Paleontology; Plant
and Animal Life; Conservation and Natural Resources
ARCHEOLOGY AND INDIANS 28
HISTORY 35
GOVERNMENT 55
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 69
LABOR 79
AGRICULTURE 89
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 96
THE PRESS 110
RACIAL AND NATIONAL GROUPS 118
FOLKLORE AND FOLKWAYS 126
EDUCATION 134
RELIGION 142
THE ARTS: 151
Literature; Theater; Music; Architecture; Painting, Sculpture, and Crafts
II. Cities and Towns
ATLANTIC CITY 189
BAYONNE 201
BORDENTOWN 207
BURLINGTON 216
CAMDEN 225
ELIZABETH 238
Xll CONTENTS
FREEHOLD 250
HACKENSACK 256
HOBOKEN 262
JERSEY CITY 270
MORRISTOWN 283
MOUNT HOLLY 292
NEW BRUNSWICK 298
NEWARK 312
THE ORANGES AND MAPLE WOOD 339
PASSAIC 345
PATERSON 349
PERTH AMBOY 361
PRINCETON 370
SALEM 390
TRENTON 398
///. Tours
TOUR 1. (New York, N. Y.) -Jersey City-Elizabeth-
Trenton- (Morrisville, Pa.), us i 417
TOUR 2. Newark-Hillside-Clinton-Phillipsburg-
(Easton, Pa.), us 22 428
TOUR 3. (Piermont, N. Y.) -Alpine-Fort Lee. us 9W 435
TOUR 4. (Suffern, N. Y.)-Pompton-Morristown-Lambertville-
(New Hope, Pa.), us 202 439
TOUR 5. (Unionville, N. Y.)-Sussex-Newton-Columbia-
(Portland, Pa.). STATE 8N, unnumbered road,
STATE 8 452
TOUR 6. (Milford, Pa.) -Montague-Newton-Trenton-
Junction with us 30. us 206 459
TOUR 6A. Montague-Walpack Center-Flatbrookville-
Rosencrans Ferry. Old Mine Rd. 472
TOUR 7. Morsemere-Dover-Hackettstown-( Portland, Pa.).
US 46 475
TOUR 8. Elizabeth-New Brunswick-Princeton. STATE 27 484
TOUR 9. Newark-Montclair-Franklin-High Point Park
(Port Jervis, N. Y.). STATE 23 490
TOUR 9A. Junction with STATE 23-Ringwood-Greenwood Lake-
Junction with STATE 23. unnumbered roads 499
CONTENTS Xlll
TOUR 10. Elizabeth-Morristown-Washington-Phillipsburg-
(Easton, Pa.). STATE 824, STATE 24 508
TOUR 11. Lambertville- Washington Crossing-Trenton. STATE 29 519
TOUR 12. Junction with STATE 30-Flemington-Frenchtown
(Uhlerstown, Pa.). STATE 12 523
TOUR 13. Middlesex-New Brunswick-Old Bridge-
Matawan. STATE 828 527
TOUR 14. West Orange-Whippany-Ledgewood. STATE 10 529
TOUR 15. Buttzville-Ringoes-Trenton. STATE 30 533
TOUR 16. (Hillburn, N. Y.)-North Arlington-Newark-
Junction with US 22. STATE 2, STATE 21 538
TOUR 17. (Staten Island, N. Y.)-Elizabeth-Plainneld-
Somerville-Junction with us 22 and us 206.
STATE 28 546
TOUR 18. Junction with us i-Perth Amboy-Toms River-
Cape May. us 9 551
TOUR 18 A. Freehold-Tennent-Monmouth Battlefield.
COUNTY 22 and 3 565
TOUR 19. Junction with us i-Hightstown-Camden-Pennsville
(New Castle, Del.), us 130 569
TOUR 20. Ocean Grove-Freehold-Hightstown-Trenton. STATE 33 579
TOUR 20A. Junction with STATE 33-Imlaystown-Fillmore.
unnumbered roads 583
TOUR 21. Matawan-Colt s Neck-Junction with STATE 35.
STATE 34 588
TOUR 22. South Amboy-Red Bank-Point Pleasant-
Lakewood. STATE 35 591
TOUR 23. Atlantic City-Berlin-Camden-( Philadelphia, Pa.).
us 30 596
TOUR 2 3 A. Egg Harbor City-Batsto-Pleasant Mills.
unnumbered roads 602
TOUR 24. Atlantic City-Malaga-Pennsville-
(New Castle, Del.), us 40 607
TOUR 25. McKee City-Williamstown-Glassboro-Bridgeport-
(Chester, Pa.), us 322 611
TOUR 26. Lakewood-Wrightstown-Camden. unnumbered roads,
STATE 38 615
Xiv CONTENTS
TOUR 27. Laurelton-Lakehurst-Medford-
Junction with STATE 38. STATE 40 622
TOUR 28. Junction with us 1 3O-Woodbury-Mullica Hill-
Salem. STATE 45 628
TOUR 29. Pennsville-Salem-Millville-Clermont. Pennsville-
Salem Rd., STATE 49 631
TOUR 29A. Salem-Oakwood Beach-Elsinboro Point. Tilbury Rd.,
Fort Elfsborg-Salem Rd. 641
TOUR 29B. Shiloh-Roadstown-Greenwich. unnumbered roads 643
TOUR 29C. South Dennis-Rio Grande-Wildwood. STATE 849 645
TOUR 30. Point Pleasant-Seaside Heights-Lakehurst. STATE 37 647
TOUR 31. (Philadelphia, Pa.)-Camden-Mount Ephraim-
Junction with us 322. STATE 42 649
TOUR 32. Mullica Hill-Pi ttsgrove-Bridgeton. STATE 46 654
TOUR 33. Brooklawn-Malaga-Millville-Tuckahoe. STATE 47 657
TOUR 34. Egg Harbor City Tuckahoe-Seaville. STATE 50 663
TOUR 35. Ship Bottom Manahawkin-Junction with STATE 40.
STATE 840 666
TOUR 3 5 A. Ship Bottom-Harvey Cedars-Barnegat City.
unnumbered road 669
TOUR 35B. Ship Bottom-Beach Haven-Holgate. unnumbered road 672
TOUR 36. Mechanicsville-Long Branch-Asbury Park-Brielle.
STATE 36, COUNTY 9, STATE 4N 675
TOUR 37. (Philadelphia, Pa.) -Palmyra- Junction with us 30.
STATE 841 685
IV. Appendices
CHRONOLOGY 689
BIBLIOGRAPHY 697
INDEX 705
Illustrations
THE STATEHOUSE, TRENTON Page 2
W . Lincoln Highton
THE PULASKI SKYWAY 4
N. J. State Highway Commission
PASSAIC RIVER FROM PULASKI SKYWAY 9
W. Lincoln Highton
SCHOOLEYS MOUNTAIN 15
W. Lincoln Highton
OYSTER FLEET ON COHANSEY RIVER 25
Charles W. Benson
THE OLD BARRACKS. TRENTON 43
W. Lincoln Highton
ROEBLING PLANT, TRENTON 73
Roebling Co.
CANNING TOMATOES, CAMDEN 77
Campbell Soup Co.
SILK MILL WORKER, PATERSON 83
Samuel Epstein
HARVESTING CRANBERRIES 91
RAILROAD YARDS, WEEHAWKEN 97
Samuel Epstein
THE "JOHN BULL" 101
UNLOADING LUMBER, PORT NEWARK 105
W. Lincoln Highton
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, GLASSBORO 135
Charles W. Benson
TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEWARK 143
W. Lincoln Highton
WALT WHITMAN S TOMB, CAMDEN 155
Nathaniel Rubel
THE DEMAREST HOUSE, RIVER EDGE 173
Nathaniel Rubel
COLONIAL APARTMENTS, BORDENTOWN 177
Samuel Epstein
xv
XVI ILLUSTRATIONS
STATUE OF LINCOLN, NEWARK 183
W. Lincoln Highton
BEACH FRONT, ATLANTIC CITY 191
Fair child Aerial Surveys, Inc.
MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM ATLANTIC CITY 199
Fred Hess and Son
BAYONNE BRIDGE 205
Samuel Epstein
CLARA BARTON SCHOOL. BORDENTOWN 214
Nathaniel Rubel
HISTORICAL SOCIETY BUILDING, BURLINGTON 223
Charles W . Benson
VIEW OF CAMDEN FROM PHILADELPHIA 227
Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.
WALT WHITMAN HOME, CAMDEN 233
Charles W. Benson
SHIPBUILDING, CAMDEN 236
N. Y. Shipbuilding Co.
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ELIZABETH 241
W . Lincoln Highton
RUG WEAVING, FREEHOLD 251
W . Lincoln Highton
BERGEN COUNTY COURTHOUSE 257
Samuel Epstein
S.S. LEVIATHAN AT HOBOKEN 265
W . Lincoln Highton
HOLLAND TUNNEL 273
Port of N. Y. Authority
THE MEDICAL CENTER, JERSEY CITY 281
W. Lincoln Highton
THE FORD MANSION, MORRISTOWN 290
W. Lincoln Highton
BURLINGTON Co. COURTHOUSE, MT. HOLLY 295
W. Lincoln Highton
QUEEN S BUILDING, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY 307
W . Lincoln Highton
VOORHEES CHAPEL 310
N. /. College for Women
DOWNTOWN NEWARK 315
Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.
AMERICAN INSURANCE Co. BUILDING, NEWARK 321
W . Lincoln Highton
ILLUSTRATIONS Xvii
PENNSYLVANIA R.R. LIFT BRIDGE 333
Samuel Epstein
NEWARK AIRPORT 337
W. Lincoln Highton
PASSAIC FALLS, PATERSON 350
Samuel Epstein
THE WESTMINSTER, PERTH AMBOY 366
Nathaniel Rubel
NASSAU HALL, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 373
W. Lincoln Highton
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY CHAPEL 377
Nathaniel Rubel
PRINCETON GRADUATE COLLEGE 387
Nathaniel Rubel
SALEM OAK 395
W. Lincoln Highton
BATTLE MONUMENT, TRENTON 411
W. Lincoln Highton
GEORGE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL BRIDGE 41 6
Samuel Epstein
HAMILTON-BURR DUEL MARKER 420
Samuel Epstein
GENERAL MOTORS ASSEMBLY LINE 425
General Motors Corp.
STANDARD OIL REFINERY, BAYWAY 427
Esso Marketers
WASHINGTON BRIDGE, APPROACHES 436
Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.
OAKLAND 443
Nathaniel Rubel
DAIRY PLANT, POMPTON PLAINS 447
Nathaniel Rubel
SMITH S STORE, WATERLOO 455
Nathaniel Rubel
MUSCONETCONG RlVER 4^9
Samuel Epstein
PICATINNY ARSENAL 479
N. Y. Journal-American
HIGH POINT MONUMENT 491
Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.
RINGWOOD MANOR 503
Nathaniel Rubel
XV111 ILLUSTRATIONS
POST OFFICE, RALSTON 515
Samuel Epstein
COVERED BRIDGE, STOCKTON 521
Samuel Epstein
CHICK HATCHERY 526
W . Lincoln Highton
HARVESTING WHEAT 537
Samuel Epstein
THE STEUBEN HOUSE, RIVER EDGE 541
W. Lincoln Highton
NEWARK WATERFRONT 545
W. Lincoln Highton
RARITAN RIVER 553
Fair child Aerial Surveys, Inc.
DUCK SHOOTING, SOUTH JERSEY 558
Fred Hess and Son
BEACH AT OCEAN CITY 561
Atlantic Studios
SURF CASTING, CAPE MAY 564
Atlantic Studios
OLD TENNENT CHURCH 567
Samuel Epstein
CHESTERFIELD FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE 573
W. Lincoln Highton
LINCOLN FORGE, FILLMORE 585
Nathaniel Rubel
SAILBOATING 595
Atlantic Studios
PINE BARRENS 603
W. Lincoln Highton
SWEDESBORO 6l4
Samuel Epstein
POTTERY WORKER, HADDONFIELD 619
U. S. NAVAL HANGAR, LAKEHURST 625
Nathaniel Rubel
HANCOCK HOUSE, HANCOCK S BRIDGE 633
W . Lincoln Highton
UNLOADING OYSTERS, BIVALVE 636
Samuel Epstein
OYSTERMEN S COMMUNITY CENTER 639
Samuel Epstein
ILLUSTRATIONS XIX
AUCTION AT GREENWICH 644
W . Lincoln High ton
HORSE BREEDING FARM, BELLMAWR 653
Charles W. Benson
PARVIN STATE PARK 659
N. J. State Dept. of Conservation and Development
KIMBLE GLASS WORKS, VINELAND 661
Nijholm
SPEEDBOATS, GREAT EGG HARBOR 665
Atlantic Studios
BARNEGAT LIGHTHOUSE 671
W. Lincoln High ton
SANDY HOOK LIGHTHOUSE 677
Nathaniel Rub el
GUGGENHEIM MANSION, LONG BRANCH 681
Samuel Epstein
BURNING MORRO CASTLE 684
Fair child Aerial Surveys, Inc.
Maps
NEW JERSEY STATE MAP back pocket
TOUR KEY MAP front end paper
METROPOLITAN AREA NORTH JERSEY reverse of State map
METROPOLITAN AREA SOUTH JERSEY reverse of State map
ATLANTIC CITY Page 196
BORDENTOWN 211
BURLINGTON 219
CAMDEN 231
ELIZABETH 243
HOBOKEN 267
JERSEY CITY 278
MORRISTOWN 287
NEW BRUNSWICK 302
NEWARK 326
NEWARK BUSINESS DISTRICT 327
PATERSON 356
PERTH AMBOY 365
PRINCETON 382
TRENTON 406
General Information
(State map showing highways, railways, topography, forests, recreational areas,
and historic and other points of interest, inside back cover. Map showing tour
routes, on end papers.)
Railroads: Pennsylvania (Pennsy) ; Delaware, Lackawanna and Western
(Lackawanna) ; Central Railroad of New Jersey (Jersey Central); Erie;
Lehigh Valley; West Shore; Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) ; and Reading
serve important points. Hudson and Manhattan R.R. (the Tubes) be
tween Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, and New York.
Bus Lines: Interstate: Greyhound, Public Service, Pan-American, Martz,
Safeway Trailways, Golden Arrow, Champlain, Edwards, De Camp, Gar
den State, Jersey Central-Reading Transportation, and others. Intrastate:
Public Service and many small independent lines connecting principal
towns and cities.
Steamship Lines: Jersey City: Dollar Line, "Round the World"; Ameri
can Export, to Mediterranean ports; American-Scantic Lines, to Scandi
navia, Poland, Russia; Moormack, to South America. Hoboken: Gdynia-
American, to Poland, Denmark, West Indies, Bermuda ; Holland- America,
to Europe, Cuba, Mexico; Cosulich, to Mediterranean and Adriatic ports;
Red Star, to Belgium ; Lamport and Holt, to South America.
Airlines: Newark: terminal of Transcontinental & Western Air, United
Airlines, Eastern Airlines, and American Airlines. Camden: airport for
Philadelphia, terminal of United Airlines (western route), Transcontinen
tal & Western Air, Eastern Airlines, and American Airlines.
Highways: Ten Federal highways, including US i from Canada to Miami
and US 30 from Atlantic City to Astoria, Ore. All State and U. S. routes
patrolled by State police. Gasoline tax 4^.
Traffic Regulations: Speed Limits: 40 m.p.h. on open highway, 15 ap
proaching intersections; 20 in residential and business districts; unless
posted otherwise, 15 in town and city districts not controlled by lights or
traffic officers; 10 in all school or other restricted districts. General Rules
of the Road: Driver approaching intersection from right has right-of-way.
xxiii
XXIV GENERAL INFORMATION
No turn may be made at a red light, unless indicated by a green arrow or
sign. Vehicles must stop at least 10 ft. in rear of streetcars stopped for re
ceiving or discharging passengers except at established safety zone. Trol
ley cars may be passed on R. only, except on one-way streets. Vehicles
operating on roads with clearly marked lanes must keep R., using center
lanes for passing only. No passing at intersections, on hills, curves, or
other places where view is obstructed for minimum of 500 ft. Ambulances,
fire engines, and police cars have right-of-way at all times. Two braking
systems, each operating on two wheels, required. Headlights and taillights
must be lit from one-half hour after sunset to one-half hour before sun
rise. Nonresident may operate car without permit within the State for pe
riod reciprocally agreed upon by State of residence and New Jersey. Mo
torist involved in accident must wait until police appear, and report to
them; or report to State police. Telephone operator will give direct con
nection. Trailers subject to restriction by local ordinances. Prohibited:
Parking on paved portion of highway or on any part of road unless a
i5-ft. passage is left for other vehicles, with view of 200 ft. each way.
Parking within 25 ft. of intersection, or within 50 ft. of stop sign, or
within 10 ft. of fire hydrant.
State Police Substations:
Absecon Newton
Berlin Penn s Neck
Cape May Court House Pompton Lakes
Columbus Port Norris
Farmingdale Scotch Plains
Flemington Somerville
Hightstown Teaneck
Keyport Toms River
Malaga Washington
Mantua Woodbridge
Milltown Woodstown
Netcong
Accommodations: Good hotels in larger cities. Many fine hotels at coast
and lake resorts, open in season. Tourist homes, small hotels, and dining
accommodations in nearly all towns.
Liquor Laws: Hours and days of sale and other regulations fixed by cities
and towns. Package goods sold in saloons, grocery stores, drug stores, deli
catessens, and similar places.
GENERAL INFORMATION XXV
Climate and Equipment: Topcoats or wraps should supplement summer
wardrobe at seashore, mountain, and lake resorts. Otherwise, seasonable
wardrobe will suffice. Occasional fogs in spring and fall along the shore
and lowlands. Moderate snowfall usually, but main highways are always
kept open.
Poisonous Reptiles and Plants: Rattlesnakes and copperheads, while not
common, are found in the northern mountains and in the pinelands of the
south and central areas. Poison ivy and poison sumac are common.
Information: The State department of conservation and development,
Trenton, N. J., provides leaflets and other information on State parks and
forests. Excellent maps are sold by the department at nominal prices
(write for list) ; of especial value are the atlas sheets, 27 by 37 in., cover
ing the State with 37 maps on a scale of i m. to the in. (50$ each). Bu
reaus of information on New Jersey travel and vacation resorts are main
tained by the Newark Evening News and Newark Sunday Call.
Recreational Areas: New Jersey has 120 miles of ocean front along the
Atlantic Coast and, behind it, many inlets and bays with ideal conditions
for yachting and fishing. There are more than 40 beaches, patrolled by
lifeguards. In most of the larger resorts the beach front is controlled by
the municipality, private individuals, clubs, or hotels. Free bathing is per
mitted in some of the less populous sections. The northern lake region
includes nearly 100 bodies of water in the woodlands and hills of Mor
ris, Sussex, Passaic, and Warren Counties, with large summer colonies. In
addition to Palisades Interstate Park, 1,700 acres held jointly with New
York, the State maintains the following 14 parks: Ringwood Manor,
Hacklebarney, Voorhees, Swartswood, Washington Crossing, Washington
Rock, Parvin, Mount Laurel, Musconetcong, Cranberry, Hopatcong, High
Point, Stephens and Cheesequake. There are eight forests operated by the
State and most of the State parks and forests have free facilities for pic
nics; lakes for bathing and boating; well-stocked streams for fishing, sub
ject to State laws; trails for hiking and horseback riding. Parvin and
Swartswood offer free supervised swimming. The Appalachian Trail,
Maine to Georgia, runs for 2 miles along the Kittatinny Ridge from
Delaware Water Gap to High Point Park, the highest section of the State.
Various counties have extensive park systems. The South Mountain and
Eagle Rock Reservations in Essex County enclose 2,500 acres of natural
forest, bridle paths, trails, camp sites, picnic grounds, and drives. The
most important Federal reservation is Morristown National Historical
Park. Many municipalities have recreational centers and playgrounds with
XXvi GENERAL INFORMATION
wading and swimming pools and other recreational facilities for adults
and children.
General Rules: Written permit required for fires in a State reservation.
Many fireplaces are provided. Smokers should use extreme care; causing a
fire in any forest reserve is a misdemeanor. State laws provide penalties
for cutting, injury, or removal of trees, shrubs, plants, or flowers by any
person without the consent of the owner of the property.
Fishing: Practically every species of salt-water fish natural to temperate
waters of North America is found in the coastal waters. All the larger
seashore resorts maintain fishing piers, and powerboats for deep-sea fish
ing. Surf casting, free on most beaches, is practiced at many spots. Among
the choice trout streams are the Musconetcong, Pequest, and South Branch
of the Raritan, in the northern section, and Wading River in the southern
section. In addition large-mouthed and small-mouthed bass, pickerel,
perch, and sunfish are plentiful throughout river and lake w r aters. The
State distributes annually 130,000,000 fish from the Hackettstown hatchery
and maintains five public fishing and hunting grounds. License: Resident
fishing, $2.10; nonresident, $5.50. Resident hunting and fishing, $3.10;
nonresident, $10.50. Note: Hunting and fishing laws are changed fre
quently ; tourists are advised to obtain up-to-date information. Licenses are
issued by the State fish and game commission, Trenton, N. J., through
agents including city and county clerks and other local officials.
Fishing Laws: Game fish are defined as bass, trout, pike, perch, and
pickerel. Open Seasons (dates inclusive) : Broad, brown, rainbow trout,
and salmon, Apr. i5~July 15 and Sept 1-30; bass and crappie, June 15
Nov. 30, except from Delaware River. Pike, pickerel and pike-perch, May
2o-Nov. 30 and Jan. 1-20, except from Delaware River. From Delaware
River and Bay tributaries: bass, crappie, pike-perch, pickerel, pike, and
trout, June i5~Dec. i. From Delaware River and tributaries between
Trenton Falls and Birch Creek; bass, crappie, pike-perch, pickerel, pike,
June i5~Dec. i; trout, Apr. i5~July 31. Daily Limit: Trout and salmon,
10 (trout 7 in.) ; black and Oswego bass, 20 in all (9 in.) ; rock bass, 20;
calico bass and crappie, 20 in all (6 in.). Pike, pickerel, and pike-perch,
no daily limit from open water; 10 when fishing through ice (14 in.) ; 10
from Delaware River (12 in.). Trout, 10 (6 in.), from Delaware River,
Bay and tributaries.
Prohibited: Sale or purchase of black or Oswego bass, except for propa
gating ; sale of pike-perch, pike or pickerel caught through the ice ; fishing
for trout, bass, pike-perch, pike, or pickerel after 9 p.m.
GENERAL INFORMATION XXVli
Hunting: Deer, the largest game in the State, are found chiefly in the
State forests set aside for their conservation, but many roam the mountains
of the northern counties and the pine forests of the southern plain. The
State game farms breed and release yearly about 70,000 head of small
game, including rabbits, quail, and partridge. The coastal salt marshes
and inlets abound in waterfowl. The northern lakes, rivers, and moun
tains attract quail, partridge, pheasants, etc. There is some fox hunting in
Somerset and Morris Counties, and raccoon hunting with trained dogs in
the country southwest of New Brunswick.
License: Same fee as fishing (see above).
Open Seasons (dates inclusive) : Quail, rabbit, gray hare, black or fox
squirrel, male English or ringneck pheasant, ruffed grouse, prairie chicken,
wild turkey, Hungarian partridge, Nov. lo-Dec. 15. Geese, ducks, coot
(crow ducks), and Wilson snipe or jacksnipe, Nov. 26-Dec. 25; sora,
clapper, and king rail (marsh hen or mudhen), other rails and gallinules
(except coot), Sept. i-Nov. 30. Woodcock, Oct. i5~Nov. 14. Skunk,
mink, muskrat, otter (may only be trapped), Nov. i5~Mar. 15. (No
open season on wood, ruddy, bufflehead, canvasback, or redhead duck,
brant, snow goose, Ross s goose, or swan.) Special State license required
for woodcock. Deer (only those having horns at least 3 in. long), Dec.
ly-Dec. 21. Raccoon, Nov. i-Dec. 31, excepting deer season. Daily Bag
Limits: 10 quail, 6 rabbits, 6 gray squirrels, 3 ruffed grouse, 2 male pheas
ants (30 in season), 3 Hungarian partridge; ducks (except wood, ruddy,
canvasback, redhead and bufflehead), total of 10 of all kinds; geese (ex
cept snow goose, Ross s goose, and brant), total of 4 of all kinds; 15
coot, 15 Wilson s snipe or jacksnipe.
Possession Limits: One day s bag: sora, 25; other rails and gallinules (ex
cept sora and coot), total of 15 of all kinds; woodcock, 4; deer, one buck
a year ($100 penalty for exceeding limit) ; raccoon, no daily limit, but 15
during season.
Prohibited: Use of any snare, snood, net, trap, or any device for catching
or trapping game birds or game animals; shooting at any game bird or
game animal from power boat, airplane, hydroplane, or automobile; use
of ferrets or poisons.
Yachting and Boating: Inlets and bays along the coast are lined with sum
mer yacht clubs. Important events yearly on Navesink, Shrewsbury, and
Toms Rivers, Absecon and Barnegat Bays. For motorboats, National
Sweepstakes Regatta yearly at Red Bank on the Navesink, others on the
XXviii GENERAL INFORMATION
Passaic. Speedboat races every summer at Hopatcong and other northern
lakes, and on Raritan, Manasquan, and other rivers and bays. Canoeing on
many rivers and lakes.
Golf: There are more than 100 golf courses in the State owned by pri
vate, semiprivate, and public clubs. The best known course is Baltusrol, at
Springfield, scene of many major tournaments.
Tennis: Many municipalities provide public tennis courts, and county
parks have increased tennis facilities in recent years. The Seabright Lawn
Tennis Cricket Club and the Orange Lawn Tennis Club hold annual cham
pionship matches.
Other Games and Sports: Important intercollegiate football matches are
held at Princeton and Rutgers. Other colleges, and high schools and pri
vate preparatory schools have scheduled games; Newark, Paterson, and
Trenton have professional teams. Baseball is played informally on sand-
lots all over the State. Most high schools and colleges have teams, and
Newark, Jersey City, and Trenton have professional teams. Outdoor polo
is played at Rumson and Burnt Mills. There is bicycle racing at Nutley;
automobile racing at Woodbridge; boxing and wrestling in Newark, Jer
sey City, and many other centers.
Winter Sports: An Erie R.R. snow train runs to High Point Park, where
there are miles of ski trails and a recently completed ski jump. There are
other ski jumps in county parks, closer to urban centers. All natural lakes
and those in parks are used for ice skating. Tobogganing and snowshoe-
ing are popular in many State and county parks. The North Branch of
Shrewsbury River at Red Bank has been an iceboating center for 50 years.
Lakewood, Morristown, and Atlantic City have ice carnivals, and Eliza
beth has dog- sled races. Indoor sports include polo at Newark, East
Orange, Westfield, Red Bank, and Trenton; ice hockey in the new mu
nicipal stadium at Atlantic City; track meets and basketball in armories
and halls throughout the State.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Calendar of Events
(nfd means no fixed date; locations subject to change have been left blank.)
Jan. 2nd wk
Morristown
nfd
Morristown
nfd
Atlantic City
nfd
Trenton
nfd
Elizabeth
nfd
Watchung
Reservation
Union County
nfd
Salem
nfd
Newark
Jan.
& Feb.
r i
Red Bank
nfd I
1
Jan.
or Feb. 1
/Lakewood
nfd J
\ Atlantic City
Feb.
I 4
New Brunswick
2nd wk
Newark
nfd
Atlantic City
nfd
Lake Mohawk
Mar.
20-
Plainfield
4th wk Newark
nfd Newark
Lenten Season Union City
Eastern States Skeet Champion
ship
Ice Carnival
Men s Championship Squash
Tournaments
Agricultural Show
Dog-sled Races
Cross-Country Ski Meet
Muskrat Skinning Contest
Metropolitan Opera
Ice Boat Races
Winter Sports Carnival
Ice Carnival
Twilight Concert
Dog Show
Atlantic Coast Women s Squash
Championship
Winter Carnival
Union County Badminton Tour
nament
Indoor Polo Championship
Contemporary Club, Grand Opera
Passion Play, Veronica s Veil
10
Burlington
Election of Officers of Council
(Cor. High and
of W. Jersey Proprietors
Broad Sts.)
2nd Fri.
Statewide
Arbor Day
26
Finns Point
Confederate Memorial Pilgrim
age
Sat. before
Palm Sun.
I Atlantic City
Dog Show
Palm Sun.
Atlantic City
Style Parade
Easter Sun.
Atlantic City
Easter Parade
Palmyra
Sunrise Service
Elizabeth
Sunrise Service
XXIX
XXX
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
nfd
Cape May
May
i
Paterson
15-30
Glassboro
Pitman
3 1
Camden
ist wk
Newark
2nd wk
Newark
ist & 2nd wk
South Jersey
last wk
Madison
Decoration
1
Day & every
Sat. until
r Newark
Columbus Day
J
nfd
Atlantic City
nfd
Jersey City
nfd
New Brunswick
nfd
Summit
nfd
South Orange
June
5-6
Atlantic City
Princeton
last wk
Rumson
nfd
Swedesboro
nfd
North Bergen
nfd
Camden
nfd
Paterson
nfd
Atlantic City
nfd
Newark
nfd
Maplewood
nfd
Princeton
nfd
West Orange
July
4
New Brunswick
Westfield
Newark
4-10
Wildwood
16
Hammonton
30-31 1
& Aug. i /
Rumson
nfd
New Brunswick
nfd
Barnegat Bay
nfd
Rumson
Mackerel Fleet Race from
Gloucester, Mass.
May Day Parade
Blossom Festival
Blossom Festival
Walt Whitman s Birthday Cele
bration
Horse Show
Flower Show
Blossom Time in Fruit Belts
Dog Show
Amateur Trotting Races
Horse Show
Hudson County Progress Expo
sition
Pageant and Horse Show
Horse Show
Dog Show
Flower Mart
Track Meet
Dog Show
Service at Old Trinity Church
German Day Exercises
Outdoor Mass, American Legion
Festival of Nations
National Headliners Frplic
Open-air Symphony Concerts
Golf Tournament
Westminster Choir
Rock Spring Horse Show
Outboard Motorboat Races
Sunrise Service
Amateur Trotting Races
"Mibs" (Marbles) National
Championship
Festival of Our Lady of Mt.
Carmel
Horse Show
Poultrymen s Field Day
International Star Race
Polo Meet
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
XXXI
nfd
Spring Lake
nfd
Seabright
nfd
Deal
nfd
Livingston
nfd
Rumson
Aug. 4
Elizabeth
2nd Sat.
Keyport
ist wk
Pitman
2nd wk
Atlantic City
3rd wk
Atlantic City
3rd or 4th wk
Red Bank
4th wk
Ocean Grove
nfd
Ventnor
nfd
Pitman
nfd
North Bergen
nfd
Clementon
nfd
Sea Girt
nfd
Asbury Park
nfd
Belvidere
nfd
Lake Hopatcong
Sept. i
Port Norris
20-25
New Brunswick
ist wk
Atlantic City |
ist wk
Newark
last wk
Trenton
Sat. & Sun. |
before Labor I
Atlantic City
Day J
Labor Day
Ocean City
Hohokus
Camden
Lake Hopatcong
nfd
Hohokus
nfd
Hoboken
nfd
Trenton
nfd
Far Hills
nfd
Rumson
Oct. ii
Camden
nfd
New Brunswick
nfd
New Brunswick
nfd
Three Mile Run
Tennis Tournament
Tennis Tournament
Women s Golf Tournament
Golf Tournament
Golf Tournament
Italian Night Program
Salt Water Day
Pitman Grove Camp Meeting
Moth Boat Races
Life Guards Races
National Sweepstakes Regatta
Methodist Camp Meeting
Middle Atlantic Coast Tennis
Tournament
Grange Day
Plattdeutsches Volksfest
Drum and Bugle Corps Compe
tition
Governor Day
Carnival and Baby Parade
Farmers Picnic
Motorboat Races
Sailing of 300 Oyster Vessels
Horse Show
Showmen s Variety Jubilee (In
cludes Beauty Pageant)
Trotting Meet at Weequahic
Park
State Fair
Power Boat Regatta
Yacht Club Regatta
Trotting Races
Labor Day Services
Yacht Races
Automobile Races
Drum and Bugle Corps Compe
tition
Feast of Lights (Italian)
Fox Hunt
Horse Show
Pulaski Day
Florists Day
Chrysanthemum Field Day
Coon Dog Championship
XXX11 CALENDAR OF EVENTS
nfd Newark Electrical Show
nfd Paterson Egg-laying Contest
nfd Camden Food Show
nfd Elizabeth "Own a Home" Show
Nov. 3rd wk Newark Automobile Show
nfd Newark Stamp Exhibition
Dec. 24 Burlington Singing by the Waits
3rd wk Newark Horse Show
nfd Atlantic City Eisteddfod (Welsh Festival)
PART I
THE STATE HOUSE, TRENTON
A New Jersey Silhouette
j j
NO PHRASE or nickname can supply an index to New Jersey, for in
physical and sociological composition the State is fundamentally
diverse. It is often called the Garden State ; with equal reason it might be
labeled the Factory State, or the Commuter State.
Geographically, New Jersey offers rugged hills, and a long stretch of
ocean shore attracting millions of visitors each summer ; fertile soil for or
chards and truck gardens, and miles of sandy waste covered by ferns and
stunted pines. Industrially, the State produces an amazing variety of goods.
It maintains a full quota of reasonably paid mechanics, and at the same
time numerous sweatshops paying wages of $4 and $5 a week. For genera
tions Paterson and Passaic have been national battlefields for organized
labor. Yet within walking distance of these cities are other communities
where picketing is considered a crime.
Politically, New Jersey is noted for one of the strongest Democratic ma
chines of the Nation and a hardly less virile Republican organization. It is
also a testing ground for the Labor Party movement. Culturally, the State
is enriched by Princeton and Rutgers Universities, Stevens Institute, an ex
cellent school system, the fine Newark Public Library, and several noted
museums. Yet within an hour s ride from the most densely populated sec
tions are mountain people who have lived for 150 years in ignorance and
poverty akin to that of Southern hill folk.
Since the time when New York and Philadelphia were villages, New
Jersey has been the corridor between them. Colonial post roads have
evolved into the strikingly designed concrete highways and bridges that
signify a motor-minded population. Fittingly, it was New Jersey that pio
neered with the cloverleaf intersection to sort unceasing streams of traffic.
Roads have been laid so straight and broad that the long-distance autoist
speeds across the State, seeing little except a landscape of reinforced con
crete and billboards, although many pleasant villages and quiet country lie
a little way off the main highways.
New Jersey s characteristic disunity extends back to the years of early
settlement, when the separate provinces of East Jersey and West Jersey
3
THE PULASKI SKYWAY, BETWEEN NEWARK AND JERSEY CITY
were created. The civil government and Puritanism of New England were
stamped upon the eastern province, which was to become the urban manu
facturing area, while the western province (now "South Jersey") concen
trated on agriculture and adhered largely to the Quaker faith. Although
the two provinces were united under a single government in 1702, fusion
has never been completed. Residents of southern New Jersey still look
askance at products of the northern half, especially when the product is
political oratory. The term "North Jersey" is used as a geographical des
ignation with little sentiment, but "South Jersey" is spoken of by fisher
men and farmers almost as a Virginian speaks of the Old Dominion.
In more recent years the State has become the home of tens of thousands
of people who work in New York or Philadelphia. The commuter reads
newspapers from those cities on his way to work; he rides on railroads
that, except for the Jersey Central, bear names taken from other States ;
and when he has money to spend for a good time at night, his pleasure
often falls into the category of interstate commerce. The legitimate theater
is practically non-existent within New Jersey. Night life is decentralized
by hundreds of neon-signed roadhouses, many of them large enough for a
thousand patrons.
But the State does not belong to the commuters. Of more significance
A NEW JERSEY SILHOUETTE 5
are the oystermen and fishing captains of the coast ; the truck farmers and
dairymen; and the merchants, professional workers, and industrial work
ers of towns and cities. The greatest share of New Jersey s working life is
in the factories, whose output of refined copper, petroleum products, tex
tiles, electrical equipment, machinery and other goods gives the State sixth
rank in the Nation for value of manufactures, although it is only ninth in
population.
Off the arterial roads are hundreds of small villages where the tempo
of life is in keeping with the general stores, white frame churches, and
schoolhouses ; where a good corn crop is more interesting news than the
murder of a Manhattan artist s model, and where the county s chief horse
trader is more representative of the community culture than the automo
bile dealer. People in these villages are independent of cities. They are as
firmly rooted to their homesteads as the stone walls and rail fences that
mark their lands.
Equal to the rural Jerseyman s apparent contempt for the neighboring
metropolises (whose residents buy most of his produce) is the simulated
scorn of New Yorkers for that unexplored portion of the United States
lying between the Hudson River and Hollywood. New Yorkers in general
know little of New Jersey. Although Newark is much closer to New
York s City Hall than are many sections of the greater city, it is sometimes
assumed to be a remote station on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Relatively
few New Yorkers ever have penetrated the miles upon miles of pine bar
rens on the coastal plain; they have never seen Bordentown, where the
early nineteenth century is alive on every street, nor the small villages
resting solidly in the pockets of northern mountains.
Like China, New Jersey absorbs the invader. On summer week ends,
when city asphalt is soft enough to take heel prints, the State s highways
are thronged with the cars of New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians bound for
the coast resorts. And it is to "Jersey" that apartment-worn residents of
Manhattan and Philadelphia move by thousands when the desire for space,
grass, clean air, better schools, and lower rents can no longer be denied.
Millionaires have joined the exodus across the Hudson and Delaware.
They have crowned the low-lying hills with their mansions and green
houses, converted the fields into golf courses, decorated the roadsides with
spring-blooming forsythia, and imported dogs and horses by the hundreds.
The State inherited a large foreign population from the years of whole
sale immigration, and received many additional immigrants who moved
from other States between 1920 and 1930. Lying at the back door of Ellis
Island, the industries of New Jersey absorbed so many shiploads of Euro-
6 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
peans that the foreign-born population in some manufacturing centers is
still as high as one-third. Negroes came also to work on farms or in fac
tories, and racial discrimination followed, particularly in southern New
Jersey a section that lies partly below the Mason-Dixon Line. According
to the report of the Interracial Committee of New Jersey Conference of
Social Work (1932), "Although civil rights are guaranteed by law to Ne
groes in New Jersey, their personal privileges are increasingly more lim
ited."
Holding to the older traditions are the members of local historical soci
eties, the Daughters of the American Revolution and similar organizations.
Washington fought much of the Revolution on New Jersey soil, and the
places associated with his name have been marked and preserved. Tales of
Indian raids and Indian-killing are still being told, although the Indian
population has decreased to some two hundred. Monuments to vanished
industry and commerce are the ruins of bog-iron furnaces throughout
southern New Jersey, the weed-grown ditches of the two canals that
crossed the State from the Delaware River, and hundreds of small streams
that once provided power for mills on almost every pond.
Toryism was rampant in New Jersey at the time of the Republic s birth,
and the State is still a seething mixture of liberal and reactionary forces.
Today the dominant corporation is Public Service, the vast utility concern
that sells electricity, gas, and transportation to most inhabitants of the
State. Consumers have won an initial fight for lower rates, and Camden is
the scene of what amounts to a civic crusade for public ownership.
But the average resident, particularly in the commuting belts, is perhaps
less concerned about the destiny of New Jersey than are the editorial writ
ers of the great New York dailies. The voter looks to Washington or to
his borough hall, and scarcely knows when the legislature is sitting at
Trenton. The commuter has no time to read the editorials as he sprints
alternately from train to ferry and from ferry to train. The industrial
worker s chief concern now seems to be the future of national labor or
ganizations. As for the farmer, he finds the soil good and usually votes
Republican.
Natural Settini
Geography, Topography, and Climate
NEW JERSEY is the fourth smallest State in the Union ; only Con
necticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island are smaller. It has an area of
8,224 square miles, of which 710 square miles are water surface. The State
has an extreme length north and south of 166 miles, and an extreme
width east and west of 57 miles.
With the exception of the 5O-mile northern boundary from Hudson
River to Delaware River, separating it from New York, the State is en
tirely surrounded by water, 300 miles of which are navigable. It is bounded
west and south by the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, dividing it from
Pennsylvania and Delaware. On the east it is bounded by the Atlantic
Ocean, the Hudson River, Arthur Kill, Kill van Kull, and New York
Bay, which separate it from New York.
The State falls naturally into three physical divisions of sharply differen
tiated scenery. In the north is the mountainous, lake-studded region known
as the Appalachian Highlands; in the central, or Triassic section, are
gently rolling hills, supporting most of the State s urban and industrial de
velopment; and in the large southern Coastal Plain are fruit orchards and
market gardens, swamps and pine wastes, miles of beaches and shallow
bays.
The Appalachian Highlands section, which extends northwest of a line
that might be drawn through Pompton, Morristown, Lebanon and Clinton
to Delaware River, includes slightly less than two-fifths of the State s area.
Along the northwest border are the level-topped narrow Kittatinny Moun
tains, which achieve the highest elevation in the State 1,805 ^ eet above
sea level at High Point. These mountains are part of the Appalachians.
Bisecting them is the famous Delaware Water Gap, 900 feet wide at the
base and 4,500 feet wide at the top, with sides rising to a height of 1,200
feet or more.
The thickly wooded ridges of this area form a natural park. In Sussex
7
8 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
County, more than 12,000 acres along the Kittatinny range have been set
aside as Stokes State Forest to preserve at least a portion of the State s
woodland in its pristine beauty. Winding roads and trails penetrate the
dense forest growth, and rock-strewn streams invite the fisherman.
Shut in between the Kittatinny Mountains on the west and the High
lands on the southeast is Kittatinny Valley, largest of the many fertile val
leys in this section that are used for farming and dairying.
Several parallel ridges, remarkably uniform in height, and some of the
oldest rocks in America, form the lesser elevations. Among the best-known
are the Green Pond, Schooley, Hopatcong, and Jenny Jump ; between them,
lakes, swamps, brooks and narrow valleys are frequent. Summer resorts
and large country estates are situated throughout this region. To the south
lies cleared land used for agriculture. The Highlands do not end at the
State line but stretch northeasterly to West Point, where they become the
Highlands of the Hudson, and southwestward into Pennsylvania. Eleva
tions in this area average about 800 feet.
Lake Hopatcong, in the south central section of the Appalachian High
lands district, is the largest inland body of water wholly within the State.
It has an area of 2,443 acres an d a shoreline of more than 40 miles. Green
wood Lake, with 1,290 acres, is divided between New Jersey and New
York. Nearby is Wanaque Reservoir, the State s largest artificial lake.
Scores of smaller lakes, many of glacial origin, are found in this region.
One-fifth of the State, a long strip barely 20 miles wide, the city belt of
New Jersey, lies within the Triassic Lowland division, which extends from
Delaware River to Hudson River, and north from US i (the straight-line
highway between Newark and Trenton) to the base of the Ramapo
Mountains.
Manufacturing and commerce have centered in this area, with the result
that it includes Paterson, Passaic, Jersey City, Newark, Elizabeth, New
Brunswick and Trenton every large urban center in the State with the
exceptions of Camden and Atlantic City. West and north of Newark is a
string of closely built-up residential towns: Maplewood, the Oranges,
Bloomfield, Nutley, Clifton, and suburbs of Paterson.
The red soils of the weak Triassic sandstone and shales are not utilized
extensively for agricultural development. However, the section running
southwest along the Piedmont belt, just above US i, is one of the oldest
farming districts in the State.
Rising abruptly from the sandstone plain generally characteristic of the
district are the traprock formations known as the Palisades, Sourland,
Watchung, and Cushetunk. They are forested and rise from 400 to 500
PASSAIC RIVER FROM PULASKI SKYWAY
feet above sea level. The Palisades, the most important of these, extend as
far as Weehawken from a point north of the New York boundary, gradu
ally decreasing in height. The traprock formation continues to the Kill
van Kull channel and into the Watchung Mountains west of the group of
suburbs known as the Oranges, but south of Weehawken has little scenic
appeal.
The State s three principal rivers, the Passaic, Hackensack, and Raritan,
all drain this section and are partly navigable. The Passaic, the most im
portant commercially, rises in the southern part of Morris County and
runs northeast to Little Falls, where it descends 40 feet by a cascade and
rapids. In Paterson the river drops 70 feet into a vertically-walled gorge to
form Passaic Falls, a spectacular sight when high water causes an over
flow. Usually the river s entire volume is diverted for electricity produc
tion. From the falls, the river turns southward and empties into Newark
Bay.
The Hackensack enters the State about five miles west of the Hudson,
flows parallel with that river and empties into Newark Bay, around which
are thousands of acres of marshland. The Raritan, largest river wholly
within the State, rises in Morris County, runs eastward and empties into
Raritan Bay. It drains an area of 1,105 square miles. Some of the streams
io NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
provide water power, as may be seen at Paterson, High Bridge, Potters-
ville, and Raritan.
The Coastal Plain division, comprising about 4,400 square miles, or
more than half of the State s area, sweeps inland and northward from the
ocean up to the general course of US i . One-third of the plain is less than
50 feet above sea level; two-fifths are between 50 and 100 feet; and one-
fourth is 100 feet above sea level. One-eighth of the plain consists of
tidal marsh.
Fringed though it is with these tidal marshes and containing many in
land swamps, the plain in certain areas is highly productive. The clay beds
and greensand marls of the northern section provide good farm land, pro
ducing melons, potatoes, corn, and other standard market crops. West
ward in Burlington County is one of the most important fruit-growing
districts of eastern United States.
The southern and central part of the plain is covered largely with stunted
pine woods the famous pine barrens. Throughout this area are cranberry
bogs. The swamp land yields in addition large quantities of sphagnum
moss (used by nurserymen for potting) and medicinal herbs. Early set
tlers quickly discovered the value of the Great Cedar Swamp in Cape May
County, on Tuckahoe River. Buried at shallow depths and perfectly pre
served were the trunks of giant cedars, which were hauled from the swamp
and converted into shingles and other building material.
Beaches and tidal marshes extending from Raritan Bay to Cape May on
the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Cape to Camden on Delaware River,
almost encircle the area. Sand bars along the coast have always been a
hazard to mariners and fishermen. Capped by sand dunes, the bars are
slowly becoming part of the mainland because of the accumulation of
sediment washed into the basins from the shore. Rivers with swampy
banks, the large extent of unproductive land, and a lack of good harbors
have generally retarded the development of the Coastal Plain.
From Manasquan south the coast is a succession of shallow inlets, river
mouths and long sandy beaches. Barnegat, Little Egg Harbor, and Great
Egg Harbor are the most important harbors on the southern coast. The
Delaware River is navigable up to Camden.
Principal rivers, none of which runs for more than 36 miles, are the
Pequest, Great Egg Harbor, and Maurice. The drainage pattern is den
dritic, or treelike.
The sole important elevation in this section is the Navesink Highlands
on Lower New York Bay, highest point on the open Atlantic Coast be
tween Maine and Florida.
NATURAL SETTING II
An ocean to the south and mountains in the north account in part for
New Jersey s strikingly varied climate. The southern tip of the State, at
Cape May, has a uniform summer coolness, but escapes hard winters be
cause it is out of the northern storm path and protected by the nearness
of the Gulf Stream. The northern highlands have the coldest winter weather
of any section in the State.
The mean temperatures range from 49.2 F. at Dover in the north to
55.4 at Bridgeton in the south. The highest recorded temperature in the
State was 109 at Somerville on September 21, 1895. At Riverdale in
Bergen County, a record low of 34 below zero was reported on January
5, 1904. Seacoast temperatures have never fallen to more than 10 below
zero.
Consistently mild weather has contributed to making Atlantic City an
important health and resort city. Its average winter temperature is 34,
while the summer mean is 70.
Annual rainfall throughout the State averages 48 inches, with less pre
cipitation along the southern shore and slightly more in the northern dis
trict. The State escaped the worst of the drought in 1930, receiving 19
inches of its normal 3 5 -inch rainfall in the growing season.
Snow falls in the period from November to April. The growing season,
between killing frosts of spring and autumn, varies in length from 155
days in the Kittatinny Mountain region to 203 days along the coast.
Geology and Paleontology
Geologists divide New Jersey as it is today into three provinces. The
first, known as the Appalachian Highlands Province, contains the highest
ground in the State and extends northwest from a line connecting Suffern,
Morristown, and Milford. Extending 20 miles south of the Ramapos to
US i (the Newark to Trenton highway) and lying between the Delaware
and Hudson Rivers, is the Triassic Lowland, a less elevated section. South
of US i is the lowest land in the State, comprising the Coastal Plain
Province.
Each section has been shaped by the interplay of sub-crustal forces and
external agencies such as erosion by surface water and invading ice. And
the character of each has exercised physical control over man s cultural his
tory within its boundaries. Cities, farms, and factories are placed today
largely where the results of geological processes not man suggested.
The Appalachian mountain ridge, on the northwestern boundary, re
sulted from tilted-up layers of hard rock that have withstood erosion while
12 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
the less durable rocks were gradually worn away to form the Kittatinny
Valley. The lower Highlands ridges are largely composed of hard rocks of
granite, gneiss, limestone, slate, sandstone, and siliceous conglomerates.
These rocks are the oldest in the State, consisting largely of pre-Cambrian
and Paleozoic types. Along the Ramapo Mountains on the southern border
of this region is a great fault, or fracture, dating back many millions of
years to the time when a vast block of rock-crust broke away and settled.
Although the hard sandstone ridges carry a soil sufficiently hospitable for
forest growth, the only productive soil is found on the soft shales and
limestones of the well-settled valleys.
The Triassic Lowland, a long strip barely 20 miles wide, is the urban
and industrial center of New Jersey. The underlying rocks of this section
are chiefly red sandstones and shales, which through decay have given
their color to the soil. Although not conducive to extensive farming, this
formation has provided excellent sandstone for building and roadmaking.
Several ridges in this province, notably the Watchung Mountains, have
successfully resisted erosion because of their hard volcanic rock. The
Watchungs may owe their origin to one of New Jersey s geologic oddities,
Snake Hill, which is probably the eroded stump of an ancient volcano.
This rough rock-pile has a lonely site in the Hackensack meadows, just
north of the Pennsylvania Railroad main line, where it is one of the first
things seen by outbound travelers from New York as the train leaves the
Hudson tunnel.
The most spectacular sight in this area is, of course, the Palisades of the
Hudson. Rising in places to more than 500 feet, these great stone columns
are the edge of what was once a thick sheet of molten rock that, forced
upward from great depths in the earth s interior, spread out horizontally
between layers of sedimentary sandstone and red shale like the chocolate
filling in a layer cake. Cooling slowly far beneath the surface, this layer
acquired its perpendicular columns through shrinkage and cracking. Over
a long period of time, erosion removed several thousand feet of sediment
in the layer above, finally exposing the Palisades. Because of greater hard
ness they have survived countless centuries of erosion.
For 17 miles within the State this rock wall parallels the Hudson, disap
pearing from sight near Weehawken. But the formation can be traced un
der the waters of Kill van Kull to Staten Island, where it makes a fare
well appearance as an unimposing little heap of rocks in an open field.
Soundings have shown that the canyon of the Hudson extends 400 miles
to sea a natural marvel easily comparable with the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado.
NATURAL SETTING 13
The broad Coastal Plain region is the center of New Jersey s market
gardens, pine forests, and beach playgrounds. Along the Atlantic coast
south of Point Pleasant, a long broken row of sand ridges rises above sea
level. These ridges have been built up offshore by the action of waves and
ocean currents. Similarly, tidal marshes and beaches extend around the
State from Raritan Bay on the east coast to Camden on the western
boundary.
Fertile soils are found upon the inner coastal plain. An inner belt of
Cretaceous greensands and marls, valuable as fertilizer, extends across the
State from the Raritan to the Delaware. As a whole, the area is one of
sedimentary rocks. Contrasting with the fertility of the farming district is
the great pine forest that covers more than 3,000 square miles in the
southeast.
Age of Invertebrates. Tests involving radioactive minerals indicate that
crystalline rocks in the Highlands region are at least one billion years
old. Geologists have pieced together a story of New Jersey that antedates
the dinosaur by many millions of years. At the earliest time in geological
records, the northwestern section of the State was the floor of a long and
narrow inland sea. This gulf was separated from the open Atlantic by a
mountainous barrier on the site of the present continental shelf. Erosion
gradually wore down the mountains, the soil and debris being distributed
on the floor of the sea. Ultimately this sediment converted an arm of the
sea into dry land.
The animals of this inland sea were all invertebrates; shellfish and
trilobites were dominant. The shellfish superficially resembled those of our
present sea, while the trilobites were peculiar animals, smaller but other
wise not unlike the king crab or horseshoe crab of the New Jersey coast
today. Fossils of these animals are occasionally found in quartzite and
limestone which in the form of sand and limey ooze formed the sea-floor
during this period. Perfect trilobites are very rare in New Jersey. Quarries
near Blairstown and Columbia have yielded fragments.
During the Ordovician period, which followed the Cambrian, lime
stones and shales were being deposited. The animals of the Ordovician
sea were more numerous than those of the Cambrian, but again they were
all spineless. Sponges, corals, shellfish, and trilobites are occasionally found
in the rocks deposited in this sea, for instance near Jacksonburg, New
ton, and Branchville.
Age of Reptiles. Millions of years later, during the Triassic period,
came the Appalachian revolution, when the earth s crust shivered and
14 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
made mountains. The eroded mountains near the sea were pushed bodily
northwest, wrinkling the layers of sediment that had filled this ancient
trough. These huge wrinkles were the ancestral Appalachian Mountains.
A long period of erosion followed; the newly formed mountains were
slowly worn down, their waste being spread upon an eastern piedmont that
lay, in Triassic time, between the new mountains and the relics of the old
barrier. The weight of these new deposits was too much for the earth s
crust. A large block split off and sank, squeezing upward enormous quan
tities of black lava that spread over the floor of this valley. (The line of
fracture is known today as the Ramapo fault.)
The elevation of the Appalachian Mountains left a valley between them
and the older mountains of Appalachia. Several fresh-water lakes must
have existed in this valley, for today there are remains of many fish in the
deposits that eventually filled the lakes. A great many of these fossil fish
have been found in the vicinity of Boonton.
More sediment from the bordering mountains on the east and west cov
ered the lava. Finally, earth movements tilted the entire strata to a gentle
northwestward slope; a series of fractures enabled the crustal blocks to
slip downward as they became tilted.
The irresistible forces of erosion forces that have carved New Jersey
as the State exists today continued their assault on the mountains. The
ancestral Appalachians were slowly leveled off. Another series of sedi
ments, now known as the Cretaceous, was built up along the coast, spread
ing inland over part of the Triassic rocks. This encroaching sea deposited
beds of gravel, sand, clay, and greensand marl that are important units of
the Coastal Plain today. Ancestors of the modern shellfish inhabited these
waters and built great shell beds covering many square miles; dinosaurs
waded in the coastal marshes, leaving footprints on the muds of geologic
time; sea serpents, sharks, crocodiles, and huge turtles disported nearby.
Their habitat was probably the dense vegetation or marshes near the sea.
Great forests of palmlike trees grew along the shores of these estuaries,
and tangles of huge ferns and slender branchless trees, not unlike our pres
ent horse-tail rushes, choked the marshes. The finding of a fossil cycad at
Woodbridge has suggested that the climate was much warmer than it is
today.
The dinosaurs and some of the other reptiles of this period were numer
ous, and their remains have occasionally been found in southern New
Jersey. A model of the large dinosaur (Hadrasaurus) found many years
ago near Haddonfield can be seen in the State Museum at Trenton. Shark
SCHOOLEYS MOUNTAIN, NEAR HACKETTSTOWN
teeth and bones of crocodiles and turtles are often found in deposits of
Cretaceous age.
During construction of the George Washington Memorial Bridge, ex
cavations made in Triassic rock of the Palisades revealed tracks of dino-
.saurs. Traces and skeletons of dinosaurs and other fossil animals have
been uncovered also at Fort Lee and near Princeton.
Cretaceous marine fossils deposited by the sea that covered most of
southern New Jersey are even more numerous than the terrestrial ones. The
shells of large clams and snails and the pens of a squidlike animal (belem-
nite) are often found in the Cretaceous deposits at such places as New
Egypt, Marlton, Crosswicks, Mullica Hill, and Lenola.
Age of Mammals. Once more the earth s crust moved. This time, how
ever, it was not a convulsion, but a rather gentle upward push that ele
vated the whole Atlantic coastal belt. Streams etched out new valleys, with
the hardest rock surfaces resisting erosion longest. The Delaware River
came to grips with the ancient bulk of Kittatinny Mountains a grand-
16 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
father in a range of patriarchs. Whereas the eroded remains of Kittatinny
once stood scarcely higher than the river s crest, its hard rock was now
rising anew as part of the general onward and upward movement. But the
mountain s uplift was slow enough to give the river a chance to use its
cutting tools. The Delaware did not need to carve through a mountain
wall, nor did it find a ready-made gap. It merely held its course as the
mountain rose, sawing downward through both hard and soft rock. The
result of that successful operation is the Delaware Water Gap.
Most of the ancient plane surfaces disappeared at this time, except for
the table top of the Palisades and the flat summits of venerable Schooley s
and Kittatinny Mountains. The Schooley peneplane, as it is designated by
geologists, is a conspicuous but little known souvenir of a long stage in
erosional history.
It was at the beginning of this period, the Tertiary, that the dinosaurs
and other large reptiles suddenly and rather mysteriously disappeared.
Their place was taken by the mammals. Although many kinds of mammals
were living throughout the country during this period, and New Jersey
probably had its quota, Tertiary fossils are not common.
The northern part of New Jersey was much as it is today, while the
southern part was covered several times by a warm shallow sea. Many of
the shellfish were similar to those of the Cretaceous seas, but others were
more like those of our present oceans. There are various deposits of Terti
ary fossils in New Jersey, but probably the best known is near Shiloh in
Cumberland County, where a large fauna of Miocene fossils has been
found in the marl pits.
The Ice Age. The surface of New Jersey was geologically ready for
man something less than a million years ago. Then the climate gradually
became colder. Down the valleys of Lake Champlain, the Connecticut and
St. Lawrence Rivers, long fingers of ice from Canada crept southward.
Finally these fingers merged into a solid sheet of ice that swept all resist
ance before it.
Vast quantities of rock, soil, and debris were pushed across country for
many miles. Remnants of this material, known as the terminal moraine,
still mark the former edge of the ice from Perth Amboy northward
through Plainfield, Summit, and Madison to Denville ; and from Denville
due west through Netcong, Hackettstown, and Belvidere to the Delaware
River. A line through these towns marks the southern limit of the glacier s
advance.
Mammoths and mastodons roamed the country at this time. One of the
NATURAL SETTING 17
finest specimens of mastodon found in the State is in the museum of Rut
gers University. The skeleton, remarkably complete, was excavated in 1869
from a bed of gray marl in Mannington Township, Salem County. It is 22
feet long and 9 feet 8 inches high. Six other mastodon skeletons were
found between Vienna and Hackettstown, and several teeth were recently
dredged off the coast.
Although this period, the Quaternary or Pleistocene, is called the Ice
Age, there were periods between advances of the ice when the climate was
probably milder than today. Water from melted ice flooded much of the
land adjoining the present shore line. Fossils from this warm, interglacial
sea include species that are now restricted to warmer waters off the Caro-
linas and Florida. Many specimens were recently found when sand was
pumped from the bottom of the marshes in Cape May and Atlantic Coun
ties to convert the lowlands into real estate developments. In addition to
shells, a few larger fossils were found, including bones of the deer, whale,
and numerous fishes.
Drainage systems were, of course, seriously disturbed by the arrival of the
glacier, by the newly formed deposits, and by the great amounts of water
released when the ice melted. Many of the lakes and swamps of Sus
sex County are of glacial origin. The Passaic River, which formerly pur
sued a short route seaward through the Watchung Mountains at Summit,
was blocked by morainal material. A large lake was formed behind the
mountains and temporarily overflowed near Bernardsville. As the ice edge
receded, perhaps no longer than 20,000 years ago, the river found lower
outlets for this Lake Passaic, finally adopting a hairpin course through
Paterson a 2O-mile detour. The river is still making that detour today,
the change being responsible for the spectacular Passaic Falls within the
city of Paterson. The last of Lake Passaic may be seen in the Great Swamp
near Myersville in Morris County.
Plant and Animal Life
Because of a topography that ranges from mountainous highland to
sandy plain, with marked differences in soil and climate, New Jersey has a
variety of wild life surprising in so small an area.
The greater part of the Coastal Plain, covered with deposits of loose
sand and gravel and a growth of stunted oak and pine, with some white
cedar survivors, is only the "Pine Barrens" to most residents of New Jer
sey. But for more than a century botanists have considered this region one
i8 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
of the most interesting in the United States. Swamps, drained by brownish
cedar-tinged streams, are veritable marine gardens.
On damp sandy spots near cedar swamps at 30 known places through
out the pine barrens is found the little fern, schhaea pusilla (curly grass),
the outstanding rarity of the State. Since its discovery in 1805 at Quaker
Bridge it has attracted naturalists from Europe and elsewhere. The fronds,
seldom more than five inches in length, are identified readily only by those
who know that the plant bears little resemblance to a fern.
Known to but a few is a sandy pocket, on an old wagon road in south
ern New Jersey, where the passionflower blooms profusely. It is perhaps
the only sight of its kind in the State. Vast stretches beneath the pine trees
are covered with the trailing pyxie plant, smallest evergreen shrub in the
world, growing only one-half inch high and putting forth white star-
shaped blossoms in April. Woods of the Coastal Plain are green at all sea
sons with swamp magnolia, laurel, and holly, in addition to the pines and
cedars.
The northern forest growth is in general similar to that of New Eng
land. Almost 20 varieties of oaks are common in the State, and the maple,
beech, locust, and birch are found in large numbers. Chestnut and hickory
trees, once abundant, are practically all gone. Old elms to match those of
Connecticut towns are found along village streets. In the northern swamps
the red maple and pin oak are typical. Ferns grow in greater profusion
northward.
Spring comes in New Jersey when the snowy wreaths of the shadbush
so named because it blooms when the shad are running appear on the
hillsides and in the dry open woods, along with trillium, hepatica, and the
eggshell-white blossoms of bloodroot. In the pine barrens a rare April
flower is that of the sand myrtle, a little plant with dark leaves somewhat
like those of box, and a smother of white blooms lasting many weeks. Ar
butus is found in the woodlands and on sunny slopes as well. In late
March and early April the pale yellow blossoms of the spice bush, and in
autumn its scarlet berries and brilliant gold leaves, add color to the wet
woods and marshes.
The staggerbush, with delicate, pinkish-white, nodding flower clusters,
blossoms from April to June. Wild azalea grows almost anywhere, scent
ing the air with its bright pink flowers. The plant is known also as the
pinxterbloom because it is seen on Whitsunday, for which the Dutch word
is Pinkster. On dry soil exposed to the sun is the birdfoot violet. The
showy Virginia cowslip, with pink buds opening sky-blue, takes root in
low meadows and on stream banks, blossoming throughout the summer.
NATURAL SETTING 19
Along roadsides near the shore the beach plum puts forth pure white
blossoms in May. The deep red or purple fruit of this low straggling tree
is much used for preserves ; the Indians prized it. Throughout the State the
spring green of most woodland is beautified by the delicate white of the
flowering dogwood. Woods and highways in nearly all parts of New Jersey
are graced by the mountain laurel, with pinkish-white blooms and ever
green leaves. On the borders of swamps and moist woods the fragrant
creamy-white flowers of sweetbay, or magnolia, are seen early in May.
Also found commonly on damp ground is the mayflower, or mayapple,
with umbrella-shaped leaves.
In late June and early July the partridgeberry, with delicate pinkish-
white blossoms, brightens the oak and hemlock woodlands of the north
ern counties. Neighbors of this plant are the wintergreen, with drooping
white bells ; the pipsissewa and pyrola, with waxen blossoms touched with
red; the dainty yellow ladyslipper, of the orchid family; and the rattle
snake plantain, also an orchid, with a short spike of tiny white florets
rising from a rosette of mottled leaves.
Sunny swamps are the wild-flower strongholds of mid-July, with turks-
cap lilies, the meadowrue, and pitcherplants ; tiny, glistening sundews,
unrolling white spikes; the rose-pink orchid; and the fringed orchises in
purple, yellow, and white. A patch of brilliant orange milkwort will be
seen on a sandy dike; near it bladderwort raises yellow blossoms above
the shallow water where its fringelike leaves float. Turkeysbeard, the odd
plant of the southern swamps, abounds in sandy bogs. Its short stiff leaves
curve upward, almost exactly like a turkey s beard, and there is a golden
gleam from its yellow spikes. Seed capsules are reddish-brown; the stalks
and bracts, buff.
Handsomest wild flower of its color is the rich orange butterflyweed,
seen in sandy fields and along roadsides throughout the summer. Blossom
ing in July also are the false indigo, with violet-blue flowers; the yellow
indigo; Jersey-tea, a shrub with plumy white flowers seen in dry open
woodlands and along gravel banks (used by Colonial housewives as a sub
stitute during the British boycott); the fringed bleedingheart ; the pink
turtlehead ; the brilliant blue closed gentian of the pine barrens ; the blue
cornflower of the northern fields; and of course the daisy, which turns
some northern pastures into an almost solid white. Constant companions
of the daisy are the buttercup, red and white clover, and yellow mustard.
In August, roadside fences and waste places are covered with matrimony-
vine and its purple blossoms. The vine is a runaway, having escaped from
New England gardens. Honeysuckle scents the air in many places from
20 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
the northern counties to Cape May. Another fragrant plant is the sweet
pepperbush, with snowy spikes, seen on stream banks. The sweetspire has
spikes of bell-shaped white blossoms in summer, and brilliant crimson
foliage in autumn. In low moist ground grows the cardinal flower, bright
ening the woods with its deep red torchlike spikes.
A roadside favorite during August and early September is joe-pye-
weed, its tall stalks crowned with dull pink clusters. Often seen near it
are the deep purple blooms of ironweed, and the familiar goldenrod.
Queen Anne s lace with its clusters of tiny white blossoms faintly tinged
with green, black-eyed-susan, and sunflowers, are also common along high
ways. In swampy sections the marshmallow, a shrub with large pale-pink
flowers, mingles with reeds and cattails. Damp roadside ditches are pre
ferred by the handsome tiger lily, whose spotted orange blossoms add
bright color throughout the State.
Colder weather brings out the bright hues of berries of vines and
shrubs. Perhaps the most generally admired is the bittersweet, with orange-
red berries, seen in thickets or against stone walls. Sumacs are a rich red
with foliage and fruit. In a few swamps and woods the rare witch hazel
puts forth clusters of golden blooms among its dying leaves, making a
weird but astonishingly beautiful effect after the first frost.
Vandals and Christmas peddlers have placed the native holly in danger
of extinction. The tree is still found in many sections of the Coastal Plain
(a grove of fine old trees is in the Sandy Hook military reservation),
dwarfed and misshapen by repeated stripping of its branches. Last and
brightest color display of the year is made by the black alder, whose scarlet
berries, densely crowding the branches, light up swamps and thickets long
after the surrounding foliage has turned brown.
The State has many varieties of both shore and land birds. The long
line of coast with its series of indenting bays and rivers invites a variety
of species. Most familiar is the herring gull, found in great numbers. This
bird picks up clams along the salt river banks and drops them from a
height on rocks or hard-packed sand to break them open. Sandpipers flit
along the beach, skillfully evading the incoming waves. They take flight
suddenly in a body and catch the sunlight on silver wings.
In the shallows of inlets and marshy lakes the great blue herons stand
as if on stilts, patiently waiting for a catch. The little green heron is com
mon ; the night heron and the least bittern are also found. In stunted trees
along shore roads are seen the crude nests of the American osprey or fish-
hawk, poorly built structures of sticks to which the birds return year after
year. The osprey circles over the waves until it sights a fish ; then it plum-
NATURAL SETTING 21
mets downward with closed wings, and carries the flapping prize off to its
nest. The Barnegat Bay region is famous for ducks, which give good sport
to hunters every season. In southern New Jersey, bald-headed eagles select
the tops of tall trees for their vast and weighty nests. These birds live as
long as 125 years.
The Delaware River provides a route for migratory birds, and favorable
homesites along its wooded banks. Up and down its length the bobolinks
pass. The males, in shining black and white, arrive first. When the females
join them, nests are made in upland meadows and the male pours forth
the maddest and merriest of all bird songs. Summer over, their bright
colors change to dull brown and the song becomes a sharp "chink." Many
southern species follow the river north. Among them are the mockingbird
and the summer tanager, the first with its rare song, the second with its
splotch of brilliant color.
Birds of the Allegheny zone cross the northern border of the State to
nest in the hills. These include the blue-headed vireo; the hermit thrush,
one of the best singers; and the veery, or Wilson s thrush. Some of the
rarer warblers, such as the hooded and the brilliant Blackburnian, are also
summer residents. Thousands of wood warblers cross New Jersey each
spring and fall, on their long journey between Alaska and Patagonia. It is
a great moment for a bird lover when he glimpses these tiny birds of pas
sage, beautiful in color, courageous in flight.
In New Jersey orchards bluebirds sing, and purple finches dance on
apple-tree boughs. Goldfinches match their colors with the yellow thistle.
Wood thrushes by the roadside "sing each song twice over" in the eve
ning; quail answer one another from the fence rails, while a brown
thrasher in a tree-top sings alone.
Urban areas are dominated by the ubiquitous English sparrow ; starlings
are also numerous. Robins, common in suburban regions, roost together in
the country in flocks of as many as 2,500 for protection against owls.
Flickers and other woodpeckers, wrens, catbirds, song sparrows, orioles,
brown thrashers, flycatchers, swallows and brilliant blue jays nest on the
fringes of cities, as well as in the country. The ruby-throated humming
bird is a frequent visitor to flower gardens, and the night-flying whip-
poorwill is often heard.
Foe of other birds as well as of small rodents is the shrike, which kills
for pleasure. The great northern shrike has been known to kill robins.
Captured mice are jammed onto thorns, or wedged tightly into crotches.
The barn owl is frequently seen, and the screech owl is commonly heard ;
occasionally the white Arctic owl is found in New Jersey. At Mountain-
22 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
ville in Hunterdon County is a buzzard s roost where from 75 to 100 buz
zards gather every summer.
Rose-breasted grosbeaks, which feed on potato bugs, were numerous in
New Jersey in 1907 ; since then, for reasons unknown to ornithologists,
they have been comparatively scarce. Evening grosbeaks were seen at Bel-
videre in 1916, and have been reported at other times.
Largest of New Jersey mammals is the deer, found in both northern
and southern woods. Virginia deer are stocked by the State fish and game
commission. Bears are occasionally reported in the northern woods, and a
few wildcats are left. Foxes have become so numerous in the southwestern
marsh area that marine hunts have been organized to check their depreda
tions on the valuable muskrat population. A few mink remain at large;
others are raised for their fur. Raccoons are still common, and so are
woodchucks and opossums. The porcupine is gradually becoming extinct,
and the beaver has all but vanished.
The skunk, perhaps the most dignified and fearless of all animals, has
withstood the march of urbanization and, along with the weasel, is a
source of annoyance to poultrymen. Squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits are
seen even in suburban areas ; the flying squirrel is common in the northern
counties.
The rattlesnake and copperhead, both relatively common in northern
parts of the State, are the only poisonous reptiles. The great mountain
blacksnake, entirely harmless, attains a length of eleven feet. Among the
handsomest of New Jersey snakes are the yellow and brown-banded king-
snake, and the pine snake, with a whitish body marked with brown black-
margined blotches. As the name implies, it is a native of the pine barrens.
There are many types of turtles, including the giant sea turtle, the snap
ping turtle (chief ingredient of a prized New Jersey dish, snapper soup),
and the mud turtle (stinkpot) of wood and marsh. Hell Mountain near
Mountainville is a terrapins retreat, where many hibernate in the marshes
beside a natural spring.
Conservation and Natural Resources
Nature has endowed New Jersey with splendid physical resources that
support the vast industrial system built by man. To preserve, develop, and
stimulate the utilization of these natural benefits is the task of the New
Jersey State Department of Conservation and Development, the State Plan
ning Board, the State Fish and Game Commission, and other public and
private agencies.
NATURAL SETTING 23
The land problem involves soil conservation, forestry work, and the se
lection of areas for recreational uses or watershed purposes. Water policy
includes provision for an adequate drinking and industrial supply, main
tenance of streams and lakes for recreation and power development, pollu
tion abatement, and flood control. The classification of minerals and deter
mination of the extent and location of the supply are the work of the State
geologist. Wild life resources are conserved by fish stocking, the establish
ment of game preserves, and the limitation of hunting and fishing.
Nearly one-half the total land area of the State is forest or "wild land,"
unsuited to farming because of inferior or depleted soil. Some of these
2,000,000 acres can be reclaimed for agriculture by improved methods of
soil treatment, but the greater portion is most easily adapted to public uses
such as recreation, development of timber and water supplies, and the
preservation of wild life.
Although the pine lands of southern New Jersey are of small agricul
tural use, they have been found suitable for chicken farming and the cul
tivation of cranberries, blueberries, and timber. Similarly, dairying has
flourished in the northern part of the State, where excessive slope has
limited farming.
The principal soil conservation work in New Jersey is carried on by the
Federal and State Departments of Agriculture on demonstration projects
totaling 37,000 acres. In 1937 the legislature created the New Jersey Soil
Conservation Committee, to have general control of all soil conservation
activities and programs in the State. Crop rotation and strip cropping are
two important techniques in the effort to avoid depletion and to protect
the soil from erosion by water and wind.
For forest development as well as recreation the State maintains 8 for
ests, with a total acreage of 54,374, and 14 parks. The State forests range
in size from 21,555 acres (Lebanon) to 43 acres (Jackson). Between these
limits are the Bass River, Belleplain, Green Bank, Jenny Jump, Penn, and
Stokes Forests. Forestry work includes investigation and experimentation,
reforestation, cooperation with private landowners in forest problems, and
most important of all the prevention and fighting of forest fires.
Valuable timber in the State is largely confined to hardwoods in the
north, and yellow pine and cedar in the south. The relative percentages
of trees available are: oak, 47 percent; pine, 22 percent; maple, 7 percent;
cedar, 6 percent ; hemlock, 5 percent ; all others, 1 3 percent.
The famous Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey consist of hundreds
of square miles of stunted pine trees, swamps, and scrub growth. This
area s history is an object lesson for conservationists. The original pine,
24 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
cedar, and oak growth was recklessly cut for shipbuilding and charcoal
burning until about 1860, when it was virtually exhausted. The second
growth proved to be of poor quality, and the region has remained barren
except for small sections where the State has treated the soil in an attempt
to produce another healthy crop of pine or to develop transplanted species.
To bolster the diminishing lumber trade within the next 75 years and
to demonstrate the timber-growing possibilities of the State, the Depart
ment of Conservation and Development has purchased 35,000 acres of
idle land, and these are being improved by scientific cutting and planting.
The State also maintains two forest nurseries where several million seed
lings are grown annually for planting in State forests and for sale to
landowners. In recent years the Civilian Conservation Corps has cooper
ated with the State forester by planting 40,000,000 trees and collecting
between 7,000 and 8,000 pounds of tree seeds.
Reforestation consists of providing for immediate new growth of the
tree species best suited to a particular locality, as mature timber is cut or
destroyed. Reproduction may be effected by seedlings or sprouts from the
original stand, or by artificial reforestation where natural reproduction is
insufficient or where new tree species are desired.
The entire forest area from Port Jervis and Suffern to Cape May is
under observation from 19 lookout and auxiliary tower stations. Fires are
fought by crews with shovels, brooms, and other equipment, including
pumps capable of forcing a stream of water through a mile of hose. Air
planes, for use in large fires, are now being equipped with two-way short
wave radio apparatus. In the past 12 years there has been, in the face of a
35 percent increase in the number of fires, a 26 percent reduction in the
total area burned and a 46 per cent decrease in the size of the average fire.
The problems of adequate domestic water supply, stream pollution, and
water for power and recreation are handled by six State agencies and two
interstate committees. The most important of these are the State Water
Policy Commission and the North Jersey District Water Supply Commis
sion, which provide for an adequate water supply. The total daily domestic
and industrial consumption of water in New Jersey is estimated at between
400 and 500 million gallons. The total water resources of the State have
been placed at from 3,595 to 3,870 million gallons daily, the exact amount
depending upon the extent to which the Delaware River ultimately can be
utilized.
Important flood-control work is now in progress in the Passaic Valley,
last flooded in 1936. The program includes creation of permanent lakes or
OYSTER FLEET ON COHANSEY RIVER, GREENWICH
reservoirs in the tributary areas of the river, and widening, deepening, and
diking the river at strategic points. A flood problem that has not yet been
solved is the further reclamation of the Passaic Meadows in the Newark
area, where valuable land is now constantly under water.
According to the State Planning Board, New Jersey is weak in stream
sanitation. The $3,500,000 shellfish industry has been driven to the Maurice
River and the lower Delaware section by stream pollution in the Raritan
and Shrewsbury Rivers areas. Similarly, in waters along the Atlantic coast,
contamination by sewage and industrial waste threatens the deep-sea fish
ing industry. Oyster culture, centered in the Maurice River Cove, which
contains the largest continuous oyster acreage in the world, is under the
supervision of the Board of Shell Fisheries.
To safeguard these enterprises and to protect streams important to future
water supply, the State Planning Board recommends the formation of joint
sanitary districts to be administered by properly related committees. The
gravest situation is in the New York Bay section, where pollution threatens
26 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
the State s beaches ; this danger is being met by the work of the Interstate
Committee on New York Bay Pollution, of which New Jersey is a member.
Although the amount of power derived from water in New Jersey is
small compared to that of many other States, its annual value is estimated
in excess of $800,000.
Probably all of the State s important mineral deposits have been located
accurately by Federal and State surveys, so that now the major problem is
to control the rate of extraction. The leading minerals are greensand marl,
zinc, clay, potash, iron, talc, and quartz.
The zinc mines at Franklin are among the world s largest deposits of
this mineral, and in total production rank second only to those of the
Mississippi Valley. Ore from this locality is conspicuous because of the
three colored minerals it contains red zincite, black franklinite, and green
willemite.
The tremendous marl deposits, estimated at almost four billion tons,
are important for fertilizer, water softening, and sand stiffening in the
glass industry. The greensands take their coloring from glauconite, which
contains potash. Although commercial production from this source has not
been tried, it is estimated that a thousand-year supply of potash for the
Nation is available, should the expense of processing be justified.
The clay resources are used for fire bricks, high grade plastic pottery,
stoneware, and terra cotta. Iron mining, as late as 1880 chief among the
State s industries, has been reduced to insignificant proportions by com
petition from Lake Superior ores.
In the stone industries, the State ranks first as a producer of trap-rock.
There are also extensive white and blue limestone deposits. Sand and
gravel, important for road construction, are found in the Woodbridge and
South Amboy area. Talc, the base for talcum powder, is abundant in ser
pentine rock near Phillipsburg. Large amounts of nearly pure quartz sand,
valuable for glassmaking, are in the southern section.
The conservation of fish and game has been a cardinal point in the gen
eral conservation program of the State. Through its game management
program, it maintains ten public shooting and fishing grounds and numer
ous game preserves, many of them in the State parks and forests. These
are stocked from the State s wild life sanctuary, the State Fish Hatchery
at Hackettstown, and three State game farms. The Fish and Game Com
mission also stocks private streams and lands.
The New Jersey State Planning Board, set up by the legislature in 1934,
is preparing a master plan for the State. The board coordinates the activi-
NATURAL SETTING 2J
ties of several State departments in order to attain a better distribution of
public works expenditures in urban, agricultural, and undeveloped areas.
In its First Annual Report of Progress (1935) the board stressed the im
portance of conservation and development, showing by reports and surveys
the need for long-term planning in utilizing and protecting the State s
natural resources.
J
A RCHEOLOGISTS concerned with New Jersey usually center their in-
y\^ terest on two main problems: (i) remains of the Lenni Lenape
Indians and their ancestors or predecessors, and (2) traces of an ancient,
possibly glacial age, man. About the Indians there is much conclusive in
formation, but evidence of ancient man has been the crux of New Jersey s
major archeological dispute.
The theory of an ancient man in New Jersey was first advanced with
evidence by Dr. Charles C. Abbott, a Trenton physician, who discovered
crude argillite blades, which he assigned to the glacial period. The spot
where these remains were found in gravel along the Delaware River bluff,
one mile south of Trenton, consequently became one of the most impor
tant archeological sites in the eastern United States. An article concerning
his finds, written by Dr. Abbott in 1872, raised a storm of argument.
Late in 1887 Henry C. Mercer, curator of the Museum of American and
Prehistoric Archeology at the University of Pennsylvania, investigated the
site. He reported that "No token of an antecedent race was discovered."
Beginning in 1894 and continuing for nearly twenty years, the Abbott
farm was excavated by Ernest Volk, under the direction of F. W. Putnam
of Harvard University. Volk, agreeing with Dr. Abbott, wrote that "the
conclusive evidence . . . asserts the antiquity of man on this continent at
least as far back as the time of these glacial deposits in the Delaware Val
ley." Dr. Leslie Spier dug several trenches on the Abbott farm in 1914
and 1915. He found large stone blades, arrowheads, and other artifacts of
a simple culture differing widely from that of the historic Lenni Lenape
Indians, but he did not attempt to answer the question of its being a pos
sible Paleolithic, or Stone Age, culture.
In April 1936 the Indian Site Survey, a Works Progress Administration
project sponsored by the State Museum and directed by Dr. Dorothy Cross,
began excavations at the Abbott farm and later at other sites. Nothing has
been discovered yet that may be attributed to an ancient or glacial man.
On the contrary, what evidence has been uncovered tends to disprove Dr.
Abbott s interpretation of his findings; as an instance, designs on recently
28
ARCHEOLOGY AND INDIANS 29
unearthed pottery indicate that the earlier people responsible for them
were not of the glacial age, but lived shortly before the Lenape.
The scantiness of evidence of these earlier people is in direct contrast
to the great number and variety of Indian artifacts found by members of
the Survey and by other investigators. From the tools, implements, decora
tive or ceremonial items, weapons, skeletons, and household units discov
ered, much progress has been made in determining the life and customs of
these aborigines. Of importance are the remains of their homes, mere
darkened spots in the ground. The sunken posts around which the bark
and grass houses of the Indians were built have left their marks; and
these, when plotted out, serve as a basis for reconstructing the actual living
quarters.
The tools and agricultural and household implements afford an espe
cially good indication of the cultural level. Made primarily of stone and
clay, they demonstrate an appreciable ingenuity. Knives, drills, scrapers,
hoes, and spades were chipped into shape from the harder stones. Some of
the uses to which the tools were put can be determined. For example, the
edges of the knives sometimes have one or more notches where they have
been used for shaping rounded objects, such as reeds for arrow shafts.
Some hoes and spades show signs of having been fitted into handles. An
other method of shaping tools was by grinding and polishing. Most of the
cutting implements axes, hatchets, adzes, and gouges were made in this
way.
Mortars and pestles show one method for preparing food. Clay pots and
stone hearths also tell the story of cooking methods. (Pots and baskets
were frequently sunk in the ground, and the food cooked by placing hot
stones in the vessels. ) Food was sometimes stored in large pots of thin clay,
buried so that the rim was flush with the surface of the house floor. Some
of these pots, most of them cracked, have been recently excavated. They
are decorated with impressions of fiber or bark.
Other smaller pieces of pottery and fragments that can be reconstructed
bear elaborate incised designs extremely important in tracing tribal dis
tribution. Each group of Indians used definite patterns in decorating its
pottery, and, where given designs are found, the work is almost certainly
that of some particular group. Certain mixtures of designs show relations
between the tribes.
Among the most interesting items are ornaments made of the rarer
stones banded slate, rose quartz, steatite, serpentine, mica, schist, and clay
marl highly polished. These include pendants, beads of tubular and disk
shapes, gorgets more elaborately designed than pendants and with more
30 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
than one perforation, and banner stones. There has been much speculation
about the banner stones usually highly polished stones in the shape of
butterfly wings, which were centrally drilled or notched. Early historical
accounts suggest that they were mounted on shafts and carried as scepters,
but there is disagreement on this point. Among the rarest ornaments are
the bird stones, shaped like birds; these were made only from the finer
stones, such as slate, steatite, and serpentine. Boat stones, resembling canoes
and sometimes perforated to be worn as pendants, are also among the rare
items.
More than 15,000 implements have been found to date (1939) in vari
ous excavations made by the Indian Site Survey. Judging by the artifacts
found, the Abbott farm site must have been a favorite place for hunting,
fishing, and farming. Numerous arrowheads, spearheads, and other imple
ments of the chase have been found here, together with sinew stones, used
for making animal gut pliable, and semi-lunar knives, used for scraping
flesh from hides or for chopping meat.
The innumerable net sinkers, usually mere notched pebbles, show that
fishing was popular. Hoes, mortars, and pestles, found in surprising quan
tities, indicate that the land was cultivated even more extensively than was
formerly supposed. Axes and gouges prove that the felling of trees and
wood-working were common practices.
Indians
The Indians who inhabited New Jersey when the white man came called
their country Scheyechbi and themselves Lenni Lenape, meaning "Original
People." The Colonists named them Delawares because most of them lived
along the Delaware River.
The Lenni Lenape belonged to the general group of Algonkian Indians
in northeastern United States and eastern Canada. The larger tribe was
divided into three sub-tribes. Each sub-tribe was further divided into fam
ily groups, each having an individual totem or guardian spirit. The Minsi
(or Munsee) sub-tribe lived in the north, and used the wolf as a totem;
the Unami, in the central part of the State, adopted the turtle; and the
Unalachtigo, in the south, were known by the wild turkey.
Where the Lenape came from is uncertain. According to their own leg
end they originated in the north country, probably southern Canada. Fam
ine and war forced them southward through western New York, into
Ohio, and then eastward to the shores of the "salt sea" or Atlantic Ocean.
A remarkable record of this migration was painted in picture writing on
ARCHEOLOGY AND INDIANS 31
strips of bark and called the Walum-Olum, or "Red Score." A copy is
reputed to have been discovered in Kentucky by Constantine Samuel
Rafinesque-Schmaltz, who interpreted the pictures in 1833.
The Lenape arrived in New Jersey not many centuries before the first
white men. Possibly there were not more than 10,000 tribesmen here when
European colonization began. They were a healthy group, slightly above
average height, but it was not long before their number was decreased
considerably by small migrations, the white man s diseases, and liquor.
Large villages were built by the Lenape. During the proper seasons they
camped near their favorite hunting and fishing grounds and quarries. The
entire State was honeycombed with well-defined trails that led to these
haunts and connected the larger villages. Since Colonial roads largely fol
lowed the earlier trails, it is possible to trace many of these today. For
water travel the Lenni Lenape made extensive use of dugout canoes.
One of the most important routes was the Minisink Trail, which con
nected Shrewsbury Inlet on the Atlantic Coast with Minisink Island in the
Delaware River four miles south of Milford, Pennsylvania. On the New
Jersey mainland opposite the island was the largest Minsi village. In
numerable trails crossed the State from the Delaware to the ocean, where
the Indians went to catch shellfish, which they dried before carrying
home. The numerous shell heaps along the coast, principally in the salt
marshes near Tuckerton and Barnegat, are evidence of this practice.
Villages were composed of round and oval houses. The round structures
were usually occupied by a single family, while the more spacious oval
ones occasionally supported several households. Chiefs had large houses,
and the council houses were also roomy.
Groups of houses were sometimes provided with a stockade, a device
borrowed from the Colonists. The houses were made by placing saplings
in the ground at regular intervals around the circumference of a circle or
oval, and tying their tops together. This skeleton was covered with strips
of bark or overlapping bundles of grass, securely lashed to the framework.
A hole was left in the roof for smoke from an inside fire.
The inside furnishings were simple. Pine boughs were used for beds.
Household utensils were made of stone or wood. Occasionally wooden
benches served as seats and beds.
Skins of the deer, elk, wolf, bear, and raccoon were used in making the
Indians scanty clothing. The men wore a small loin cloth, with a blanket
thrown over the shoulder. Leggings and moccasins of skin completed the
wearing apparel, except for necklaces and armbands of sharks teeth, shells,
wooden and stone beads, and pendants. With mussel shells they pulled
32 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
out their beards and hair, leaving a scalp lock down the center of the head
to which painted feathers were frequently fastened. Chieftains sometimes
affected two locks. Faces and exposed parts of the body were painted and
tattooed with designs of snakes, eagles, turkeys, and imaginary beings.
Women wore short skirts, with a loose tunic fastened on one shoulder.
Turkey feathers were dyed and made into skirts for dress occasions. Their
hair, worn either loose or in two braids, was held in place by painted
bands of deerskin. Before marriage their faces were brilliantly painted to
attract the attention of prospective husbands. Children wore no clothing
until they were three years old, and thereafter simply a loin cloth.
Most of the food supply was secured from hunting and fishing. In cer
tain sections of the State, however, agriculture flourished. The ground was
cultivated with crooked sticks or crudely chipped hoes mounted on shafts.
For fertilizer, a dead fish was buried at the base of the growing plant.
Corn, squash, and beans were the chief products, all grown in the same
field. Corn was usually ground into meal, from which bread and a kind of
porridge called samp (adapted by the early settlers as mush) was made.
Occasionally the meal was mixed with water, rolled up in leaves, and
baked in ashes. For winter use, corn meal was charred and placed in stor
age pots sunk in the ground. Such storage pots have been found on the
Abbott farm at Trenton.
Meat and fish were boiled or broiled. Shellfish were dried, smoked, and
used as seasoning for meats or mixed with corn and beans. Broiling was
done over an open hearth fire. Heated stones were dropped into clay pots
containing food and water for boiling.
Trade was generally conducted by barter, although the Indians had a
medium of exchange in the form of small tubular shells or painted wooden
beads called wampum. Black and white beads were used, the black being
twice as valuable as the white. Wampum was used either by the piece or
by strings, usually a foot long.
The white settlers took advantage of this cheap currency, and manufac
tured it from conch and periwinkle shells in regular factories on Long
Island, at Pascack near Hackensack, and at Egg Harbor, New Jersey. This
was considered legal currency for purchasing products from the Indians
until it was outlawed toward the end of the seventeenth century.
The religion of the Lenni Lenape was very simple. They believed in one
supreme god or Manitou, who was supported by lesser beings having
charge of various parts of everyday life. Elaborate ceremonies were pre
sented in honor of the various deities, but individuals seldom prayed to
them. Each Indian had a guardian spirit, who was supposed to have his
ARCHEOLOGY AND INDIANS 33
particular interest at heart and to whom he turned in time of need. At the
time of puberty the male child was turned out into the forest, where he
remained without food or drink until some object, animate or inanimate,
feeling sorry for him, presented itself in a dream; this object then became
his guardian spirit.
From the time the first white explorer Verrazano anchored off the shores
of New Jersey in 1524 until the last group of Indians left the State in
1802, the relationship between aborigines and whites was, on the whoJe,
peaceful and friendly.
Numerous treaties were formulated, the Indian interests being taken
care of by brilliant native chieftains and sympathetic white statesmen. Per
haps the most notable chief of the Delawares was Teedyuscung, who rep
resented his people at the five councils of Easton between 1756 and 1761.
In treaty making, the Indians of New Jersey were usually affiliated with
their kinsmen on the western shores of Delaware River because they
"drank the same water." Teedyuscung represented the entire group. He
had a remarkable career as a bold warrior, opportunist Christian, eloquent
speaker, and able counselor for his tribe. Born near Trenton shortly after
the turn of the century, he became chief in 1754, and continued to rule
until 1763, when he died in his burning house.
Teedyuscung was mainly interested in restoring the prestige lost by the
Delawares in 1725, when they became subservient to the Iroquois after re
fusing to fight against the English. During this association, the Iroquois
addressed the Delawares as "women," because the women in the Iroquois
council were the ones who had the right to ask for peace, and the Dela
wares had often shown peace-loving tendencies. They were frequently
called upon as mediators during the Colonial period.
Another great leader was Oratam, chief of the Hackensacks during the
middle part of the seventeenth century, who represented his people at nu
merous peace treaties and land transfers in the northern part of the State.
The rapid decline of the Indian population after the coming of the
white men was due principally to sale of their lands, to disease, and to
liquor. By 1758 there were but a few hundred scattered over the entire
Colony. In that year the Colony purchased 3,000 acres of land for a reser
vation at the present village of Indian Mills in Burlington County. Here
were collected almost 100 Indians, mainly Unamis, who agreed to surren
der their title to all unsold lands, and attempted to form a self-supporting
community. Governor Bernard appropriately named the community Broth-
erton. The Colony erected private homes, a meeting house, a general store,
and a sawmill. The Indians kept their rights to unrestricted hunting and
34 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
fishing. Stephen Calvin, a native interpreter, was the local schoolmaster.
This Utopia did not last long, and in 1762 the group petitioned the as
sembly to pay bills for provisions, clothing, and nails.
In 1 80 1 the Indians living at New Stockbridge, New York, invited
their kinsmen at Brotherton to join them. The Lenape petitioned the legis
lature again, and a law was passed in that year appointing three commis
sioners to dispose of the Brotherton tract at public sale. The land brought
from $2 to $5 an acre, enough to pay the Indians fare to their new home,
allow a donation to the New Stockbridge treasury, and leave a remainder
that was invested in United States securities.
In 1822 the Stockbridge group moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Ten
years later the New Jersey contingent appealed to Bartholomew Calvin,
son of their old schoolmaster, for further monetary aid in exchange for
the relinquishment of hunting and fishing rights not mentioned in the
1 80 1 settlement. Calvin obtained a legislative grant of $2,000. In a stir
ring speech of acceptance he said:
"Not a drop of our blood have you spilled in battle; not an acre of our
land have you taken but by our consent. These facts speak for themselves,
and need no comment. They place the character of New Jersey in bold relief
and bright example to those States within whose territorial limits our
brethren still remain. Nothing save benisons can fall upon her from the
lips of a Lenni Lenape."
NEW JERSEY S position as a main corridor of eastern United States
has broadly affected her political, social, economic, and cultural
history. Lying between two metropolises, New York and Philadelphia, the
State from early times has been the highway and often the stopping place
for hordes of people of many races, religions, and cultures.
This location has brought both embarrassment and blessing. Governor
Woodrow Wilson, who thought of New Jersey as "a sort of laboratory in
which the best blood is prepared for other communities to thrive upon,"
gave the key to the State s history when he remarked in 1911 that "we
have always been inconvenienced by New York on the one hand and
Philadelphia on the other . . ." He called the State "the fighting center of
the most important social questions of our time" and explained that "the
whole suburban question ... the whole question of the regulation of cor
porations and the right attitude of all trades, their formation and conduct
. . . center in New Jersey more than any other single State of the Union."
The first white man to see, and possibly to land on, the New Jersey
shore is believed to have been the Florentine navigator, Giovanni da Ver-
razano, sailing in the employ of the French Crown. In 1524 he is said to
have anchored his vessel off Sandy Hook and with a small boat explored
upper New York Bay as far as, or almost as far as, the New Jersey shore.
Almost a century later, in 1609, Henry Hudson, employed by Holland,
sailed the Half Moon into New York Bay, dispatched a sounding party as
far as Newark Bay and then sailed up the Hudson River. Within a few
years the Dutch sent out trading expeditions and established a post at Man
hattan, the base for the invasion of New Jersey. The first known outpost
west of the Hudson River was the trading station of Bergen, founded in
1618 by colonists from the island. Five years later Captain Cornelius
Jacobsen Mey, who had sailed into the Delaware River in 1614, set up
Fort Nassau on the east bank of the river, near the present site of Glouces
ter. Mey s name survives in Cape May.
Actual settlement of the unnamed New Jersey section of New Nether-
land was slow. Accordingly, the West India Company offered the feudal
35
36 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
title of patroon and a grant of land to any member who would establish a
specific number of settlers. In 1629 the company granted to the Burgo
master of Amsterdam, Michael Pauw (Pauuw), a tract on the shore oppo
site Manhattan where his agent, Cornelius Van Vorst, began to develop an
estate called Pavonia. At the same time two other patroons, Godyn and
Blommaert, shared a grant on both sides of Delaware Bay. Both attempts
were futile, and Indian raids in 1643 drove all whites across to Manhattan
from the Jersey side. By 1645 the only Dutch survival was the Van
Vorst estate in Pavonia which had become the farm of the West India
Company.
The Swedes came to New Jersey shortly after the New Sweden Com
pany had built a fort and trading post in 1638 on the western shore of
Delaware River. A vast tract of land between Cape May and Raccoon
Creek was purchased from the Indians in 1640; small trading posts were
peopled mostly with Flemings, Walloons, and Finns. The enterprise was
poorly managed, however, and failed to attract many settlers.
The Dutch, who had reoccupied Fort Nassau after the Swedish arrival,
were for a time friendly enough with the Swedes on the Delaware to
unite with them against the encroaching English, whose claim was based
upon John Cabot s discovery of North America in 1497. However, the
Dutch unwisely considered Swedish competition in furs more dangerous
than England s territorial ambitions. During the autumn of 1655 Peter
Stuyvesant, Governor of New Netherland, peacefully took over the Swed
ish forts on the Delaware basin, thus ending the Swedish phase of the
Colony s history.
With the problems of its Rebellion and stormy Protectorate behind it,
England seriously went into the business of colonization. In 1664, Charles
II granted to his brother James, Duke of York, the Dutch domain, which
included the area now New Jersey. In the same year the English took
over New Netherland with a naval expedition. Having been treated by
the mother country as less important than the fur-bearing animals they
trapped, the few hundred Dutch and Swedish colonials in the New Jersey
section of the grant indifferently took the oath of allegiance to England.
The change in sovereigns was far more significant than the inhabitants
of Bergen, the largest settlement, could have sensed. From its experience
in Virginia and Massachusetts Bay, England was learning that permanent
settlements were commercially sounder than the trading posts established
by the Dutch and Swedes as a short-cut to riches. As an indication that
colonization was to be the English policy, the Duke of York s Deputy
Governor in New York, Richard Nicolls, immediately issued the so-called
HISTORY 37
Elizabethtown and Monmouth patents, providing for the founding of
New Jersey towns on the New England model.
While Nicolls was still at sea, the Duke of York in June 1664 created
New Jersey with a stroke of his quill. He granted the area between the
Hudson and Delaware Rivers to two of his favorites, John, Lord Berkeley
and Sir George Carteret. The area was to be known as Nova Caesarea or
New Jersey in memory of the island where in 1650 Carteret as Governor
had sheltered the Duke from Puritan England. The new proprietors com
missioned 26-year-old Philip Carteret, a cousin of Sir George, as New
Jersey s first English Governor.
York s simple act not only created New Jersey but also perplexities for
the Colony for the next 40 years. Unaware of the Duke s grant, Governor
Nicolls in New York encouraged settlements at the sites of contemporary
Elizabeth, Shrewsbury, and Middletown. These settlements, as well as that
of Newark in 1666, were made chiefly by religious dissenters from New
England and by adventurous Long Islanders. Confusion began when Philip
Carteret arrived at Elizabethtown in 1665 and was surprised to find four
families under the Nicolls grant. Some of the colonists brought by Nicolls
compromised temporarily by taking the oath of allegiance required by
Berkeley and Carteret.
When the Governor s first assembly met at Elizabethtown in 1668 with
delegates from that village and from Bergen, Newark, Middletown, and
Shrewsbury, it became clear that New England Puritanism was dominant
in the settled part of the Colony. Swearing, drunkenness, and fornication
were made penal offenses and the child over 16 who cursed or smote at
parents might incur the death penalty. The government operated under
"The Concessions and Agreements of the Lords Proprietors," which Car
teret had brought from England in 1665. This document, which may be
termed New Jersey s first constitution, contained a particularly emphatic
guarantee of religious liberty, no doubt motivated by the Proprietors de
sire to promote rapid settlement.
The smoldering controversy over the dual land grants broke out in the
assembly. Many settlers held that their grants from Nicolls and deeds of
purchase from the Indians gave valid titles to their land, and that the Pro
prietors did not have the right of government. Barred from the assembly
for this stand, a number of delegates formed the basis of an Anti-
Proprietary party which in 1670 refused to pay quitrents to the Propri
etors. The revolt spread and in 1672 five of the seven settlements
Newark, Elizabethtown, Woodbridge, Piscataqua, and Bergen held a
revolutionary assembly at Elizabethtown. They deposed Philip Carteret as
38 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Governor and elected as "president" James Carteret, dissolute son of Sir
George. With the settlers insisting that the Duke s lease to the Proprietors
did not convey governing power, Philip Carteret hastened to England to
lay the matter before the Proprietors, that they might be able to present
their case. The King upheld the rights of Berkeley and Carteret against
the grants of Nicolls.
A sudden attack by Holland temporarily swept aside these technical
wrangles. In 1673 a Dutch fleet arrived at Staten Island and regained a
portion of Holland s New World holdings, including New Jersey but
only until 1674, when the territory was restored to England by the Treaty
of Westminster. Legally the province had thus reverted to the Crown, and
Charles II regranted it to the Duke of York who in turn reconveyed the
eastern part to Sir George Carteret. Philip Carteret returned as Governor
in November 1674; four counties (Bergen, Essex, Middlesex and Mon-
mouth) were created, and a system of courts and grand juries was estab
lished.
If eastern New Jersey seemed on the point of extricating itself from the
snarls of conflicting claims, western New Jersey was just beginning an
even more confused career. Before the King issued the charter of renewal
to York, Berkeley in 1674 turned over his proprietary rights to John Fen-
wick in trust for Edward Byllynge. Immediately these two Quakers quar
reled over their shares, and in 1676 William Penn arbitrated the case by
awarding nine-tenths to Byllynge and one-tenth to Fenwick. Byllynge,
however, became insolvent, and Penn, Gawen Lawrie, and Nicholas Lucas
were appointed trustees for his creditors. Because this action involved
New Jersey lands, it happened indirectly that William Penn s first Quaker
colony was West Jersey.
In 1675 Fenwick settled Salem with his family and a few friends. Like
Byllynge, he was soon in financial trouble ; ultimately Penn and the other
trustees acquired control of part of his land. On July i, 1676, Byllynge
and the three trustees entered into a "quintipartite deed" with Sir George
Carteret. This agreement officially clarified the previous haphazard divi
sion of the province into West and East Jersey by drawing a line north
west from Little Egg Harbor to a point on Delaware River just north of
Delaware Water Gap, Carteret retaining East Jersey, and West Jersey
passing into the hands of the Quakers.
The choice of the boundary itself represented more logic than almost
any previous act in the management of the Colony. The line cut through
what is still the least populous part of the State. Across that wasteland
there was neither commercial, political, nor religious unity. East Jersey,
HISTORY 39
the section northeast of the boundary line, has always been dependent
upon New York, while West Jersey has been linked to Pennsylvania and
Delaware. Not even modern super-highways nor radio have been able en
tirely to controvert the astuteness of the men who divided the Colony.
The "Concessions and Agreements" for the government of West Jer
sey, adopted in 1677 and largely devised by Penn himself, provided a lib
eral and surprisingly modern frame of government, although the constitu
tion was never put into full effect and it was not until 1681 that the first
assembly met. Meanwhile, the present town of Burlington had been set
tled by Quakers in 1677 an< ^ other colonists were arriving in considerable
numbers.
New Jersey was faced with a struggle for independence in 1674 when
the Duke of York sent Edmund Andros to New York with authority to
govern New Jersey as well, even though Governor Philip Carteret had re
turned on the same boat with Andros. No man to waste a prerogative,
Andros in 1676 dispatched soldiers to the Salem district and jailed Fen-
wick as a usurper, although he (Fen wick) was shortly released. The death
of Sir George Carteret in 1679 gave Andros an opportunity to employ
high-handed methods in East Jersey. Philip Carteret was warned to relin
quish the governorship; when he refused, Andros jailed him. Insisting
that all New Jersey trade should clear through New York, Andros aroused
so much popular disapproval that he was summoned to England to answer
charges, leaving Carteret master of East Jersey. A strongly worded remon
strance, probably the work of Penn and his Quaker associates, induced the
Duke of York to accept New Jersey s independence of New York.
The elimination of Andros failed to bring harmony to East Jersey and
in 1682 the province was put up at public auction. For the sum of 3,400
Penn and n associates obtained the land; their shares were divided into
innumerable fragments, many of which were purchased by Scots and other
non-Quakers. Perth Amboy, which had already attained the dignity of
port of East Jersey, was selected as the capital in 1686.
While the population of the two Jerseys grew to an estimated 15,000 in
1702, the Proprietors became, as one historian phrases it, "mere rent-
chargers." Their position was no happier than the traditional one of any
landlord. Finally, after riots and interference with government dignified
by the name of "revolution," the Proprietors of both East Jersey and West
Jersey surrendered their governing power to the Crown in 1702 and New
Jersey became a united Royal Colony under the administration of Lord
Cornbury, the Governor of New York.
Despite the merging of the two Jerseys, separate capitals were main-
4 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
tained at Perth Amboy and Burlington, the legislature meeting alternately
in the two cities until after the Revolution. And although New Jersey was
to remain under New York s Governor until 1738, the Governor held a
separate commission that recognized the political independence of the
Colony.
The Proprietors, it must be noted, relinquished only their civil author
ity. Their land rights were retained and proved a troublesome influence on
political affairs in the Colony. To this day the successors of Penn and his
associates maintain small offices in Perth Amboy and Burlington, where
they meet regularly and exercise jurisdiction over any unlocated or new
land, such as fluvial islands.
Lord Cornbury s instructions provided for a council and an assembly,
guaranteed some personal rights, and in effect formed a constitution for
the united province. New Jersey retained its own legislature and officials,
who found many causes for disagreement with the new Governor.
Cornbury was removed after five years. His successors encountered Pro
prietary disputes and continual complaints against absentee government
from New York. Finally Lewis Morris of Monmouth County was named
in 1738 as the first Governor of New Jersey alone.
Morris had frequently complained against previous Governors; but
now, as legal representative of the King, he faced the same difficulties that
formerly he had fostered. He found it hard to get troops for King
George s War, and there was frequent trouble in managing the currency.
When Morris died in 1746 his salary had been unpaid for two years, and
was never collected by his widow.
Increased population on many small farms developing throughout the
Province resulted in new rebellion against the territorial claims of the
Proprietors. Disputes over the old Nicolls grants were kept alive, and
squatters in the western part of the Colony stood their ground. The doc
trine of man s natural right to land frequently appeared. Riots against the
Proprietors broke out at Newark in 1745 and soon spread to other sec
tions, continuing under Governor Belcher until the outbreak of the French
and Indian War in 1754.
As a Royal Province New Jersey made notable economic progress, al
though it did not rank as one of the most valuable Crown possessions. The
farms yielded a variety of fruit, vegetables, poultry, and cattle, and the
grain crop was important enough to make New Jersey one of the "bread
colonies." Hunterdon County was known as the "bread basket," producing
more wheat than any other county in the Colonies. Cider and apple brandy
were then, as now, well known products. By 1775 the Colony was an im-
HISTORY 41
portant source for iron, leather, and lumber, while some glass and paper
were produced. On the whole, however, economic development suffered
from the proximity of New York and Philadelphia.
Despite the late start in settlement, population grew with fair rapidity.
By 1726 the total was 32,442 (including 2,550 slaves); 47,402 (3,981
slaves) by 1737; 61,383 (4,605 slaves) in 1745. At the outbreak of the
Revolution the population was estimated at 138,000.
Several important cultural contributions were made by the Colony. In
architecture some of the finest examples of the Dutch Colonial were built
in New Jersey comfortable stone houses, modest in scale and design, and
in harmony with their surroundings. From the early Swedish settlements
came the pattern for the typical log cabin of the American frontier. The
founding of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) and
of Queen s College (later Rutgers University) made this the only Colony
with more than one college. New Jersey was the center of the humanistic
work of John Woolman, the Quaker preacher of Mount Holly. Other
sects developed notable strength, the Baptists having been established at
Middletown in 1668, and the Presbyterians at Freehold in 1692.
Continual disagreements between the royally appointed Governors and
the popularly elected assemblies, combined with unwise commercial re
strictions put in force by the British Government, ranged New Jersey in
1774 on the side of Massachusetts against the British. In February of that
year the assembly had already followed the lead of Virginia by appoint
ing nine men as a Committee of Correspondence; similar township and
county committees sprang up during the summer. On July 21, county com
mittees met at New Brunswick as the First Provincial Congress and chose
Stephen Crane, John de Hart, James Kinsey, William Livingston, and
Richard Smith as delegates to the proposed Continental Congress at Phila
delphia.
In spite of strong Tory sentiment later proved by the organization of
six battalions of Loyalists anti-British feeling swept New Jersey. In No
vember 1774, at Greenwich on Cohansey River, a band of young men dis
guised themselves as Indians and burned a shipload of tea. Indignant citi
zens of Newark branded a New York printer "a vile ministerial hireling"
and boycotted his paper. Rejection of other Loyalist papers from New
York and Philadelphia later resulted in the founding of a local and patri
otic press. As the Royal agents desperately tried to stem the tide of the
Revolution, volunteers began drilling on village greens in the summer of
1775, and official after official yielded his authority to the aroused Colo
nists. Finally, in June 1776, the Provincial Congress arrested Governor
42 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
William Franklin, natural son of Benjamin, when he attempted to revive
the defunct assembly.
The strategy of the Revolutionary generals showed that New Jersey s
position on the Hudson and Delaware Rivers rendered the State dependent
upon the fortunes of New York and Philadelphia in war as well as in
peace. To the discomfort of the patriots of 1776 and the delight of local
patriots ever after, Washington spent one-quarter of his career as Com
mander in Chief in New Jersey, moving his army across the State four
times. Within its boundaries were fought 4 major battles and at least 90
minor engagements.
Toward the close of 1776 Washington retreated across the northern
part of the State and into Pennsylvania, seizing every boat for miles along
the Delaware to prevent British pursuit. On Christmas night he recrossed
the river and captured the Hessian garrison at Trenton in a surprise attack
that did much to rebuild the waning morale of the Revolutionaries. A few
days later, after outwitting Cornwallis at Trenton, he marched by night to
Princeton and there on January 3, 1777, defeated three British regiments.
The exhausted American Army then went into winter quarters at Morris-
town.
Coming by water route from New York, the British seized Philadelphia
in September 1777; but in June 1778, they evacuated Philadelphia and re
treated across the State, harassed by Jersey troops. Washington hurried with
his main army to intercept the British Army of General Howe in the inde
cisive Battle of Monmouth on June 28. That winter, parts of the Conti
nental Army encamped at Somerville, and in the winter of 1779-80 Wash
ington again made his headquarters at Morristown. From New Brunswick
in 1781 the American Army started its march southward to the final victory
at Yorktown. In 1783 Washington delivered his farewell address to part
of the Army at Rocky Hill, near Princeton.
The war proved a stimulus to agriculture, industry, and commerce in
New Jersey. The State s farmers, sometimes involuntarily but mostly with
the shrewdness of non-combatants, turned a handsome profit supplying
provisions to both sides. Ironworks, gristmills, sawmills, fulling mills, tan-
yards, and salt works operated at capacity. Goods brought in by privateers
and smugglers were advertised in the newspapers, indicating the luxury
possible to those who could afford it. Prices rose and labor was scarce. In
the rapid shift of values, due partly to monetary inflation, fortunes were
made and lost. The end of the war found the debtor a problem for the
first time since 1776. The lure of the West was soon to prove an attrac
tion too strong for tax-burdened farmers on worn-out lands to resist.
THE OLD BARRACKS, TRENTON
44 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
In June 1776 the fourth Provincial Congress of New Jersey had trans
formed itself into a constitutional convention and on July 2 adopted a
combined declaration of independence and constitution. The hastily drawn
document provided for its nullification "if a reconciliation between Great
Britain and these colonies should take place. . . ." Nevertheless, this con
stitution was retained for 68 years. The Colony s long struggle with Pro
prietary and Royal Governors inspired a provision for annual election of
the Governor by the legislature. This arrangement, at first adopted by sev
eral other States, obviously violated the prevailing theory of separation of
powers (executive, legislative, and judicial) in a free government. New
Jersey s first State Governor, William Livingston, was elected August 27,
1776, for one year.
In the two-house legislature, the upper chamber (the council) was com
posed of one representative from each county, a precedent for equal county
representation in the senate under the present constitution. The lower
house (the assembly) was apportioned among the counties roughly by
population.
The franchise was limited to "all inhabitants of this colony, of full age,
who are worth 50 proclamation money ..." Under laws passed in 1790
and 1797, women were permitted to vote. In 1807, however, the women
were disfranchised by a statute justified as "highly necessary to the safety,
quiet, good order and dignity of the State." This harsh stricture came
from a legislature beset with charges of fraudulent voting by women,
notably in an exciting referendum on the location of the Essex County
Courthouse. Another 1807 statute reduced voting qualifications by giving
the franchise to any taxpayer.
For brief periods, two New Jersey towns had the honor of being the
National Capital at least the temporary capital. When, in June 1783,
Congress in session at Philadelphia was confronted by mutinous troops,
demanding what it could not give, the session was adjourned to meet
again on June 30, at Princeton. There, in somewhat cramped quarters, the
National Government remained seated until November 4. A year later,
November i, 1784, Congress convened at Trenton. It was even thought
that a "Federal town" a permanent National Capital would be built
near Trenton. The plan however never materialized New York and
Philadelphia were too powerful and the Congressional session at Trenton
was very brief. Congress adjourned on Christmas Eve of 1784 to meet
again a fortnight later in New York City.
New Jersey in the days after the Revolution was grimly compared to a
keg tapped at both ends. The State s economy was seriously hampered by
HISTORY 45
commercial restrictions imposed by New York, through which most of the
State s goods had to pass. Her representatives demanded that Congress be
given power over interstate commerce and the exclusive right to lay duties
on imports. When New York and other States failed to meet their fiscal
obligations to the weak Congress, New Jersey also withheld payments to
the Federal Treasury, hoping to force more co-operative action. Finally,
New Jersey was one of the five States that participated in the Annapolis
Conference of 1786, which led to the Constitutional Convention at
Philadelphia in 1787.
At the Philadelphia convention New Jersey, long conditioned to fear
New York and Pennsylvania, became the chief spokesman for the small
States in their struggle against the Virginia or "large-State" plan for a
powerful national government with a Congress based on population. Al
though the Virginia plan was adopted for the House of Representatives,
the New Jersey plan of equal representation matured into the provision
for the balancing Senate. The small States victory was the greater one,
since Congress could not act without the consent of a majority of the
States, regardless of population.
A further New Jersey contribution to the Constitution was the all-
important clause which declares that the Constitution, laws, and treaties of
the United States shall be the supreme law of the land. From this clause,
together with the provision for a national judiciary empowered to deter
mine all legal questions involving the Constitution, the United States Su
preme Court later derived the power to harmonize Federal and State laws
with the Constitution by the process called judicial review.
Satisfaction with the document itself and with the opportunity for pro
tection against New York and other neighboring States resulted in prompt
ratification. On December 18, 1787, New Jersey became the third State to
approve the Constitution.
Between 1790 and 1840 the foundations of the State s present indus
trial system were laid. In 1791 Alexander Hamilton founded the Society
for Establishing Useful Manufactures, selecting the Great Falls of Passaic
River as the site for an industrial city, Paterson. The first factory built at
Paterson began to operate in 1794, printing calico goods. As Newark s
leather and Trenton s pottery industries grew, businessmen developed im
portant branches of commerce. Banks were chartered at Newark, Trenton,
and New Brunswick during the first decade of the nineteenth century, and
insurance began in the same period.
At Trenton, which had become the State capital in 1790, the legislature
sensed the power of trade. Many turnpike companies were chartered even
46 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
before the need for good roads was emphasized by the War of 1812. Sci
entists and inventors John Fitch and Colonel John Stevens with their
steamboats and, later, Seth Boyden with malleable iron and patent leather
accelerated the trend toward industrialization.
On this groundwork there rose, following the short depression at the
end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, a 2O-year prosperity. By 1828 the
State had about 550 miles of gravel and dirt roads under 54 charters. Be
tween 1 8 10 and 1840 New Jersey ranked third as an iron producer in the
Nation. The value of iron products in 1830 was about $657,000; glass
and pottery, $490,000; and cotton products, $1,733,000. Encouraged by
the protective tariff of 1816, investors developed water power and mill
sites for textiles and flour. By 1830 Paterson had fulfilled its early promise
and had become a busy mill town, rich with profits and scarred with labor
exploitation.
To weld the expanding sections of the State as well as to modernize the
New York-Philadelphia highway, the industrial barons of the day hurried
across-State transportation lines. Colonel John Stevens of Hoboken had
proved in 1824 that his "steam waggon" could run 12 miles an hour. Six
years later his son Robert got a charter for the Camden and Amboy Rail
road, and by 1834 the line was finished. The railroad soon absorbed the
new Delaware and Raritan Canal, which it paralleled. In 1831 the Morris
Canal between Newark and Phillipsburg opened a water route to a rich
mining district. Newark, because of its key position on the canal and rail
routes and on Passaic River, strengthened its grip as the leading city of the
State. With the stage set for even greater economic progress, the specu
lative bubble of industrial prosperity burst in the panic of 1837.
During the 1830 $ New Jersey was affected by the spirit of reform that
was sweeping the country, partly as a result of the industrial revolution.
The legislature began to allot money for public schools; hospitals were
built; and a start was made toward guarding the public health. In 1844
Dorothea Dix presented to the legislature a memorial describing the dis
graceful conditions in jails and poorhouses and the medieval treatment of
the feebleminded, epileptics, and the insane. Public indignation resulted
in prison reform and the establishment of an insane asylum. Reform was
a leading topic in public meetings and in newspaper columns. With an in
crease of almost 200,000 in population since 1790, the citizens of the
State were demanding democratization of their political structure.
It came in 1844. A constitutional convention swept away property qual
ifications for voters, provided for separation of powers among the three
governmental departments, and included a formal bill of rights and a
HISTORY 47
clause permitting amendment (the latter had been omitted from the 1776
document). The 1844 constitution has been amended only three times.
When the business cycle swung toward good times in 1845, the Cam-
den and Amboy Railroad emerged as a monopoly, since the charter, after
merger with two terminal roads, prohibited any other line between New
York and Philadelphia. So complete was the railroad s grasp of the State s
economic and political life that New Jersey was for a generation bitterly
referred to as "the State of Camden and Amboy."
Rising anti -slavery feeling together with pro-tariff and anti-immigrant
sentiment turned the State Republican in 1857, at its first opportunity to
elect a Republican Governor. But, in the crucial election of 1860, the con
flict between industrial and agricultural interests and anti-slavery men and
unionists-at-any-cost split New Jersey s electoral vote for the only time.
Lincoln received four votes and Douglas three.
In 1863 copperhead opposition to the Civil War, partly created by the
New York bankers mistrust of Lincoln, caused New Jersey to revert to
political type and elect Joel Parker, a Democrat, as Governor. Yet New
Jersey provided 88,000 troops and $23,000,000 for the war.
After 1865 profits from war supplies and a favorable location as the
nexus of the most populous and prosperous sections of the Nation con
tributed to an intense industrial activity. Paterson was processing two-
thirds of the country s silk imports; Newark could proudly hold an im
pressive trade exhibition of its varied manufactures in 1872 ; kerosene and
other oil products were being refined in Bayonne; and agriculture was
passing into its present form of lucrative truck farming. While real estate
companies plotted chimerical developments, the legislature recklessly is
sued charters for any kind of money-making enterprise. The great eco
nomic spree which lasted until the panic of 1873 fastened New York s
hold upon New Jersey more securely than ever.
The hold that the Camden and Amboy had upon the State had been
considerably weakened by 1867. In that year its opponents, seeking a char
ter for a competing line across the State, had turned the legislature into a
roundhouse battleground. When the Camden and Amboy sensed that pub
lic opinion would ultimately spell defeat, the company prudently leased
its lines to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania took up in 1871
where its predecessors had left off and brought about a Republican victory
in the legislature. The railroad retained a majority in 1873, but this time
it was the legislators who felt the popular wrath. They passed a bill open
ing the State to all lines.
Although the Pennsylvania lost the battle, the State s history shows that
48 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
it won the war. The act giving any company the right to put down rails in
New Jersey was much less objectionable to the Pennsylvania than the alter
native of a special charter to a single competing line. Like its predecessor,
the new company succeeded during the next generation in maintaining a
powerful hold on the State government.
As far back as 1871, however, public opinion had caused the legislature
to attempt checks on railroad domination. In that year the railroads were
denied free loading space along the Hudson. In 1883 Leon Abbett was
elected Governor on a platform calling for railroad franchise taxes. Al
though the subservient legislature compromised on a plan for assessment
and taxation of railroad property, this action resulted in investigation of the
Lackawanna Railroad. A State audit of the company s books yielded New
Jersey several hundred thousand dollars.
Nevertheless, for more than a quarter of a century the railroads gener
ally enjoyed an extraordinary privilege to profiteer. This license illustrates
the beginning of a gradual blurring of party labels between 1870 and
1900, for even on the few occasions when the Democrats won complete
control of the State government, their efforts to curb the railroads were
feeble. Shut out of the Governorship since 1869, the Republicans had to
bid for power by such trivial stratagems as seeking the Prohibition vote
through the passing of a county option law in 1888. Such schemes faile d
to elect a Governor, but the Democrats own corruption finally lost them
the legislature in 1893. Even then the Republican victory was delayed
while eight hold-over Democratic senators attempted to steal the senate
back from the Republicans simply by organizing themselves into a rump
senate, which prevented the seating of any new members. This bold bid
was thwarted by the courts.
Except for the electoral split in 1860 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 1880. 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
HISTORY 49
of manufactured products in New Jersey rose from $169,237,000 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 im
migrants, chiefly from southern and eastern Europe, poured into the indus
trial 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 metropo
lises 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 estab
lished 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*5 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 Bid
dies and Drexels of Philadelphia. A quarter of a century later Atlantic
City and Asbury Park were performing the same service for many thou
sands of Philadelphia and New York vacationers. New Jersey s oyster and
cranberry industries catered to the national appetite, while its truck gar
dens and dairy farms supplied a large portion of the produce sold in
metropolitan markets.
For New York and Pennsylvania financiers and for corporation builders
generally New Jersey offered a special attraction. From the 1870*5 on, the
State s lax incorporation laws invited the formation of trusts and monopo
lies in hastily rented offices in Newark or Jersey City. When Lincoln Stef-
fens 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
50 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
"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 inter
ests 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 corpora
tions lightened the burden of taxes on New Jersey voters and their prop
erty. Many New Jersey people frankly and publicly justified the laws fa
voring 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 Pagan, who
repudiated his boss after being elected the first Republican mayor of Jer
sey 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 1910 by the Democratic lead
ers against the opposition of the young progressives in his party. Colonel
George Harvey was looking for a 1912 Presidential candidate. He in
duced 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 dur
ing 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.
Upon the strength of this victory, Wilson was able to push through his
bewildered legislature bills for direct primaries, regulation of public utili
ties, employers liability, and other reforms, which were in part inspired
HISTORY 51
and supported by some of the New Idea Republicans, notably George L.
Record. Thus Wilson sought to justify his belief in the mission of New
Jersey as a "mediating" State, destined to inspire and lead her neighbors
into better ways. His courageous and successful fight for reform made him
President in 1912, in spite of the bitter opposition of the very men who
had deliberately started him on the road to that office.
Wilson held his post in Trenton until March i, 1913, completing his
program by passage of the "Seven Sisters" acts. With these laws he hoped
to restrain monopolies and to impose penalties against individual officers
of offending corporations. Other States promptly invited the business
which New Jersey turned away; while New Jersey "mediated," they would
take the cash. With Wilson safely in Washington, the "Seven Sisters" acts
were gradually repealed until by 1920 there was hardly a vestige left, but
New Jersey never recaptured her former pre-eminence as the favorite home
for new corporations.
Ironically, at the time when the State was first perceiving the danger of
corporation control, there arose a new industrial power. In 1903 the Pub
lic Service Corporation was formed and started on its way toward virtual
control of gas and electric power, trolley and bus transportation.
Under Governor Fielder the reform movement continued at a slower
pace until it was interrupted by the World War. New Jersey s geography
and its industrial resources gave it a strategic part in the conflict. Camp
Dix at Wrightstown was an important training center, and Camp Merritt
(near Dumont) and Hoboken became known to a majority of the men
who went overseas as their last points of contact with the homeland. New
Jersey shipyards were unceasingly busy and New Jersey factories supplied
a large proportion of the Nation s chemicals and munitions. Governor
Walter E. Edge declared, however, that the outstanding features of his
wartime term were "the inauguration of the State highway system, the
Delaware River Bridge, and the Hudson River Tunnels," and the estab
lishment of the State department of institutions and agencies.
The State s post-war improvement of transportation facilities attests
Edge s perspicacity. When the automobile required another modernization
of the New York-Philadelphia highways, New Jersey responded with a
splendid and expensive highway system, a proud bid for the praise of mil
lions of travelers who annually cross its borders. Another post-war devel
opment was a widespread popular campaign against the utilities, featured
by attacks on the gas and electric rates and a spreading though scattered
demand for public ownership.
To understand New Jersey in the twentieth century, it is necessary to
52 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
visualize the progressive transformation of the State from an agricultural
to a primarily industrial and urban region. In 1890 the urban population
was about 60 percent; by 1900 it was about 70 percent, and by 1930 it
was 82.6 percent.
While wealth and industry continued to increase, agriculture declined
in relative importance. The amount of improved farming land dropped
from 1,977,042 acres in 1899 to 1,305,528 acres in 1924, although the
total value of farm produce showed a gain, largely because of the concen
trated poultry and dairy industries. On the other hand the value of indus
trial output multiplied sixfold from $611,748,000 in 1900 to $3,937,-
157,00 in 1930, and the number of wage earners rose from 241,582 to
442,328.
The total population more than doubled between 1900 and 1930, ris
ing from 1,883,669 to 4,041,334. The most spectacular growth was in the
five counties of the New York metropolitan area which reached a total of
2,496,558, about three-fifths of the State s population.
A large volume of immigration helped to push census figures upward
and to increase the diversification of population that began in Colonial
times. To the Colonial settlers Dutch, English, Scotch and smaller num
bers of French, Germans, Swedes, Negroes and others thousands of Irish
and Germans had been added by the middle of the nineteenth century.
In the latter part of the century large numbers of immigrants from south
ern and eastern Europe poured into New Jersey via New York.
The State s immigrant population was further increased between 1920
and 1930 (after the influx from Europe had been stemmed by Federal
legislation) through migration from other States. Although the foreign-
born white population of the entire Nation increased by only 111,013 in
that decade and most States showed a decline, the figure for New Jersey
rose by 106,014 to a total of 844,442 almost double the number of
foreign-born whites in 1900.
The most rapid increase in the Negro population occurred in the large
cities, beginning when World War industries mustered man power. Many
hundreds of Negroes were also imported for work as servants in the
homes of wealthy residents of Montclair and other suburban communi
ties. By 1930 the Negro population was 208,828, almost treble the figure
in 1900.
The twentieth century politics of New Jersey has continued to be domi
nated after the interruption of Woodrow Wilson s term as Governor
by the natural conservatism of the industrial and business interests. The
conservative forces have helped to defeat movements toward municipal
HISTORY 53
ownership of utilities, to hamper organization of labor, and to delay mod
ernization of the archaic property tax system.
In the political field, the blurring of party labels in the i88o s became
almost a total effacement by the i92o 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 Gover
nors. Since Wilson s term, the Republicans have elected only three Gover
nors, Walter Edge in 1916, Morgan Larson in 1928, and Harold G. Hoff
man 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 conserva
tive supporters. This unusual cooperation between Democratic and Repub
lican chieftains moved the New York Times 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 Jer
sey 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 to
ward the formation of an independent Labor Party in New Jersey.
54 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Despite population growth and industrial changes undreamed of in
Colonial days, the essential pattern of New Jersey history remains insepa
rable 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 me
tropolises; 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.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <#> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A LTHOUGH government in New Jersey is essentially the same in gen-
jf$^ eral pattern as in each of the other 47 States, there is an amazing
number of important differences. In this treatment of the constitutional
and political structure of the State, emphasis is placed on these differences
as well as on the antiquities and the innovations of which New Jersey citi
zens are especially proud.
At the outset of the Revolution the fourth Provincial Congress of New
Jersey transformed itself into a constitutional convention and on July 2,
1776, adopted a constitution which contained a declaration of independ
ence. New Jersey was the fourth Colony to take this step; and although
the work was done hastily and was not intended to be permanent, the con
stitution was retained for 68 years.
Reflecting the antagonism of its framers to executive interference with
the legislature, the constitution was a strange document in that it violated
the "separation of powers" principle in a great variety of ways. The Gov
ernor was to be elected by the legislature every year; yet he was granted
both judicial and legislative powers. At the same time the legislature re
served a large measure of executive and judicial power for itself.
In the case of Holmes v. Walton in 1779, New Jersey set the first prece
dent after the Revolution for exercise of the power of judicial review the
right of courts to declare legislative acts invalid.
The Constitution of 1844: Despite obvious inefficiencies and inequali
ties in the original constitution and bitter attacks on it, it continued in
force until 1844. Then popular sentiment, stirred by democratic Jack-
sonian tendencies, demanded further revision. Lacking any machinery for
revising the original constitution, the legislature of 1844 simply went
ahead and called a convention. The work of the convention was ratified
at a special election on August 13. The new constitution abolished prop
erty qualifications for voters and legislators, recognized the principle of
separation of powers among the three departments of government, and
(unlike the document of 1776) included a formal bill of rights and pro
vision for amendment.
55
56 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Only three times (1875, 1897, and 1927) in the period of nearly 100
years since its adoption has the New Jersey Constitution been amended
not because few amendments have been proposed but because the process
is extremely difficult. Amendments must be passed by two successive leg
islatures and then approved by the people, with the restriction that amend
ments may not be submitted to popular vote more often than once in five
years.
For more than 60 years attempts have been made to revise the docu
ment as a whole. But the legislature has never consented to a constitu
tional convention, largely because the senate, which is based upon equal
representation of the counties, has feared that a convention might revise
this system, thus shifting the balance of power from the less populous
counties. Industrial New Jersey therefore continues to live under a consti
tution designed for an essentially agricultural population.
Aside from its age and inflexibility, the New Jersey Constitution is dis
tinguished as one of the briefest in the country, containing only the bare
outlines of a frame of government. It embodies little regulatory law, and
the legislature is left with full responsibility for setting up administra
tive departments, most of the courts, and practically the entire system of
local government. This situation somewhat compensates for the difficult
amending process.
The Legislature: Like every other State except Nebraska, New Jersey
has a two-house legislature. But in other important respects the State s
legislative machine is distinctive. One of the seven smallest in size, it is
composed of a senate of 21 members (one for each county) and an
assembly of 60. It is one of only five State legislatures that hold annual ses
sions. New Jersey is now the only State that has annual elections for mem
bers of the lower house, and no other State has a three-year term for sena
tors. Equal representation of the counties in the State senate, giving the
balance of power to the less populous counties, is another unusual feature,
inherited from the constitution of 1776.
Members of the assembly are apportioned among the counties accord
ing to population. For more than 40 years assemblymen were elected by
districts within the counties, but in 1893 the State Supreme Court de
clared this method unconstitutional, thus requiring the election of each
county delegation at large. The matter would doubtless never have reached
the courts if both parties had not been scandalously gerrymandering the
assembly districts.
The overwhelming advantage of the smaller counties in the upper house
is shown by the fact that the four largest counties, with 54 percent of the
GOVERNMENT 57
State s population in 1930, have only 19 percent of the voting strength in
the senate. In the assembly the "Big Four" Essex, Hudson, Bergen, and
Union Counties have 52 percent of the voting power. Although much
may be said for finely balancing the legislature between the rural and
metropolitan areas, the system has been bitterly criticized. As far back as
1873 the Newark Daily Advertiser lamented editorially:
The pine-barrens have beaten the populace. Ten gentlemen, representing the
wealth, power, honor and good sense of the State of New Jersey, representing also
the bulk of its population and its true will and purpose, yesterday voted for a com
peting railroad between New York and Philadelphia. Eleven other men, whose title
is Senator, representing an innumerable host of stunted pines, growing on sand-
barrens, voted the bill down . . . You can t make pine trees vote nor endow them
with a conscience.
Because of the small size of the State, the legislature can conduct its
sessions on an unusual plan, meeting only every Monday night during the
greater part of the session. Any legislator can travel by rail or motor from
his home to Trenton in not more than three hours. This makes it possible
for members to live at home and conduct their regular professional or
business activities while the legislature is in session. It is important that
they do so, since senators and assemblymen are paid only $500 a year.
The Governor: New Jersey is the only State with a three-year term for
Governor, matching that for State senators. The Governor s salary of
$20,000 is the highest paid by any State except New York. As in a dozen
other States, the Governor may not succeed himself, but this restriction
operates more severely in New Jersey than in these other States, in each
of which the Governor enjoys a four-year term. Since 1844 only three
men have been elected twice to the Governorship: Joel Parker and Leon
Abbett each served two terms, and A. Harry Moore is now in his third
term. Another peculiarity is that in New Jersey, as in only three other
States, the Governor is the only official chosen by State- wide election.
There is no Lieutenant Governor, the next in line being the president of
the senate.
In the number and variety of offices filled by gubernatorial appointment
the Governor of New Jersey has a decided advantage over those of most
other States. For example, he appoints all State judges and county prose
cutors positions filled in many other States by election. Nevertheless his
position is not so powerful as one might suppose. Some administrative of
ficials are chosen by the legislature, and most of the others either have
terms longer than that of the Governor or administer departments headed
by boards whose members have overlapping terms.
As in only six other States, a bare majority of the legislature can over-
58 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
ride the Governor s veto; the veto power is therefore of little value. An
other serious handicap to the Governor is his incapacity to succeed him
self. Woodrow Wilson bitterly denounced this constitutional limitation in
1913, pointing out that the politicians "smile at the coming and going of
Governors as some men in Washington have smiled at the coming and go
ing of Presidents, as upon things ephemeral, which passed and were soon
enough rid of if you but sat tight and waited."
It naturally follows that no Governor except one with the most unusual
qualities or remarkable good luck can make and keep himself the domi
nant factor in State government. Woodrow Wilson did it because he rode
into office on a wave of reform sentiment that transcended party lines, and
he developed an effective technique of appealing to the people through
newspaper interviews and public addresses. Perhaps the greatest of his as
sets was his inflexible obstinacy in holding to a position, no matter how
terrifying the opposition.
New Jersey follows an acknowledged pattern in American politics, ac
cording to which the legislature and the Governor act largely in consulta
tion with party leaders. Legislative policy is frequently determined through
informal councils of legislative and party leaders.
The State is one of 1 8 in which the Governor does not have full power
of pardon. A strange feature is that the Board of Pardons includes, in ad
dition to the Governor, the chancellor and the six lay judges of the Court
of Errors and Appeals, thus injecting the highest court of the State into
what always has been considered an executive prerogative designed to cor
rect miscarriages of justice for which there was no judicial remedy.
Executive Departments: When the constitution was adopted in 1844,
the State administration consisted of little more than the Governor, six
constitutional departments, and a single State institution, the prison at
Trenton. Since that time the number of State departments and agencies
has increased steadily. The movement has been checked, but never stopped,
by occasional consolidations involving a few related departments.
Today there are more than 80 separate administrative departments in
the State government; and if the semi-independent boards heading the
several institutions and agencies are included, the total is approximately
100 distinct administrative agencies.
A rough classification shows that there are approximately a dozen de
partments or agencies dealing primarily with the State s fiscal affairs;
about half a dozen primarily engaged in maintaining law and order; 8,
not counting the 17 separate institutions and agencies under the depart
ment of institutions and agencies, responsible for protecting public health
GOVERNMENT 59
and welfare; more than 20, counting some 15 examining boards, engaged
in economic regulation and promotion; 16 or more responsible for public
works, conservation, and recreation ; and about 2 primarily devoted to edu
cation and research. A few of these departments or agencies are at present
languishing for lack of appropriations, but they may always be revived by
new funds.
The State pay roll is the best index of the phenomenal increase in gov
ernmental operations during the past few years. From the fiscal year 1916-
17 to the fiscal year 1936-37 the number of employees as reported by the
Civil Service Commission jumped from 2,900 to about 11,800; and the
pay roll climbed even more sharply from $3,600,000 to about $18,-
500,000.
The number and variety of the State departments and commissions long
have constituted an obvious argument for reorganization and simplifica
tion. For nearly 40 years such a movement has been under way, but prog
ress has been slow. In 1925 the legislature received a plan for merging 78
permanent departments into 14 large units; nothing at all was done about
this report. Four years later the National Institute of Public Administration
made similar recommendations. Nearly all of these were likewise ignored,
but some fiscal reforms were made.
Princeton University was the next institution to play doctor to the State
government. Dr. Harold W. Dodds prescribed some of the same medicine
recommended by the Institute of Public Administration, including consoli
dation of all fiscal functions under one commissioner responsible to the
Governor. But the legislature showed its characteristic distrust of the Gov
ernor and instead of unifying the financial structure added one more de
partment.
Most of the State departments are administered by boards appointed by
the Governor. Board members generally are not paid, although necessary
expenses are customarily granted and some very adequate salaries are given
to a few such as the three public utility commissioners, who draw $12,-
ooo annually. Each board usually selects the active department head, al
though the Governor appoints both the boards and the commissioners of
education and aviation. Thirteen other department heads are appointed
by the Governor subject to senatorial confirmation and in most cases with
terms longer than the Governor s. Only two department heads are ap
pointed by the Governor to hold office at his pleasure. The heads of five
important departments are elected by the two houses of the legislature in
joint session.
Confirmation of appointments by the senate is anything but an empty
60 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
form in New Jersey. Gubernatorial recommendations have not infrequently
been turned down, often under the principle of senatorial courtesy which
requires that the nominee be acceptable to the senator from his home
county. Political horse trading becomes almost imperative when the Gov
ernor must bargain with a hostile senate, a common situation in New
Jersey.
One of the most important executive departments has developed from
the old State prison and the first hospital for the insane, which opened in
1848. This, the department of institutions and agencies, administers 17 in
stitutions for the insane, feebleminded, tubercular, delinquent, and epilep
tic, and for old soldiers; and two agencies: the commission for the blind
and the board of children s guardians. Mental hygiene clinics operated un
der this department provide the services of expert psychiatrists for the or
dinary citizen who cannot afford to pay private practitioners. New Jersey s
work in this field has placed it well ahead of most other States.
An administrative curiosity in New Jersey is the department of agricul
ture. The State board of agriculture consists of eight members chosen by a
convention of delegates from the chief farm organizations of the State, an
unusual example of functional representation.
An obvious result of New Jersey s location between New York and
Philadelphia has been the necessity for working agreements with her
neighboring States on interstate construction projects and port develop
ment, the management of water supply and garbage disposal. New Jersey
operates, jointly with New York, the Palisades Interstate Park, and is also
a partner in the Port of New York Authority, builder of four great bridges
and two vehicular tunnels linking the two States, and a model for similar
publicly owned corporations throughout the country. At Camden the State
joined with Pennsylvania in building the Delaware River bridge to Phila
delphia. It was thus natural that New Jersey took the lead in 1935 in a
step for permanent commissions on interstate cooperation, to operate both
regionally and nationally.
One of nine States with civil service systems, New Jersey shares with
Massachusetts the distinction of being one of the two States in which
jurisdiction of the commission has been extended to all county and local
units operating under civil service. Only 10 of the 21 New Jersey counties
and only 22 municipalities have adopted the civil service system, but these
include the largest population areas and well over half of the full-time
employees in local units of the State.
Local Government: According to a 1937 Princeton University bulletin
GOVERNMENT 6l
there are 1,137 separate self-governing units within the State classified as
follows :
Counties 2 1
Cities 52
Boroughs 254
Towns 23
Townships 233
Villages 3
School Districts 551
Total I J I 37
In addition, the survey found about 225 special intra-municipal districts
and about a score of regional and inter-municipal districts and commis
sions. "This is the New Jersey patchwork . . . ," says the Princeton report.
The terms "city," "town," "borough" and "township" are entirely
meaningless as far as classification by size or area is concerned. The largest
city is Newark, with nearly half a million residents ; the smallest is Corbin
City, with a population of 256. The largest township is North Bergen,
population 40,714; the smallest is Pahaquarry, population 80. North Cape
May and South Cape May, with populations of 5 and 6, are the smallest
boroughs.
Patchwork government is expensive, the Princeton survey declares. Cit
ing the police organization, a 1936 bulletin says:
There are 350 separate and independent police departments in New Jersey, of
which 127 are in the five counties covering a scant 700 square miles of northeastern
New Jersey. Nowhere else in the United States is there such a concentration of sep
arate police agencies in so small an area.
This goes far to explain the fact that costs of New Jersey police protection are
not only the highest in the United States for cities of the corresponding size groups,
but in some cases they are nearly twice as high.
At the entrance to the Holland tunnel a citizen can be arrested by at least five
different sets of police officers, for violation of several sets of traffic laws.
Six municipalities have the city manager form of government, the larg
est being Trenton, a city of more than 125,000. Cape May City in 1937
abandoned the manager plan for the commission form, which is so gener
ally preferred by the larger municipalities that the Princeton experts have
labeled New Jersey "the most commission-ridden State in the Union."
Fifty-three of the 565 municipalities in the State are now operating under
the commission form authorized by the so-called Walsh Act of 1911. In
62 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
these municipalities, which include Newark, Jersey City and many other
large cities, all legislative and administrative functions of local govern
ment are vested in a single commission, usually of five persons, elected at
large every four years.
The system originally was lauded as simple, responsible, and easy for
the public to control. In practice, however, the lack of centralized respon
sibility in a single executive, the failure to distinguish between policy for
mation and administration, the designation of politically elected commis
sioners to head departments requiring able technical direction, and
especially the lack of centralized financial administration all have run
counter to the high hopes of the municipal reformers of the early part of
the century.
Under the general municipalities act the 233 New Jersey townships have
the same powers and functions as all other local units. Township govern
ment is substantially of the commission form, the principal difference be
ing that the township committeemen are elected for overlapping terms, so
that the whole committee is never voted in or out at the same time. Town
ship government, therefore, displays the same weaknesses as the pure com
mission form.
The other types of local government city, borough, town vary widely.
A relatively small number vest substantial authority in the mayor as a real
chief executive, but much more numerous are those in which administra
tive responsibility is largely taken by the council, or by committees or
boards not effectively controlled by the mayor. Thus, even these units dis
play weaknesses similar to those of townships and commission municipal
ities, especially the lack of centralized financial control. This doubtless ac
counts in large measure for the gloomy situation described by the Princeton
survey in June 1936 when it reported that the course of municipal gov
ernment in New Jersey had resulted in a gross debt of almost 20 percent
of net taxable valuation, $121,479,000 in uncollected property taxes, i out
of every 8 municipalities in default on notes or bonds, and 12 municipali
ties in virtual bankruptcy and under State supervision.
For counties, the governing body is a "Board of Chosen Freeholders"
of three, five, or nine members, which is in reality the familiar commis
sion plan again. But these boards are by no means overworked since
judges, prosecutors and some other officers are appointed by the Governor,
while the sheriff, county clerk, and surrogate are elected by the people.
All of these officials and others besides are wholly or largely beyond con
trol of the freeholders. Chief functions of the county boards are the
building and maintenance of roads and bridges, and the management of
GOVERNMENT 63
county institutions other than the jail. Salaries of the freeholders are as
high as $6,000 in the two largest counties.
Parties and Elections: Governor Woodrow Wilson advocated the di
rect primary as a means of taking the nomination of candidates and the
selection of party committee members away from the bosses and giving
the parties back to the people. Although the old-line politicians fought
for retention of the convention system, Wilson won. It is a tribute to the
ingenuity and the steadfastness of purpose of the political leaders of both
parties that the direct primary appears to have had little effect upon con
trol of the parties.
In the Democratic Party, the result perhaps has been to strengthen the
State organization led by Jersey City s present (1939) mayor, Frank Hague.
His Hudson County organization is held by students of practical politics
to be probably the most smoothly running machine in the country. Sub
stantially one-third of all the votes cast in the State Democratic primary
come from his county.
Republican leadership is more scattered, and the party s primaries often
present lively contests in striking contrast to the peaceful balloting of the
Democrats. Usually the party is controlled by a semi-permanent coalition
of leaders from Republican strongholds.
The overwhelming Democratic vote in Hudson and Middlesex Counties,
and considerable Democratic strength elsewhere, make it relatively easy
for the Democrats to elect a Governor. But apportionment in the legis
lature based on counties seriously handicaps their efforts to win a majority
in either house. Since 1910 the Democrats have elected their gubernatorial
candidate six times out of nine, whereas they have controlled both the
assembly and senate in only two years 1913 and 1914. This constant
division of State machinery between the two major parties has been cited
as justification for the system (roundly attacked by Woodrow Wilson)
under which leaders of the two parties unite in political action. This sys
tem, it is said, tends to prevent a deadlock on appointments and legis
lation.
Minor parties have played practically no part in New Jersey politics.
Great efficiency of the two major party organizations, and the support of
organized labor for candidates of one or the other party, have prevented
the Socialists and other groups from showing any considerable strength.
Annual conventions for preparing party platforms are held after the
primary elections. An interesting law names as delegates the members of
the State committee of the party, the candidates for the legislature, gov
ernorship and Congress, as well as hold-over members of the legislature.
64 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
The Administration of Justice: New Jersey courts have changed rela
tively little since the time of George III, and the intricate judicial system
is puzzling to the lawyer as well as to the layman. There are about twenty
different courts created by the constitution or by legislative enactment;
several have overlapping jurisdictions, and two or three are practically
without parallel in other States.
Charles H. Hartshorne s characterization of the New Jersey judicial sys
tem, written in 1905, is as accurate today as when it was penned: "... our
system is the most antiquated and intricate that exists in any considerable
community of English-speaking people . . . Both courts and procedure
were brought here from England by our colonial forefathers and were
worked into shape fitted to the needs of a rural community of eighteenth
century colonists. They are fundamentally in that shape today." Although
procedure has been greatly simplified since 1905, the court structure itself
has become more rather than less involved.
The State has three distinctive judicial hierarchies: the law courts, for
the trial of criminal and civil actions under statutory law ; the eqity courts^
for giving legal relief not afforded by the law courts ; and the prerogative
or probate courts, for wills and estates.
The Court of Errors and Appeals is the highest tribunal in each of
these three hierarchies. As the name implies, it handles nothing except
appeals from the lower courts. It is unique in name and structure. Six of
its sixteen members are laymen (or at least need not be lawyers), while
the other ten comprise the chancellor of the State, the chief justice and the
eight associate justices of the Supreme Court. The chancellor is the presid
ing judge. The provision for lay members, who are appointed for six-year
terms, stems from Colonial times; indeed, until 1844 the Governor and
his council constituted the court of last resort.
In the law courts the second highest body is the Supreme Court, which
handles both criminal and civil cases, although the latter are limited to
suits involving $3,000 or more. It is authorized to superintend or review
the conduct of all inferior courts and public officers. The chief justice re
ceives $19,000 a year and the eight associate justices get $18,000. The
term is seven years.
The Circuit Courts enjoy common law jurisdiction in civil cases concur
rent with the Supreme Court within the counties in which they are held,
and statutory jurisdiction in a number of specific matters. The Common
Pleas Court, consisting of from one to five judges in each county, also
deals with civil matters, but its judges hear criminal cases when they sit in
the courts of Quarter Sessions, Special Sessions, and Over and Terminer.
GOVERNMENT 65
Civil actions involving less than $500 are tried in county or city district
courts. In some counties there are also criminal district courts to relieve
the common pleas judges of lesser criminal trials. At the very bottom of
the system are the recorders courts, the police courts and local justices of
the peace.
New Jersey is one of a half dozen States in which the equity or chancery
courts are still separated from the common law courts. The chief equity
judge is the chancellor, appointed by the Governor for a seven-year term
at a salary of $19,000 a year. The chancellor, in turn, appoints ten vice
chancellors for seven-year terms at salaries of $18,000 each. The vice chan
cellors, acting theoretically for the chancellor, sit individually at strategic
points throughout the State. As mentioned above, the chancellor is also
the presiding judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals. The Chancery
Court is assisted by numerous masters in chancery appointed by the chan
cellor.
The Court of Chancery has been vigorously attacked and defended in
connection with its issuance of injunctions in labor disputes. Trade union
ists and liberals have for years unsuccessfully sought an amendment to the
State constitution that would curtail the court s power. Mortgage fore
closures, divorces, insolvencies, and guardianships are other matters that
come before this court.
In the third judicial hierarchy the chancellor and his ten vice chancellors
constitute the Prerogative or High Probate Court. As the chief probate
judge, the chancellor is known as the Surrogate General or Ordinary; and
a vice chancellor sitting on probate matters is termed a Vice Ordinary.
Appeals to the Prerogative Court lie from the Orphans Court, held by a
common pleas judge another example of the crisscrossing of the New
Jersey judicial system.
The prerogative courts have jurisdiction over matters relating to wills,
administrators and executors of estates, guardianship, and the recovery of
legacies. Uncontested wills are admitted for probate before the surrogate
of each county. The surrogate, although he is sometimes thought of as the
lowest probate judge, is in reality nothing more than an administrative
officer.
Attached to the common law system is the important Juvenile and Do
mestic Relations Court, which does not logically belong in any of the three
hierarchies. This court is held by separate judges in the four largest coun
ties Essex, Hudson, Bergen and Union. In all other counties, a common
pleas judge adds this to his multifarious duties.
Under New Jersey s juvenile court act no person under 16 is deemed
66 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
capable of committing a crime, although the Court of Errors and Appeals
has twice held that the constitutional guarantee of trial by jury renders the
Juvenile Court (which does not use a jury) incompetent to hear cases in
volving "the malicious killing of a human being." The act, one of the
most progressive in the United States, allows wide authority to the judge.
At least in the four counties with separate judges, these courts are sharing
with those in only a few other jurisdictions in the country the distinction
of blazing a trail toward a new conception of juvenile delinquency and
perhaps of crime in general.
Unusual is the fact that all State judges, from the members of the Court
of Errors and Appeals to the civil and criminal district court judges, are
appointed by the Governor with the consent of the senate. In most other
States all or nearly all judges are elected. In spite of the allegation that
politics plays a part in these appointments, New Jersey courts have attained
a high standing. One recent study of the prestige of the highest State
courts gave a better rating to the courts only of New York, Massachusetts,
and Illinois. Moreover, there is a seldom broken custom of reappointing
justices of the higher courts regardless of politics.
Attempts to simplify the judicial machinery have been defeated for
many years. Since 1930 the Judicial Council, consisting of the attorney
general and representatives of the courts, the bar association and the legis
lature, has been making recommendations for changes in the constitution,
the statutes, and the rules and procedures of the courts. Some real progress
has been made; but so far the council has been unsuccessful in securing
the adoption of its constitutional amendments, the most important of which
would create a separate high court of appeals in place of the present Court
of Errors and Appeals. This would have the result of ending the dual role
played by Supreme Court justices and the chancellor as both trial judges in
their respective courts and appellate justices in the Court of Errors and Ap
peals. The Judicial Council proposals would also eliminate lay judges, and
would create a separate court of pardons.
Penal Institutions: In contrast to its archaic legal machinery, the State s
penal institutions are as progressive as any in the land. One of the best
features is the system of segregation, classification and individual treat
ment of inmates. Criminals are classified and put in separate institutions
for men, women and youths, as well as for the feebleminded, epileptic,
tubercular and insane.
Each institution has a classification committee consisting of the superin
tendent and other officers, including a physician, a psychiatrist, a psycholo-
GOVERNMENT 67
gist, a chaplain and the director of education. This committee studies each
inmate upon admission, prescribes a course of personal treatment, and
reports periodically on progress. The advisory committee on penal institu
tions, probation and parole of the Wickersham Commission on Law Ob
servance and Enforcement in 1931, after describing this system in detail,
commented: "It is clear that there is a plan of institutional treatment,
carried on by a whole State, quite unusual in the United States."
Work is an essential part of the program. The prison industries in New
Jersey are conducted under what is called the "State use system." This
means that goods produced are sold only to State departments or agencies,
and thus do not find their way to the open market in competition with the
products of free labor.
The State has an unusually liberal probation law, under which sentence
can be suspended for practically any crime if circumstances indicate that
imprisonment would destroy the convict s usefulness without giving addi
tional protection to society. Parole is supervised by the State department of
institutions and agencies, while probation is handled by the counties. As a
result, the probation system is highly developed in some of the larger
counties, but is still in a rudimentary stage in others.
Paying for Government: What does this remarkable system of govern
ment, this bewildering aggregation of State departments and local units,
cost the people of New Jersey, and how do they pay for it? Dogmatic
answers cannot be given to these questions because of the inadequacy of
the records and because of theoretical differences in opinion as to just
what should be included in the term "cost of government." The following
statements dealing primarily with the revenue system will give, however,
a rough sketch of the problem.
According to Local Government Bulletin No. 2 of the Princeton Local
Government Survey, the total State and local taxes levied in New Jersey
for the year ending December 31, 1935, were $320,477,621. A little more
than a quarter of this amount was in State taxes, the rest in local taxes.
Since the State returns a considerable amount of its revenues to local units,
the Princeton survey points out that the total tax bill was earmarked for
expenditure by the several units of government in the following propor
tions :
State $ 58,134,259
Municipalities 133,340,732
School Districts 80,470,796
Counties 48,531,834
68 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
The Princeton report concludes, therefore, that "local government in New
Jersey, including the counties, spends over four-fifths of the State and local
tax dollar."
It must be borne in mind that the above figures do not represent actual
total expenditures or costs of government. Something less than a third of
the money used in government in New Jersey is derived from nontax rev
enues in the form of a great variety of fees, permits, grants, earnings, etc.
In addition, a considerable amount of borrowed money is spent each year,
but such money must be repaid out of receipts from taxes and other sources.
The general property tax that is, the tax on real estate and personal
property both tangible and intangible, including the tax on railroads is
the backbone of the New Jersey tax system. In 1935, according to the
Princeton survey, "the property tax provided 76 percent of the total State
and local tax revenue and 89 percent of all local tax revenues." As a result
of the incompleteness of the assessment of personal property, about nine-
tenths of the general property tax revenue is derived from real estate.
The United States Census Bureau reported that in 1932 only four States
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Arizona obtained as large a propor
tion of their State and local taxes from real and personal property as New
Jersey. This is especially remarkable in view of the fact that New Jersey
is one of the most highly industrialized States ; and the assumption would
be that financial and commercial enterprise would yield a higher propor
tion of revenue.
About 96 percent of the taxes on property goes to the counties, munici
palities and school districts. The State derives the bulk of its revenue from
other taxes; notably more than $18,500,000 from the gasoline tax, almost
as much from motor vehicle registration and license fees, and varying
but substantial amounts from transfer inheritance taxes. Corporation taxes,
including taxes on foreign insurance companies, annually yield several
million dollars, as do beverage licenses and taxes. For four months in 1935
a consumers sales tax produced good revenues, but the tax proved so un
popular that it was repealed at a special session of the legislature.
Aside from property taxes, the principal local tax revenue is derived
from public utilities. Local units also collect the poll tax, dog taxes and
miscellaneous license taxes, while the State government collects small sums
from a variety of minor taxes and licenses. The fish and game commission
collects about one-third of a million dollars from sportsmen s licenses. All
told, State and local units in New Jersey collect about 30 different kinds
of taxes. Nevertheless, New Jersey is one of 18 States with no income tax.
Industry and Commerce
A GRICULTURAL development was the chief economic interest of
jf"^ New Jersey during the early period of its existence as a Colony.
Small farms were intensively cultivated in the eastern section and large
plantations, operated mainly by Negro slaves, flourished in the west. Al
though the isolation of farm people contributed to the establishment of
home industry, it likewise stunted commercial manufacturing.
The self-supporting farm was the standard unit of the Colony s econ
omy for the two earliest generations at least. Even the small towns clus
tered at the head of tidewater regions on the eastern shore or along the
Delaware were largely devoted to agriculture. Soap, candles, textiles, even
tools were manufactured in the home by the pioneer women and children.
Trade, however, began to flourish almost as soon as the Colonists sighted
the Indians. Furs, skins, and tobacco found a ready market in England;
oil and fish in Spain, Portugal, and the Canary Islands; and agricultural
products in neighboring Colonies and the West Indies.
Gradually manufacture spread from the home to the community. The
miller, almost invariably first on the scene, was soon joined by the weaver,
fuller, tanner, shoemaker, and carpenter. Newark had a commercial grist
mill in 1671, and the earliest sawmill was established in Woodbridge in
1682. Tanning, which had been started as a business in Elizabeth in 1664
by the Ogden family, quickly led to saddlery and harness making.
The fine forests in southern New Jersey yielded their lumber to ship
carpenters of Burlington, Salem, Newton, and Cape May, where ship
building became a leading industry. Equally significant was the develop
ment of whaling from Cape May and Tuckerton; in many respects these
towns rivaled the more celebrated New England ports of the Colonial
period. Tar and turpentine were also important exports from the southern
part of the Colony.
Toward the close of the seventeenth and opening of the eighteenth cen
turies, several industries were founded in New Jersey that were destined
to become not only leading sources of wealth but traditional occupations
as well. An abundant supply of beaver, raccoon, and sheep furnished the
69
70 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
materials for hat manufacturing, which attained its greatest strength in the
southern area. At the same time, the Colony was rapidly becoming distin
guished for its brewing skill. Hoboken, still identified with beer drinking,
had the first brewery in 1642. Beer was a major interest in Burlington in
1698. Two years later, Newark made more than 1,000 barrels of cider, and
Jersey applejack seems to have been as renowned among the Colonies as it
was throughout the East during the recent prohibition era.
In several spurs of the Appalachian range, running through the north
ern and central sections of the State, lay mineral deposits unusual for their
richness and variety. The State s earliest iron works were established at
Shrewsbury in 1676 by Colonel Lewis Morris, a merchant of the Barba-
does. Forges, furnaces, and bloomeries began to appear all over the north
ern part of the State, with a concentration at Boonton, the center of seven
rich mines in Morris County which supplied most of the Nation s iron.
These mines were a mainstay to Washington s army during the Revolution.
At the same time, swamps throughout southern New Jersey were uti
lized as an important source of iron deposits. Iron-laden water impreg
nated the marshy soil ; the Indians had long used this ore, mixed with bear
grease, to make an excellent war paint. The ore was hauled to charcoal-
heated furnaces built on the banks of streams, which provided power for
the bellows and an easy means of shipping the finished product. Wey-
mouth, Batsto, and Atsion were typical iron centers thriving little com
munities a century or more ago but ghost towns today. The bog-iron
industry lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century, when competition
from the iron mines and coal-burning smelters gradually smothered it.
Copper mines were worked in New Brunswick, and in 1768 the discov
ery that the marl of Monmouth County could be used as fertilizer led to
the establishment of another new industry. Steel manufacture at this time
was concentrated principally in Trenton.
Another famous early industry in New Jersey was glass making. The
first glass factory was founded at Allowaystown in 1740 by Caspar Wis-
tar, a German immigrant. The sand of the southern part of the State
proved especially suitable for the manufacture of glass, and within a few
decades Salem County was a leading producer of bottles, jugs, pitchers,
and other glassware.
The selection of the Falls of Passaic (now Paterson) for the site of a
gigantic manufacturing enterprise marked New Jersey s emergence as an
important industrial State. Sponsored by Alexander Hamilton in 1791,
this undertaking to utilize abundant water power was part of a scheme to
make the new Nation independent of foreign industrial products. Al-
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 71
though this grandiose aim was not realized, the Society for Establishing
Useful Manufactures did succeed in attracting a large part of the textile
industry to Paterson.
The first census of manufactures taken in New Jersey in 1810 placed
the total industrial wealth at $4,816,288, listing textiles, hides, leather,
iron products, and liquor as the most important goods. Cotton manufac
ture and cotton machinery so completely dominated Paterson at this time
that it earned the title of "The Cotton City." Twenty-five forges indicated
the growth of mining, while items like 36,000 packs of playing cards and
300,000 pounds of chocolate candy illustrated the diversity of industry.
The invention of new processes in the manufacture of iron, notably
Seth Boyden s discovery of a method for making malleable iron in New
ark in 1826, brought increased prosperity to this flourishing business. In
1830 the East Jersey Iron Manufacturing Company established a $283,000
plant at Boonton, capable of producing 1,000 tons of malleable iron an
nually.
Boyden also contributed to the growth of the leather industry with his
process for making patent leather. Moses Combs had earlier founded the
shoe industry in Newark, and by the end of the eighteenth century a
majority of the city s industrial population was engaged in the leather
trade. Combs was also famous as the first slave owner in local history to
teach his slaves a trade in order to raise their economic and social level.
Shortly after the rise of leather Newark developed another manufacture
which has remained one of its leaders. In 1801 Epaphras Hinsdale opened
on Broad Street a jewelry factory which soon became a fashionable gath
ering place for the ladies of the town. By 1836 the industry numbered
four establishments, with an annual output valued at $225,000 and 800
workers employed. Many years, however, had to pass before the general
public would accept articles known to have been made in America. Be
lieved to be products of Paris or London, Newark jewelry, remarkable for
its workmanship, found a market in the largest cities here and abroad.
The influx of European immigrants in the 1840 $ supplied needed man
power to the State s growing factories. Paterson gradually shifted from
cotton to silk manufacture after 1840, when John Ryle devised a way of
winding silk on a spool. A decade later New Jersey ranked second only
to Connecticut in the national production of spool silk, and Paterson was
already known as "The Silk City."
In the same period, potteries were founded at Trenton, brick works
expanded enormously at Perth Amboy, and in 1852 Edward Balback es
tablished America s first smelting and refining plant, on the Passaic River
72 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
near Newark, where he refined the floor sweepings from local jewelry fac
tories. Woolen mills, formerly situated chiefly in the south at Mount Holly
and Bridgeton, began to move north to Passaic.
Old industries yielded to this amazing variety of new occupations. Be
tween 1840 and 1850 Newark alone had been producing more than 2,000,-
ooo pairs of shoes annually. On the eve of the Civil War, however, the
industry there as well as in Orange and Burlington revealed the strain of
New England competition. Similarly the discovery of rich iron deposits in
Michigan and Minnesota began to reduce the State s mining importance.
During the next 20 years the State rode the waves of prosperity born
of the Civil War. Although the conflict severely cut trade with the agri
cultural South, compensations were found in Union Army orders, and im
proved transportation facilities opened new world markets.
Textiles, locomotives (the first in the State had been built at the Rogers
Works in Paterson in 1837), carriages, and machinery achieved wide do
mestic and foreign sale. Although iron mining was headed downward, the
manufacture of heavy machinery in Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson (the
latter a center for railroad construction) appeared to make up the loss.
Railroads spread all over the State and linked New Jersey more firmly
with the rest of the Nation.
Following the panic of 1873, the State entered another period of ex
pansion in which the gains began to fit into New Jersey s industrial pat
tern as it appears today. Bayonne started on its way to becoming one of
the great oil refining centers of the world in 1875 when the Prentice Re
fining Company established a still there. John D. Rockefeller came next,
and within a decade three other companies followed Standard Oil to the
site so close to the huge oil and kerosene market in New York City. The
steel cable industry was established in Trenton by the Roebling family,
and that city became known as a center of supply for suspension bridge
construction after the Roeblings built Brooklyn Bridge.
The work of Thomas A. Edison at Menlo Park and Edward Weston at
Newark established in New Jersey a vast electrical industry, especially in
light bulbs and phonograph records, dynamos, and power plant supplies.
John Wesley Hyatt s invention of the roller bearing and celluloid and
Hannibal Goodwin s perfection of photographic film introduced important
new manufacturing activities into Newark and its environs. As electricity
replaced steam in industry, the State s manufacturing strength continued
to grow even in the face of depressions. The tremendous rise in immigra
tion from southern and eastern Europe after 1880 brought abundant cheap
labor to factories, mills, and foundries.
""/ |
WIRE MAKING IN THE ROEBLING PLANT, TRENTON
The manufacture of paper and paper boxes, slaughtering and meat
packing, and the canning of fruit and vegetables rose in importance after
the turn of the century. The hat industry, which in 1892 had produced
more than 4,000,000 hats, including a $250 sombrero, was beginning to
decline as was the production of ceramics, cast-iron piping, glass, and
jewelry. Paterson, where in the i88o s more than one-third of the Na
tion s silk factories were situated, began to feel the effects of the industrial
drift southward to cheaper labor. The dyeing and finishing of textiles,
however, increased.
At the outbreak of the World War, New Jersey, along with the rest of
the country, faced a period of industrial uncertainty, despite which econo
mists hoped that the feverish gains and losses of the two previous decades
might balance into some kind of stability. Abuse of the State s easy incor
poration laws had made it a legal dumping ground for young and ruthless
corporations, seriously in need of industrial discipline.
The guns of Europe, however, shattered the opportunity for normal
growth by plunging the State into the most intense industrialization in its
74 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
history. The production of high explosives, textiles, steel, and ships rock
eted to new heights. The Bureau of Statistics reported that expansion in
manufacturing was 400 percent greater in 1916 than in any preceding
year. Chief among the cities that benefited from the industrial resurgence
were Newark, Perth Amboy, Jersey City, and New Brunswick. The chemi
cal industry in New Jersey sprang up almost overnight. Six factories for
the production of aniline, formerly imported from Germany, were set up
within the State, the most important at Kearny. Other towns that became
chemical centers were Carteret, Chrome, Maywood, and Perth Amboy.
The success of aircraft in the war made aeronautical manufacture in
New Jersey a leading industry, chiefly represented by the Wright Aero
nautical Corporation of Paterson, one of the world s largest airplane en
gine factories.
The tide of war prosperity, except for recurrent dips such as that of
1921, continued to rise until 1929. The value of manufactures from 1919
to 1929 increased $165,091,000, whereas workers wages for the same
period rose only $10,000,000, and in the same decade, through techno
logical improvements, there was a decrease of 60,000 workers. Production
in chemical factories was 450 percent greater in 1929 than in 1914. Elec
trical supplies multiplied by 700 percent in the same period, foundry
products by 300 percent, and petroleum products by 300 percent.
Building in the middle 1920*5 prospered to such an extent that the ap
pearance of many New Jersey cities was transformed by the construction
of new skyscrapers, factories, apartment houses, small-home developments,
and public parks.
In New Jersey as elsewhere this prosperity vanished with the crash in
1929. The State, which had been increasing its industrialization at a terrific
rate since 1900, suddenly halted and backslid, so that by 1932 its formerly
busy industrial sections became silent witnesses of reckless spending and
general lack of planning. Shantytowns built of galvanized iron, packing
boxes, and other materials salvaged from dumps sprang up in front of
idle factories, and relief became the real industrial problem of the State.
The situation gradually improved. By 1934 recovery slowly began to
make itself felt throughout the paralyzed industrial structure. Production
in 1937 reached pre-depression levels in some fields, greatest gains being
made in the electrical, iron, steel, and aircraft industries. Widespread lay
offs in the latter part of the year, characterized as a "recession," inter
rupted the period of the "little prosperity."
Latest available figures (the 1935 Census of Manufactures) report 377,-
078 wage earners in New Jersey, receiving $397,170,661 in 7,468 estab-
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 75
lishments, the total value of manufactures being listed at $2,439,426,000.
These figures represent an increase of 21.3 percent in number of wage
earners and 43.6 percent in value of manufactures over 1933. The State
has ranked sixth in the Union for industrial production since 1850.
The most important New Jersey industries ranked according to the
value of annual output by the 1935 Census of Manufactures are petroleum
refining, copper smelting and refining, chemicals, electrical supplies, dye
ing and finishing, paints and varnishes, clothing, rubber goods, and foundry
products. On the basis of the number of workers employed, dyeing and
finishing of textiles holds first place with 16,961 employees.
The State ranks first in the Nation in smelting and refining of copper,
dyeing and finishing of textiles, and the production of rubber goods (other
than tires). It is second in the manufacture of silk and rayon and chemicals.
The greatest concentration of industry is in Newark and the surround
ing area, including Jersey City, Paterson, Passaic, Elizabeth, and Bayonne.
Centers of industry outside the metropolitan area include Camden and
Trenton on the Delaware River and Perth Amboy on Raritan Bay. Al
though the "company town" as such is rare in the State, many small com
munities surrounding the large cities depend solely upon two or three
factories or plants for their economic existence.
Petroleum refining, with a yearly output valued at $157,000,000, is
centered in Bayonne, where four large companies maintain huge plants to
which oil is piped from the Middle West. Three enormous copper and
lead smelting firms and a score of smaller gold, silver, and platinum plants
constitute the rich refining industry, with annual production valued at
$182,000,000. About one-sixth of the zinc in the United States is mined
at the New Jersey Zinc Company s plant at Franklin.
Electrical supplies, a comparatively new industry in New Jersey, are
manufactured principally in the Newark sector, where appliances, dyna
mos, and incandescent lamps are produced ; while Camden leads the coun
try in the manufacture of radios. The annual output of the electrical
industry is valued at $91,000,000.
Paterson and Passaic are the traditional homes of the textile industry.
Although the manufacture of silk, rayon, and cotton goods has been stead
ily declining in this area for the last three decades, it remains together
with finishing and dyeing of textiles the major occupation. High tax
rates, excessive power costs, and destructive price-cutting by some operators
have combined to weaken the textile industry in New Jersey. Many of the
silk and cotton manufactures have moved their machinery into New Eng
land, Pennsylvania, and the South. In 1933, when production throughout
-j6 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
the Nation was beginning to rise from the low point of 1932, the output
of silk and rayon in New Jersey was 60 percent lower than in pre-war
years. Since textiles, however, still employ a greater number of the State s
workers than any other one industry (approximately 30 percent in the
many branches), the decline constitutes one of New Jersey s most pressing
industrial problems.
Other industries that contribute significantly to the State s wealth are
cigar and cigarette manufacturing; slaughtering and meat-packing; print
ing and publishing ; canning, in Camden ; rubber goods manufacturing, in
Trenton and Passaic; shipbuilding, in Kearny and Camden; jewelry-
making, in Newark; and soap-making, in Jersey City.
New Jersey houses many industries, not included in the leading group,
which nevertheless by virtue of location or individuality are of great im
portance in the State economy. Trenton is the center of clay-products
manufacturing for the entire Nation. Lenox, Incorporated, produces a
chinaware known the world over. Trenton is also headquarters for the
three plants of the John A. Roebling Son s Company, the world s leading
manufacturers of wire cable and rope.
A number of unusual manufacturing concerns have developed in New
Jersey. In North Plainfield is one of the Nation s five telescope factories.
At Burlington is the only company in the United States which makes arti
ficial human hair and horse hair, and here also is a birch carriage factory
that manufactures jinrikshas for Japan, one-wheeled carts for Korea, and
big-wheeled trekking wagons for use on South American plantations. Red
Bank has three shops exclusively devoted to the hand-hammering of gold
leaf.
The smooth functioning of New Jersey s industrial structure depends in
large measure upon power, light, and transportation facilities, supplied
in almost monopolistic fashion by the Public Service Corporation. Formed in
1903, this corporation acts as a holding company for Public Service Gas
and Electric Company, and Public Service Coordinated Transport, both
operating companies.
A rapid process of absorbing smaller utilities has brought Public Service
to a position where it supplies about 80 percent of all electricity gener
ated throughout New Jersey and about 86 percent of all gas. There still
exist 14 independent gas companies and 10 electric companies which serve
smaller communities; about half of these are municipally owned. The
efforts of the city of Camden in 1934 to build a municipal power plant
were thwarted by the State legislature, which voted against the city s issu
ing bonds to finance the venture.
CANNING TOMATOES, CAMDEN
This threat of municipal ownership, as well as formation of citizens
committees all over the State, has caused Public Service to reduce its rates
slightly in recent years. Rates for the residential consumer are now, for
example, $2.20 for 24 kilowatt-hours and $5.41 for 100 kilowatt-hours.
Thirty-six other States, according to a Federal Power Commission report
in 1936, have lower average rates than those in New Jersey.
Public Service also holds a commanding position in local streetcar and
bus operation and in intercity transportation. In 1936 this corporation,
generally considered the largest single employer in the State, listed 19,674
workers.
Banking and Insurance: Banking in the Colonies originated in New
Jersey, when in 1682 Mark Newbie, a Quaker, persuaded the General
Assembly that his souvenir Irish copper coins ("Patrick s pence") could
be put into circulation in the neighborhood of Camden (see Tour 31).
This was the first authorized use of currency in the Colonies, and Newbie
became in effect the first American banker.
Out of this modest but shrewd beginning grew the complicated banking
jS NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
structure of present-day New Jersey. Banking did not develop into a large
commercial undertaking until about 60 years ago when industry began to
demand a unified currency, sources of credit, and a generally stable finan
cial structure to stand back of the post-Civil War expansion. Notable early
banks in the State were the Newark Banking and Insurance Company,
which in 1804 received the first bank charter in the State, and the Trenton
Banking Company. The latter, also founded in 1804, is the oldest bank in the
State. The oldest bank in Newark is the National State Bank, founded in
1812. A State department of banking and insurance, with jurisdiction over
private banks as well as State banks, building and loan associations, and
remitters of funds abroad, was established in 1891.
The national banking system in 1936 included 266 New Jersey estab
lishments out of a total of 417 banks in the State. Total resources of the
banks were listed at $2,349,705,942. Since 1900, trust companies have
increased rapidly and today dominate New Jersey banking. At present 142
such institutions have combined resources exceeding $1,000,000,000. Sav
ings banks showed a corresponding rise, the number of depositors increas
ing from slightly less than 75,000 in 1900 to 574,667 in 1936. The
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in March 1934 insured 400 New
Jersey banks with 3,153,601 accounts and deposits of $869,981,197.
The Fidelity Union Trust Co. of Newark is the State s largest and most
important banking organization. It is the 36th largest bank in the United
States and has resources exceeding $150,000,000. Second is the Trust
Company of New Jersey, in Jersey City, with resources of about $86,-
000,000. The Howard Savings Institution of Newark is the largest savings
bank in the State with 95,000 depositors and $50,000,000 resources.
Newark is the fourth largest insurance city of the Nation, outranked
only by New York City, Hartford, and Boston. Insurance in New Jersey
began in 1810, when a group of Newark business men organized a mutual
fire insurance company as a measure of public welfare, without thought of
deriving profit. This company still survives as one of the groups within
the Royal Insurance Company of London.
In 1846 the American Mutual Insurance Company was founded in New
ark. A year earlier, life and casualty insurance had been founded in Newark
with the organization of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company. In
1877 the Prudential Insurance Company was established and quickly be
came the dominant company in the State. Its success has been due mainly
to its emphasis on industrial insurance, providing for small weekly pre
miums that place a $1,000 policy within the average worker s reach, al
though at a comparatively high annual rate.
>>
E course of the workingman s struggle for higher wages and better
JL working conditions in New Jersey has followed generally the pattern
of that struggle throughout the country. Periods of prosperity usually
brought militant, stubbornly fought strikes, while depression frequently
retarded the growth of unionism and the advance toward more equitable
social and economic adjustments. The decline in union membership dur
ing the boom years 19231929 was an exception to this general pattern;
and, in the opposite direction, the less prosperous years 19331938 have
brought progressive labor legislation and increase in union membership,
though largely through the action of forces and leadership Nation-wide
in influence. The State has seldom been a leader in trade union activities,
but it has served, in many cases, as something of a proving ground for
trade union theories. On the whole, labor has traveled a rough road, for
local and State governments have been consistently conservative.
The lodging of mass production industries such as steel, textiles, oil,
chemicals, and electrical supplies in the northeastern section of the State
made New Jersey for some time an open-shop stronghold. On the other
hand, the large number of cities with more than 25,000 population pro-
Tided fertile territory for craft unions. Over the years, the embattled tex
tile workers of Paterson and Passaic have become the State s symbol of
resistance to exploitation.
Throughout the Colonial period rigid stratification of classes in both
agriculture and industry prevailed. Industrially the old guild system of
master, journeyman, and apprentice without actual guild organization was
iirmly entrenched, and in agriculture, slaves and indentured servants formed
the main classes of laborers. For every slave imported each settler received
175 acres of land, and in 1737 slaves comprised 8.4 percent of the popu
lation. Slave riots were sufficiently violent and frequent to cause a citizen
in 1772 to urge parliament to pass a law "obliging owners of the slaves
to send them all back to Africa at their own expense." The most serious
insurrections occurred probably in connection with other political events,
as at Radtan in 1734, at Hackensack in 1741, and, some years later, at
79
8o NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Elizabethtown. As the Revolution approached, free labor began to displace
slaves and indentured servants.
The industrial revolution, which closely followed the political revolu
tion against England, created a favorable opportunity for labor organiza
tion as it replaced home manufacture with the factory system. Despite this
and the growth of many other natural fields for unionism, notably railroad
and canal construction, iron and glass making, and pottery production, or
ganization until 1850 was almost wholly confined to the older individual
crafts. The extremely harsh conditions of the Paterson textile factories
made them an exception. Here, women and children, who formed the
majority of the employees, were required to be at work at 4.30 a.m.; the
whip was frequently used to obtain speedier production, and the work day
lasted up to 16 hours.
One of the earliest recorded strikes and the first recorded sympathy
strike in America occurred in these Paterson mills in 1828. The employees,
including a large number of children, walked out, demanding restoration
of the noon lunch hour (which the company had changed arbitrarily to
one o clock) and reduction of the work day from 131/2 hours to 12 hours.
Carpenters, masons, and mechanics struck in sympathy with the millhands.
The strike was lost, although later the owners conceded the 12 o clock
lunch.
Trade unions organized by journeymen in several crafts caused the first
real wave of strikes in New Jersey. Rising costs of living unaccompanied
by increased wages during the prosperous period 1830-1836 resulted in at
least a dozen important strikes. In 1835 or 1836 shoemakers in Newark,
Paterson, and New Brunswick ; hatters in Newark ; textile workers in Pat
erson ; harness makers and curriers in Newark ; and building trades workers
in Trenton, Paterson, New Brunswick, and Newark all battled for high
wages, and in some cases for the lo-hour day. A majority of the strikes
was won by organized trade societies that closely resembled the present-
day "locals" of international unions. Early cooperation among such so
cieties was evidenced by a $203 contribution from the Newark working-
men to striking textile workers in Paterson.
Recognition of the value of such mutual aid led 16 trade societies to
form a Newark Trades Union, which today would be called a city federa
tion or central labor council. Although this body sanctioned strikes and
lent moral and financial assistance, the individual trade societies shoul
dered the brunt of strike action. The Newark group played an important
part in 1836 in the formation of the National Trades Union; New Bruns
wick also had a trades union, but it did not participate in the national
LABOR 8l
movement. Paterson s organization, grandiloquently styled "The Paterson
Association for the Protection of Laboring Classes, Operatives of Cotton
Mills, Etc.," joined with the Newark Trades Union.
Workers cooperation coupled with the burgeoning of radical thought
paved the way for labor s entry into politics during the turbulent thirties.
In September 1830 a group of farmers, mechanics, and workingmen from
Essex County met in Newark to form a Workingmen s Party. Although
the outcome is unknown, records show that the meeting demanded the
removal of property qualifications for voting, the taxation of bonds and
mortgages, and free schools. In 1834 and 1836 attempts were again made
to establish a labor party in Newark. Their failure may be traced to the
founders apparent aim to build a patchwork political party rather than a
strictly labor party, as demonstrated by their nomination of a coach lace
manufacturer for mayor.
The panic of 1837 temporarily halted the remarkable progress of the
previous decade. Along with most other trades unions, the Newark group
expired during the long depression, and in 1840 labor sacrificed its tiny
political independence to the Whig onslaught against the "panic-making"
^Democrats. The following quarter of a century was marked by the growth
of reform movements rather than militant trade unionism. Labor neglected
organization for Fourierism, land reform and the struggle for the lo-hour
day. Perth Amboy and Trenton were centers of the reform movements;
workingmen in the latter city were mainly responsible for the passage in
1851 of the lo-hour working day law which also prohibited labor of chil
dren under 10 years of age.
Out of this law, which characteristically carried no provisions for its
enforcement, developed the Paterson textile strike of 1851. This struggle
lacked the united front of the 1835 strike, and, although there was some
attempt to form a union to sustain the law, most of the strikers lost their
demands or agreed to work the lo-hour day at a reduction of wages.
Three years later a spectacular dispute arose between the directors and
the engineers of the Erie Railroad. The engineers objected to a company
rule which made them solely responsible for the safety of the trains. They
tied up the railroad s traffic, and were charged with violence against strike
breakers. The difficulties were compromised, but in 1856 a new strike oc
curred when the company discharged 10 members of a negotiating
committee which was seeking to revise the objectionable rules. The Erie
employed a strong police force to guard the nonstrikers; contemporary jour
nals warned readers against traveling on the road during the strike. Al
though the struggle was won by the company, the engineers were pre-
82 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
pared for participation in the national railroad organization that grew up
after 1852.
Despite an epidemic of strikes in the late fifties, organization activities
fell off during the Civil War. When they were resumed after 1865 it was
on a broader, more nearly national basis. New Jersey contributed to this
widening through the work of Uriah Smith Stevens, a native of Cape May,
who founded the Knights of Labor in Philadelphia in 1869. This organi
zation (whose sessions were secret until after 1878) sought to form a
national alliance of skilled and unskilled workers, women as well as men,
but its progress was impeded for almost a decade by the results of the
panic of 1873. One of the earliest New Jersey groups to join was that of
the ship carpenters and caulkers of Camden, organized in 1873 as Local
31. Other State locals were formed by Trenton printers, Jersey City me
chanics, and Newark brewery and leather workers.
During this period the State was the scene of two important events that
indicated labor s rising strength. In 1877 the Socialist Labor Party, the
oldest labor party in the country, was founded at Newark at the seconc
convention of the so-called Working Men s Party of the United States
This early organization had grown from a union of various socialist groups
(1874-76). In 1882 Peter McGuire of Camden and Matthew Maguire o
Jersey City started to campaign for the establishment of an official Labor
Day. Despite these significant trends, it was said in 1882 that the window
glass workers of New Jersey constituted the only large body of workers
in the State that had steadily maintained a trade organization throughout
the previous 15 years.
Improved conditions after 1882 swelled the membership of the Knights
of Labor, which more and more showed itself a forerunner of industria
unionism. It made rapid strides in railroads, textiles, hats, cigars, leather
machinery, and pottery. The organization reached its peak in the State in
1887 with an enrollment of 30,000 out of a total of 50,000 organizec
workers; 11,000 of these were in Newark alone.
A combination of causes brought about the sudden and swift downfal
of the Knights. The looseness and latitude of the organization made strike
operations difficult, and its leaders tended toward conciliation rather than
militancy. More serious, however, were the external obstacles and interna
wrangles arising from the invasion of mass production industries employ
ing unskilled labor. In these fields the Knights lacked the strength to cope
with the employers, who could easily dissuade immigrant labor from
unionism and could use the new arrivals as strikebreakers. Finally, the
^*tPl,4-
SILK MILL WORKER. PATERSON
84 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
advocates of the old craft union system bitterly and constantly fought the
national policy.
These dissenting factions gradually made their way into the new Ameri
can Federation of Labor which completed the local disintegration of the
Knights by a vigorous push into the State shortly after 1890. The organi
zation, set up on a craft union basis, was successful in unionizing the the
atrical, printing, metal and building trades, although brewing and textile
operatives were organized industrially. The federation concentrated on
skilled workers and, although it became the official voice of labor in New
Jersey, it generally neglected the mass production industries which domi
nated the State after 1900.
The most important struggles in New Jersey labor history have been the
Paterson silk strike in 191213, under the leadership of the Industrial
Workers of the World; the Passaic woolen and worsted strike of 1926,
the first strike in the country in which acknowledged communists played a
vital part in organization; and the Paterson silk and dye strikes of 1933
and 1934. Only the 1933 strike was notably successful. Both the silk
workers and dyers unions won recognition, with pay increased from $12
and $13 weekly to $18 and $22 in the silk mills, and wages as low as 20
cents an hour in the dye houses raised to 66 cents.
Perhaps the most ruthless labor massacre in New Jersey occurred early
in 1915 when "deputy sheriffs" hired from a Newark detective agency
fired on an unarmed group of pickets standing outside of the Williams and
Clark fertilizer factory at Carteret. A member of the local police force
testified later to the peacefulness of the strikers, whose losses were 6 dead
and 28 wounded. Twenty-two deputies were arrested on charges of man
slaughter but were later released. The following year guards of the Stand
ard Oil Company at Bayonne killed 8 and severely wounded 17 men. As
with the Carteret killings, this assault outraged even the conservative press.
For about half a century the efforts of workers in New Jersey, as else
where in the United States, to form unions have been handicapped or
crippled by the activities of industrial spies. The La Follette committee s
report (1938) on violations of the rights of labor showed that n New
Jersey corporations alone spent 12 percent of a $9,440,132 national total for
espionage, strikebreaking, munitioning, and similar activities in 1933-37.
At least 31 other New Jersey concerns were listed as clients of detective
agencies that provided spy service. All of the widely known detective
agencies had contracted with one or more New Jersey corporations to pro
vide lists of union members or workers interested in unionization; or re
ports on union meetings; or armed guards for strikebreaking or all of
LABOR 85
these services. In every important manufacturing city spies worked side by
side with the employees, often taking a prominent part in union activities,
and turning in daily reports that resulted in the sudden dismissal and
blacklisting of an unestimated number of workers.
At present the New Jersey State Federation of Labor claims approxi
mately 250,000 dues-paying members, organized in about 1,000 local
unions. There are 21 central labor bodies in the State, which include most
of the A. F. of L. local unions in the respective county districts. Strong
holds of organized labor are Newark, Passaic, Elizabeth, Trenton, Paterson
and Camden.
Of recent origin is the work of the Committee for Industrial Organiza
tion, which established a special North Jersey Council early in 1937, later
supplanted by the Greater Newark Industrial Council. Similar councils
have, been set up in Trenton and Camden. The C.I.O., with a State-wide
membership estimated (1939) at 175,000, is attempting to organize on an
industry-wide basis thousands of workers who have been neglected by
craft unions. The committee s immediate objectives in the State are the
textile, steel, heavy machinery, and electrical industries.
Although Governor Harold Hoffman warned early in 1937 that he
would tolerate no sit-down strikes involving the C.I.O., a number of such
strikes, as well as ordinary walk-outs, have been called successfully. The
organization s drive continued virtually unimpeded until December 1937
when it launched an offensive against the open-shop refuge of Jersey
City. Police of that city seized distributors of literature, prevented mass
meetings, and jailed organizers. However, in April 1938 the ban against
the distribution of literature was lifted.
The American Newspaper Guild s successful strike in 1934-35 against
the Newark Ledger (the Nation s first large-scale strike of newspapermen)
not only established the Guild as a labor power but also broke ground for
the subsequent C.I.O. drive to organize white-collar workers. Including
the Guild, C.I.O. affiliates in this field late in 1937 numbered approxi
mately 2,700 members. Among these were office, professional and insur
ance workers, architects, engineers, chemists and technicians, State and
municipal employees, retail clerks and professional medical workers. The
A. F. of L. has also organized teachers and has retained a portion of the
unionized office workers. An independent white-collar union is the State
chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
Because New Jersey remains "The Garden State," the unionization of
agricultural and allied workers constitutes an important labor objective.
The first farm labor organization in the State developed in 1934 from a
86 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
strike at Seabrook Farms in Cumberland County. Although the A. F. of L.
subsequently chartered agricultural locals in three other counties, in 1937
the New Jersey membership of 1,500 helped to organize the international
union of United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers,
which immediately affiliated with the C.I.O.
To one other class of workers the C.I.O. opened wide the door to full-
fledged unionism. In line with its drive for industrial unionism, the C.I.O.
offered Negroes equal membership with whites and established locals in
fields where Negro employees predominate. Organizers have been con
spicuously successful with junk yard, novelty and felt, and domestic work
ers. The A. F. of L. responded by increasing the Negro membership of
the International Union of Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers
and by organizing building service workers. The great mass of Negro
labor, spread over light industry and mercantile establishments, still re
mains unorganized.
Union labor in New Jersey keeps vigilant watch on the entrance of
"runaway shops." According to the State Federation of Labor, of 250
factories that moved to the State in 1936 approximately 200 were "fugi
tives" from trade union activities. Most of these shops were in the needle
trades; a few manufactured cosmetics, hats or textiles. They have invaded
Essex, Passaic, Union, Hudson, Morris and Monmouth Counties. In 1937
a runaway umbrella shop from New York was established at Boonton;
union organizers signed up a majority of the underpaid girls, and a strike
was called. The manufacturer moved to Pennsylvania, and again was
harried by the union. He returned to Boonton, and finally went back to
New York. There are many other instances of sweatshop operators being
pursued across State lines.
Not so progressive as the labor legislation of New York, Massachusetts
or Wisconsin, New Jersey laws protective and favorable to labor have
slowly increased since the impetus given 25 years ago by Woodrow Wil
son. In 1932 the Consumers League of New Jersey established a labor
standards committee which unites the efforts for labor legislation of a
score of progressive organizations. In 1937 the State Federation of Labor
cooperated with the Consumers League, the New Jersey League of Women
Voters and the New Jersey Federation of Women s Clubs to secure an
appropriation for the enforcement of the minimum wage statute and maxi
mum hour law for women passed in 1933. A somewhat similar coalition
succeeded in 1935 in having the legislature ratify the Federal Child Labor
Amendment.
Progressive labor continues to struggle against the power of the Court
LABOR 87
of Chancery to grant injunctions in labor disputes. An anti-injunction bill
was passed by the assembly in 1936 but was defeated in the senate. A
major factor in the defeat, it is alleged, was the withdrawal of the tradi
tional Democratic support for the bill on the ground that its passage would
frighten industry from the State.
In common with other industrial States, New Jersey is faced with the
problem of regulating industrial home work. The State department of
labor licenses these operators, but it has not had sufficient funds to enforce
even the meager health restrictions. The latest census shows that 5,000
operators have been licensed but since each family works under a single
license, the total number of home workers may well be 15,000 or even
20,000. The median wage for this type of work is figured to be 9 cents
per hour and the average family income $2.60 weekly. Major home work
products are dolls clothing, knitted goods, and powder puffs. The legisla
ture has to date failed to pass the industrial home work bill sponsored by
the Consumers League, which would drastically reduce health hazards and
raise wage levels to those paid for similar employment in factories.
Undoubtedly this menace to legitimate industry and to the preservation
of minimum wage standards accounts for a large number of New Jersey
workers who earn a sub-subsistence wage. According to a survey com
pleted in 1937 by the minimum wage division of the State labor depart
ment, 34,000 women and children receive less than $5 weekly and 292,000
less than $17.
After a generation of allying itself with either the Republican or
Democratic parties, New Jersey labor took a step toward political inde
pendence in 1935 when Labor Party tickets entered the field in Essex and
Passaic Counties. Although none of the nominees was elected, the action
led to the formation of the State-wide Labor s Nonpartisan League the
following year. Thus far the organization has endorsed two successful
candidates in the Newark city election of 1937 (one of them Vincent J.
Murphy, secretary of the State Federation of Labor), and held the balance
of power in the last gubernatorial contest. The estimated 150,000 members
of the league are expected to form the nucleus of the proposed State
Labor Party.
Along with its quest for political independence, labor is seeking eco
nomic independence by joining professional and white-collar workers in
cooperative enterprises. Cooperative leaders look to such economic activity
to provide consumers with a means of controlling prices and the cost of
living. Fifty years of effort in New Jersey resulted in the establishment by
December 1936 of 240 consumer-producer cooperatives. Of these, 120
88 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
were credit unions; 42, agricultural purchasing organizations; and 26,
urban food stores.
Consumer cooperatives, which chiefly sell groceries and fuel supplies,
are strongest in the northern and central urban areas; producer coopera
tives naturally center in the agricultural south. Jersey Homesteads, or
ganized by the Resettlement Administration in 1935, is considered one of
the most modern cooperative experiments in the United States. With a
garment factory, gardens and homes, it represents a fusion of the indus
trial, agricultural and consumer interests of cooperative enterprise. This
fusion typifies on a small scale the social goal of the cooperative move
ment.
Agriculture
NEW JERSEY is rightly called "The Garden State." Its truck-farms,
extending from the northern mountains to the southern plain, are
mere garden patches when compared with the western prairies or southern
plantations. But these gardens produce a large proportion of the fruits
and vegetables consumed in New York and Philadelphia. For these mil
lions as well as for its own, New Jersey has developed exceptionally pros
perous small farms and some of the highest types of agricultural specializa
tion.
The State has three main soil and topographical farm belts. Under
lain largely with limestone and other glacial rock, the northern counties
are hilly and in some places even mountainous. Here dairying and the
raising of grains and other field crops predominate, with scattered centers
for market gardening. Although found in all sections of the State, com
mercial poultry farms are concentrated in the northern and central areas.
In the middle counties are fertile loam lands, level or rolling, with a
rich subsoil of greensand marl. Of first rank in this section are truck
crops and potatoes. Grain, hay, fruits, and milk are secondary.
The southern counties of the level sandy coastal area contain, in addition
to a broad expanse of pine barrens, large fertile areas that yield excellent
apples, peaches, cranberries, and other small fruits and vegetables. Peach
blossoms in Burlington and Cumberland Counties make this section the
agricultural show-place of the State in spring.
When the early settlers arrived they found the Indians growing corn,
pumpkins, gourds, tobacco, and beans. Taking a lesson from the natives,
they cleared the lands, and with the help of seeds and livestock imported
from the old country, soon made New Jersey an important agricultural
colony.
Although its large wheat yield ranked New Jersey as one of the "bread
colonies" before the Revolution, the farmers were already anticipating the
present-day variety in products. Large farms had been established in the
south on which Negro slaves performed most of the work. This system
89
90 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
was readily adapted to flax-raising, a major pre-Revolutionary crop. Al
though white labor predominated in the north, Negroes were commonly
seen in the small fields and large orchards, which produced fruits, vege
tables, and cider. The hill country specialized in grazing, and about 1750
New Jersey was reckoned the leading sheep-raising Colony. By the time
the armies of Washington and the British were criss-crossing the State,
New Jersey offered a ready supply of horses and pork from the north,
flour and grain from the central part, and fruits and thread materials from
the south.
After the Revolution a period of serious depression was intensified on
New Jersey farms by the ravages of the Hessian fly in the wheat fields.
This was followed by a gradual upward trend in agriculture that reached
fruition in the middle of the nineteenth century. During the next half
century agricutural societies were formed in the several counties. Worn-
out soils were restored by the use of marl, lime, and fertilizer, and crop
yields soared.
The horse replaced the ox, and constant improvements in machinery in
creased the output of the individual farmer. A New Jerseyman, Charles
Newbold of Burlington County, had patented in 1797 the first cast-iron
plow. Newbold is said to have spent $30,000 in perfecting and introduc
ing his plow, but farmers at first refused to use it through fear that it
might poison the soil. Other improved plows were made by Peacock,
Deats and Stevens. New Jerseymen also contributed to the development
of reaping and tillage machinery and the improvement of livestock breeds.
The famous Jersey Red breed of hogs originated in the State.
With the growth of the urban population in adjoining States and the
opening up of the West in the last half of the nineteenth century, general
farming gradually gave way to specialization. The production of field
crops, hogs, and sheep declined as the cultivation of berries, fruits, and
vegetables increased. Dairying became paramount in the north, and the
rich central loam lands were given over largely to Irish potatoes, sweet
potatoes, and tomatoes. By 1900 New Jersey had truly become "The
Garden State."
During the nineteenth century New Jersey dairymen turned from the
production of butter and cheese to the production of milk for the nearby
city markets. A number of world s record cows emerged from the State s
Holstein, Guernsey, and Jersey herds. In 1898 the world-famous Walker-
Gordon farm was established at Plainsboro, where in 1930 was built the
"Rotolactor," the most advanced of mechanical milking devices. A New
I
HARVESTING CRANBERRIES, OCEAN COUNTY
Jersey farm in 1904 produced the first quart of certified milk in America.
The baby chick industry originated in Hunterdon County in 1892. New
Jersey hatcheries now annually distribute millions of baby chicks, and the
State is one of the leaders in commercial egg production. The Jersey Black
Giant breed of poultry, as suggested by the name, was developed within
the State.
Two wild fruits found by the early settlers, the cranberry and the blue
berry, were domesticated largely through the intelligent and progressive
efforts of New Jersey farmers. New Jersey now ranks second among the
States in the production of cranberries and first in the production of cul
tivated blueberries. In the 1820*5 Seth Boyden developed an improved
variety of strawberry, so large that 1 5 of them weighed a pound.
Specialization in farming has reached a remarkable peak on Seabrook
Farms, Incorporated, just north of Bridgeton. Here, on 5,000 acres owned
or leased by the corporation, industrial technique and efficiency engineer
ing have been applied to agriculture. Lands once worked by small farmers
living in perennial semi-starvation have been absorbed by the company
and converted into profitable acreage. The similarity to industrial method
92 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
extends into the financial set-up, for here is a farm with a holding com
pany, and a subsidiary company to handle canning and packing operations.
To illustrate the intense agricultural specialization: Peas are planted in
patches covering as many as 200 acres, with rows so close together that
the usual method of cultivation is impossible. Aphis and other pests are
controlled by dust sprayed from the farm s two airplanes ; and, instead of
being picked by hand, the vines are harvested whole by reapers and the
peas separated by specially built viners.
The farm has its own reservoirs, railroad sidings, and concrete high
ways, plus a trucking fleet with special refrigerating apparatus for hauling
frozen foods to market. Farm hands as well as factory girls punch time
clocks, and company police patrol the land. Two bitterly fought strikes in
1934 for higher wages and union recognition carried the industrial parallel
even further. The first strike brought a wage increase, but the second re
sulted in withdrawal of union recognition, although wages were not
altered.
Nurseries represent an even more intense type of specialization. Trees
and shrubs, vegetable and flower seeds are raised for an international
market. At Bound Brook is the largest orchid-growing plant in the country,
and Camden County has the largest dahlia farm in the State. Rose growing
is centered in Morris County; the extensive greenhouses of Madison have
given that community the nickname of the "Rose City." Nursery and
greenhouse products total nearly $10,000,000 in value annually.
The State pioneered in agricultural education and research. In 1864 the
legislature designated the Rutgers Scientific School as the Land Grant
College. In 1880 the State set up an agricultural experiment station at
New Brunswick the fifth of such State stations to be founded in this
country. The State board of agriculture was established in 1875 and reor
ganized in 1916 to provide for the present department of agriculture.
Other agencies that have contributed significantly toward the progress
of New Jersey agriculture include the various State and local agricultural
societies and associations, the high school departments of agriculture, the
State Grange with its local branches scattered throughout the State, and
the State Farm Bureau Federation.
These public and semi-public agencies have taken the leadership in de
veloping New Jersey s farms. They have provided scientific training in
agriculture for young men and women and kept farmers abreast of new
discoveries in management of soils and crops, as well as in control of
destructive insects and diseases. Farmers, manufacturers, and tradesmen
AGRICULTURE 93
have all received protection against fraud in handling farm produce and
supplies.
The agricultural experiment station conducts experiments in dairy sci
ence at Beemerville in Sussex County, a cranberry-blueberry laboratory in
Burlington County, a poultry pathology laboratory in Cumberland County,
an oyster laboratory in Cape May County ; also poultry contests in Passaic,
Hunterdon, and Cumberland Counties, and a pigeon contest in Cumber
land County.
Among the many contributions the experiment station has made to agri
cultural progress are new varieties of peaches, such as the Golden Jubilee
and the Cumberland, the new Rutgers tomato, the discovery of vaccine for
poultry bronchitis, improved fertilizers, control of potato diseases, the
reduction of the mosquito pest, improved methods of sewage disposal,
growth of greenhouse vegetables and flowers with nutrient solutions in
sand, new dairy rations, and improved strains of field crops. New facts
about human and animal nutrition have been revealed. Discoveries in soil
science and other departments have won world-wide recognition. Since
1914 the New Brunswick station has conducted the largest peach-breeding
experiment in the world, pollenizing by hand as many as 30,000 blossoms in
one season. The orchards attract thousands of visitors to the college farm.
Through the extension service of the New Jersey College of Agriculture
and the agricultural experiment station, scientific information is made
readily available throughout the State. The college, in cooperation with
the United States Department of Agriculture, maintains an office in every
county but one. Expert agents assigned to these offices give free service to
the local residents and to groups of persons who seek advice on questions
relating to agriculture and home economics. Also, thousands of boys and
girls are members of the 4-H Clubs directed through the county offices.
New Jersey farmers have suffered severely from two notorious pests.
The older and more destructive is the Japanese beetle, first discovered in
1916 at Cinnaminson. This bright metallic-green native of Japan, three-
eighths of an inch in length and about the same in width, has blazed a
destructive trail over most of the State and adjoining sections of Pennsyl
vania and Delaware. Control methods have been devised, but the beetles
are still responsible for a vast amount of damage to the business of nursery
men and to deciduous foliage from peach trees to roses in the New
Jersey area. The second pest is the Mexican bean beetle, a native of Central
America, which was reported by bean growers in 1927 as doing some
damage in Cape May County. Spraying and dusting have proved effective
94 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
in controlling the spread of this prolific insect, which kills bean plants by
feeding on the leaves until only a lacy shell remains. About one-quarter
of an inch in length, the Mexican bean beetle has yellow or copper-
colored wings with sixteen small black spots.
In recent years there has been decided progress in methods of market
ing farm produce. Through the leadership of the State department of
agriculture, standard grades have been established and ways and means
provided for marketing much produce cooperatively. Motor trucks have
largely displaced the railroads as carriers of produce, and New Jersey farm
products are now marketed at roadside stands in large quantities.
New Jersey farmers obtain many services from their marketing and
purchasing organizations. There are 57 different associations, one or more
serving every county in the State. Twenty-three of these, serving approxi
mately 6,500 members, are concerned only with purchasing various farm
supplies. Twenty associations devote themselves entirely to marketing farm
produce for their 6,000 members. Twelve combine both marketing and
purchasing and serve about 5,500 farmers. The largest purchasing organ
ization is the South Jersey Farmers Exchange in Woodstown, which buys
for 2,500 members in Salem, Gloucester, and Cumberland Counties. An
other important purchasing association is the Grange League Federation
Exchange, Incorporated, of Ithaca, New York, which serves 1,600 mem
bers in seven New Jersey branches.
The marketing organizations specialize in certain products such as blue
berries, peaches, potatoes, and poultry, or deal in general farm products.
Their fruit and vegetable auction markets are situated to serve the nine
counties in which the great fruit and vegetable supplies are grown. Largest
of the marketing associations is the Flemington Auction Market Coopera
tive Association, serving 1,300 farmers. Two other large organizations are
the Monmouth Farmers Exchange in Freehold and the Gloucester County
Agricultural Association in Glassboro.
In 1935 the Federal Census showed 1,914,110 acres of farms in New
Jersey, occupying about 40 percent of the total land area. Dairy products
are preeminent in money value, followed by vegetables, eggs, and grain.
The State leads all others in production for market of lima beans, cucum
bers, and eggplants; and it holds second place in asparagus, string beans,
spinach, and green peppers. Other important vegetable crops are tomatoes,
beets, cabbage, cantaloupes, cauliflower, celery, sweet corn, lettuce, onions,
and peas.
The money value of all crops in 1935 was $87,054,275, but a more
AGRICULTURE 95
typical figure would probably be that of 1929: $106,055,000. Values of
principal agricultural products in 1936 were:
Grain $10,219,000
Hay 4,756,000
Vegetables 15,774,000
Fruit 4,739,000
Berries 2,128,000
Potatoes 9,586,000
Sweet potatoes 2,520,000
Milk 25,500,000 *
Eggs 13,000,000 *
Baby chicks 2,200,000 *
* 1935 estimate.
SDortation
S ONE of the great natural terminals of the country, New Jersey has
developed with considerable profit to itself a transportation system
in line with the shipping and travel needs of the Nation. Its historic role
as a highway between New York and Philadelphia has made it the trans
port broker of the Middle Atlantic States.
Eight trunk railroads cross the State to converge on the west bank of
the Hudson River, where an elaborate transfer service for passengers and
freight to New York has been created. Transoceanic shipping is handled
largely by the ports of Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, and Perth Amboy
on the east, and on the west by Camden. The State has constructed an in
land waterway along the Atlantic Coast and has dredged its navigable
streams to develop inland ports. Newark has the most important trans
continental airport in the country.
Highway traffic within New Jersey has generally assumed a cross-State
diagonal course, with the north central part dominated by US i from
Jersey City to Trenton, and the south depending chiefly on the Camden-
Atlantic City roads. The excellence of the highway system has made pos
sible a general use of busses, which are steadily eliminating the once im
portant trolleys.
Colonial transportation in New Jersey began with the Dutch settlers
cautious use of the footpaths already worn through the forests on the west
bank of the Hudson River by the Lenni Lenape Indians. The colonists
gradually widened these narrow trails, first by walking double file for
added safety, then by driving their cattle and carts over them. When
wagons and stagecoaches came into use, the trails began to assume the
appearance of roads. Many eventually developed into the broad highspeed
thoroughfares of the present highway system.
The need for communication with their countrymen across the Hudson
led the early Dutch to operate the first ferries between what are now New
96
RAILROAD YARDS, WEEHAWKEN
York and Hoboken. These were rough-hewn rowboats or flat-bottomed
rafts, which passengers were called to man whenever a squall came up. At
the same time, the colonists ventured with small skiffs on the northern
lakes and down the streams.
As settlements spread southward and trading centers developed, the
need for swifter transport became urgent. New Jersey, lying between New
York and Philadelphia, two rapidly growing cities that afforded good
markets for its products, was the birthplace of the American stage wagon.
Freight transportation, which preceded passenger conveyance, was started
shortly before 1700 between South Amboy and Burlington. Soon after
ward passengers began to ride the hard uncomfortable wagons, first adver
tised in 1723. Regular routes were established by the middle of the next
decade between South Amboy and Burlington and between New Bruns
wick and Trenton. From these points travelers were transferred to sloops
to complete the journey to New York or Philadelphia.
Intense rivalry between the through lines caused operators to improve
their service with changes of horses, stronger wagons, and more direct
routes. They filled the public prints with advertisements accusing one an-
98 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
other of deceiving and defrauding their customers, but the public profited
from the competition by quicker travel. In 1752 Joseph Borden, inaugurat
ing a new line out of Bordentown, proudly advertised a trip from New
York to Philadelphia requiring only 30 to 40 hours. This was actual driv
ing time. Allowance for stopovers, delays and breakdowns commonly ran
the total to 72 hours still a vast improvement over the original five-day
trip. Fast electric trains now cover the distance in i hour and 35 minutes.
Four, six, and sometimes eight horses were needed to haul the wagons
over the miserable dust heaps or mud bogs that served as roads. Passengers
not only had to endure the jouncing and tossing of the wagon but also
were forced often to walk up steep rises in the road or help rescue horses
stalled in a slough. The vehicles were brightly painted but hardly easy-
riding; a strip of leather nailed across the back of a seat was luxurious.
Washouts on the roads were frequent, and passengers were constantly in
danger of falling from the wagons. The only comfort on the trip was
provided by the roadside inns or the stage boats, which advertised "fine
commodious cabins, fitted with tea tables and sundry other articles of con
venience to add to the comfort of the ladies."
In 1764 a new company speeded the trip by starting a wagon in Phila
delphia and sending it over the ferry at Trenton. The same year Sovereign
Sybrandt came near to establishing an all-land route between New York
and Philadelphia by running his stage overland from New Brunswick to
Elizabethtown, thence to Paulus Hook (Jersey City) by post road. He
avoided the perils of the bays, but still required five ferryings. The time
of the trip was cut to two days in 1771 by Joseph Mercereau s "Flying
Machine," and within a few years thereafter heavy coaches were intro
duced that greatly reduced the dangers of the journey.
A direct result of the rise of coaches was the improvement of the roads.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an inadequate road system was
sending most of the products from the farms and mines of the Delaware
Valley down that river to the Philadelphia market. Partly to bring this
trade to the east, the State began chartering turnpikes to supplant the dirt
and corduroy roads. The first of these improved highways linked the
Morris County iron mines with the infant industrial center of Newark;
others followed from Trenton to New Brunswick, Jersey City to Hacken-
sack, and Newark to New Brunswick. By 1828 the legislature had granted
54 turnpike charters. Like the old Indian trails, these turnpikes have
formed the basis for some of the best roads in the State.
Steamboats: While land routes were being speeded by simple expansion
and construction, water travel was improved by the inventive skill and
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 99
courage of men who saw the possibility of applying the principle of James
Watt s stationary steam engine to sailing vessels. John Fitch, a poor clock-
mender from Connecticut who lived for a time in Trenton, and Colonel
John Stevens, a rich Hoboken engineer, labored to make the steamboat a
reality on New Jersey waters.
In 1786 the State legislature granted to Fitch all rights to operate steam-
propelled craft on the waters of the State. In the summer of that year,
Fitch made his first trial on the Delaware with a queer looking boat, hav
ing a row of paddles on each side. While no great success, it warranted
the construction of two more boats in 1787-8. Fitch s best work was his
commercial steamboat of 1790. Although it carried passengers and freight
between various points along the Delaware and the Schuylkill on a regular
schedule, it received so little patronage that it was abandoned. This was,
however, 17 years before Robert Fulton prospered with his larger Cler-
mont on the Hudson.
In 1791 Stevens obtained a patent on an engine for running a boat with
paddles, and seven years later he tested his own steamboat on a run down
the Passaic from Belleville to New York and back. In 1804 he tried again
with a steamboat, the Little Juliana, having the first screw propeller.
Finally in 1808 he applied for a license to run the Phoenix, his best boat,
as a steam ferry between Hoboken and New York. This was the first steam
ferry in the world, but its career was curtailed by the Hudson River
monopoly that Robert Fulton had obtained. Stevens then took his boat
around to the Delaware, and the Phoenix became the first steamboat to
sail the open sea.
To circumvent Fulton s hold on the Hudson, Stevens and others used the
ingenious "teamboat" ferry, twin boats with a wheel between the two
hulls. Power was furnished by eight horses walking in a circle on deck
and turning a crank. It required no royalty payment to Fulton and operated
successfully for some time.
Canals: Increased activity in the northwestern mining district and the
south central agricultural area led to the construction of two canals to hasten
shipments and enlarge the State s share of the Pennsylvania trade. The
Morris Canal, chartered in 1824, passed through the iron-mining and in
dustrial district from Jersey City to Phillipsburg, connecting the Delaware
and Lehigh Rivers with the Passaic and the sea at Newark Bay. It was
completed in 1831 at a cost of $2,850,000, but never realized the hopes
of its backers. Hampered by a channel that was never large enough to
handle the heavy traffic, it paid so poorly that in 10 years it was closed.
Reopened in 1841, it closed again, and later was leased in perpetuity to
ioo NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Recently both the railroad and the canal
owners surrendered their rights to the State, but kept the Jersey City
terminal of "the ditch." In Newark the city has constructed a subway for
trolley lines in the canal bed.
The Delaware and Raritan Canal, extending from New Brunswick to
Bordentown, was in its heyday one of the three most important canals in
the United States. Chartered in 1830, it began inauspiciously, for in the
same year the legislature permitted the Camden and Amboy Railroad to
parallel it from South Amboy to Bordentown. To avoid being overcome
by the railroad, the canal owners joined their stock with the Camden and
Amboy but maintained separate operation. The combination thus obtained
a monopoly on traffic between New York and Philadelphia, all passengers
being allotted to the railroad and all freight to the canal.
The Delaware and Raritan s prosperity rested largely on coal from the
Schuylkill Navigation System, the first link in the transport of coal from
the Schuylkill section to the sea. But association with the Schuylkill later
proved disastrous, for floods, mismanagement, and railroad competition
after the Civil War crippled its trade. In 1871 the Pennsylvania Railroad
leased the Camden and Amboy and with it the ailing canal. The new
owner refused to permit coal from the Schuylkill mines, now controlled
by the rival Reading line, to pass through. This loss of 1,000,000 tons of
freight a year eliminated the Delaware and Raritan as an important water
way. It limped along doing a little business, until recently, when the Penn
sylvania surrendered the title to the State. At present the Federal and
State Governments are considering a plan to build a ship canal through
the same territory.
The Railroads: Success with the steamboat inspired Colonel John Stev
ens to work on the idea of a steam railroad. He petitioned his own State
legislature and Governor De Witt Clinton of New York to consider his
proposal for a railroad which would run trains at 18 miles an hour. This
suggestion won as little attention as his plan to connect New York and
New Jersey by a tunnel on the bed of the Hudson. In 1824, however,
when he was 75 years old, he demonstrated an experimental "steam
waggon" which ran 12 miles an hour on a circular track at his Hoboken
estate. This was the first locomotive built and operated in this country.
His son, Robert L. Stevens, carried on to complete the task of building
New Jersey s first railroad. Confidence abounded at a meeting in Mount
Holly in 1828 to promote the project; the success of the elder Stevens
and of British railway ventures swept aside the opposition of stagecoach
operators, who prophetically attacked the plan as a scheme for monopoly.
JOHN BULL," NEW JERSEY S FIRST LOCOMOTIVE
In 1830 the company obtained a charter for the Camden and Amboy
Railroad, first to be operated in the State, and sent Robert Stevens to Eng
land to buy equipment. This included all-iron rails, instead of the wooden
rails that had been tried on tramways.
After a favorable demonstration of the locomotive John Bull at Borden-
town in 1831, the Camden and Amboy speeded construction and in 1834
completed the route from Camden to South Amboy. It acquired control
of the Philadelphia and Trenton Railway Company, which had built a
line from Philadelphia to Morrisville (opposite Trenton) and owned the
rights to constructing a railroad between Trenton and New Brunswick.
By making a traffic agreement with the New Jersey Railroad and Trans
portation Company, which ran a line from Jersey City to New Brunswick,
the Camden and Amboy in 1840 consolidated its holdings and opened the
first through all-rail line from New York to Philadelphia.
Other important lines chartered and constructed in this period were the
Elizabeth and Somerville, the Morris and Essex, and the Paterson and
Hudson, all of which knitted together the growing cities of the north and
the surrounding mining and agricultural sections.
Favored by the State legislature with the necessity of paying only an
102 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
insignificant "transit fee" and with an ironclad monopoly concession on
rail transportation between New York and Philadelphia, the Camden and
Amboy rapidly grew into a powerful corporation. In return for valuable
favors received, the railroad turned over to the State 1,000 shares of stock.
The ultimate result was that the railroad entrenched itself so strongly in
the State s political field that New Jersey acquired the sobriquet of the
"State of Camden and Amboy."
Others eyed the rich monopoly with envy. The New Jersey Central Rail
road, then a small line operating across the northern part of the State,
built a line southward as far as Bound Brook. Meanwhile a railway, later
to become the Philadelphia and Reading, was laid to a point opposite
Trenton. Completion of the link between Trenton and Bound Brook
would form the competing road from New York to Philadelphia.
For five years the question of a franchise was fought in the legislature
between the backers of the new line and the Camden and Amboy. When
public opinion crystallized against the domination of the corporation, the
Camden and Amboy skillfully shifted responsibility by leasing its lines
to the Pennsylvania. The struggle became more furious as the Pennsylvania
was attacked as an "alien" interest. Bribery, violence, and subsidized news
papers were common weapons on both sides. At length the public sickened
of the battle and demanded a general law opening the State to all rail
roads, with prudent restrictions. The act was passed promptly, and the
link between Trenton and Bound Brook was assured at last.
But when the construction crews began work, the Pennsylvania applied
for injunction after injunction against the New York and Bound Brook
Railroad, as the new road was called. The fight became so acute at Penn-
ington, where the two roads crossed, that the Governor had to call out the
militia. By the time the troops restored order, the crossing had been
achieved and the grip of the railroads had been loosened, if not broken.
New Jersey has today more railroad track per square mile than any
other State. The system features concentration of terminals on the west
bank of the Hudson, feeders for ocean traffic, and eight great trunk lines
across the central and northern parts of the State. In all, 2,179 miles of
track within the State are being operated by 27 railroads, of which 15 are
first class.
Railroad construction has been concentrated in the central industrial
region of the State where travelers and shippers are offered a wide choice
of routes and schedules. In the northern and southern sections, however,
coverage and service are generally inadequate.
Across the mountains and into the valleys of the northern part of the
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 103
State run the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Lackawanna, and the Jersey Cen
tral, hauling mine, forest, and farm products eastward to New York.
They also carry thousands of commuters and vacationers between the many
resorts and suburban communities in this area. The Pennsylvania, Lehigh
Valley, Reading, and Jersey Central bear the major burden of traffic in the
manufacturing belts, in which lies the New York-Philadelphia route, one
of the richest runs in the world. The large cities in this area are all linked
with their surrounding suburbs and each other by a network of minor
lines.
Agricultural south New Jersey depends chiefly upon the Pennsylvania
and the Reading for cross-State shipments of its produce to Philadelphia,
while it uses the Jersey Central for travel within the district. The State s
long seashore playground is served by the Pennsylvania, Jersey Central,
and Reading. Newark, with six trunk line stations, is the busiest railroad
center in the State. Camden, Hoboken, and Jersey City are also major
terminals.
Electrification of the Pennsylvania and the Lackawanna Lines has con
siderably increased the value of nearby real estate and has tempted thou
sands of new commuters into the State. The Hudson and Manhattan tun
nels from Newark and Jersey City to New York, constructed in 1911,
daily carry thousands of commuters over one of the busiest short runs in
the country.
Highways : New Jersey s State highway system is largely a war product.
When a vast output of munitions and war supplies was rushed to the
Atlantic coast, trunk line railroads were overloaded, and motor trucks were
drafted. Railroad freight was dumped beside the rails and reshipped by
truck.
Although in 1890 New Jersey became the first State to provide State
aid in construction of highways, the roads were not sufficiently developed
to meet the wartime need. All through the State, businessmen patronized
the motor express lines that sprang up by hundreds. The old county and
town roads nearly went to pieces under the pressure of the new freight
traffic. The slogan of "Win the War with Transportation" brought the
State into long-delayed action. The legislature in 1917 voted to build a
State system of 15 roads connecting the principal industrial and shipping
centers.
Post-war use of the motor truck demanded speed and expansion in this
program. In 1926 a special road commission recommended an expendi
ture of $300,000,000 for the highway network, half of which has been
spent on road construction and maintenance to date.
104 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
New Jersey s present highway system is generally considered to be sur
passed only by that of California. It is 26,767 miles in extent, of which
17,315 miles are "improved." The State-controlled portion totals 1,877
miles; the remainder is administered by local communities or by counties.
The Federal Government has given important aid in the improvement and
development of the State s highways. In addition to previous extensive
projects carried through under the Works Progress Administration, twenty
new county-wide projects have been approved for New Jersey (April
1938), averaging approximately one million dollars expenditure in each
county. These projects provide for improvement of principal and sec
ondary roads of the present system, construction of new roads, widening
of highways, and building of bridges and culverts. Up to March 23, 1938,
grants made to the State of New Jersey under the Public Works Ad
ministration totaled $2,817,655. These grants were made for the construc
tion of bridges and viaducts and for the elimination of various grade
crossings, the total cost of which is estimated at $6,693,221. The Civilian
Conservation Corps also has done valuable work in the improvement of
public properties in the State.
The excellence of the system, however, has not prevented an appalling
record of death and accident on the highways. One of the most dangerous
roads in the State is US i, the superhighway from George Washington
Bridge to Trenton. Efforts to reduce hazards on the roads include the
gradual elimination of the three-lane highway, considered among the most
treacherous of road designs; increased use of divided highways, and the
institution of the cloverleaf crossing. This latter device, introduced in
New Jersey, cuts down the risk of collision at congested intersections by
sorting the traffic into one-way streams without crossings. The State is
also experimenting with daylight illumination (sodium vapor lighting) to
reduce the dangers of night driving.
Three troops of State police patrol the State highways. Numerous sta
tions connected by telephone and teletype enable rapid concentration of a
force in any locality where it is needed. Headquarters are in Trenton,
where contact is maintained with the State administration and with the
commanding officer and staff of the National Guard.
Outstanding among State highways is the Pulaski Skyway over the
Newark meadows, part of US i. Three and one-half miles long, it steps
across two rivers on high cantilever bridges. No toll is charged.
Completing the highway system are bridges, tunnels, and ferries con
necting the State with its neighbors. The major links with New York City
UNLOADING LUMBER, PORT NEWARK
io6 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
are three Port of New York Authority enterprises: the $60,000,000
George Washington Memorial Bridge, running from iSist Street in Man
hattan to Fort Lee on the New Jersey side; the Holland Tunnel, extend
ing from Jersey City to Canal Street, Manhattan; and the new Lincoln
Tunnel, linking midtown Manhattan with Weehawken. Hudson River
ferries have survived the competition of the tunnels and the bridge by
reducing their rates.
Three Port of New York Authority toll bridges join New Jersey with
Staten Island. They are Bayonne Bridge between Bayonne and Port Rich
mond, with the longest steel arch span in the world (1,675 feet) ;
Goethals Bridge from Elizabeth to Howland Hook, and the Outerbridge
Crossing from Perth Amboy to Tottenville. The Delaware River Bridge,
between Camden and Philadelphia, and 10 other toll and 15 free bridges
span the Delaware.
One result of the construction of bridges and tunnels across the Hud
son has been the shift from congested Manhattan of a part of its popula
tion into New Jersey. The trend began with the construction of the Hud
son tubes, and between 1910 and 1930 Manhattan lost almost half a
million residents while New Jersey s four counties of the northern metro
politan area increased in population by 690,000.
Similarly, the rise of the motor bus since the World War has caused
amazing growth in the suburban zones of New Jersey s large cities. Rural
districts have almost overnight become modern towns with most of the
conveniences and few of the disadvantages of the urban centers nearby.
The Public Service Coordinated Transport, largest local bus operator in
the country, covers most of the State with lines that carried 292,398,000
passengers in 1936. The same company s trolley lines carried 118,075,000
passengers in that year. Like its neighboring States, New Jersey once had
an extensive network of interurban trolley lines, but streetcars have been
steadily displaced by busses. Some of the busses are equipped with trol
leys for electric operation as well. Interstate bus lines cross the State in
generally the same directions as did the Colonial stages, and have been
particularly conspicuous in competing with rail service to Philadelphia and
shore points.
Water Travel: New Jersey shares navigation of the Delaware River
with Pennsylvania and Delaware for sea-going vessels as far as Trenton,
and for small craft to Port Jervis, New York. The State s other important
navigable streams are the Passaic, Hackensack, and Raritan, all of which
afford ready access to inland ports in the industrial area. The Hudson
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION IOy
River, Kill van Kull, and Arthur Kill are shared with New York for river
trade and ocean transport.
A plan for an important inland waterway has been suggested by the
Board of Commerce and Navigation of New Jersey. According to this
plan the old Delaware and Raritan Canal and the Delaware River, from
Trenton southward, would become links in the Intracoastal Waterway
from Boston, Massachusetts, to the Rio Grande, Texas. The project would
involve the Federal Government s making navigable this part of the Dela
ware; and opening and restoring to use the old canal, or constructing a
new one. The State maintains all inland waterways and operates State
inland waterway terminals.
The principal deepwater ports on the northwest border of the State for
overseas and coastwise transportation are Newark and Elizabethport on
Newark Bay, Perth Amboy on Raritan Bay, Jersey City and Bayonne on
New York Bay, and Hoboken, Weehawken and Edgewater on the Hud
son. On the Hudson County waterfront 100,000 passengers yearly arrive
or depart by regular transoceanic steamship lines, which also handle freight
in quantity. At Hoboken a modern feature is the seatrain steamship serv
ice that carries 101 loaded freight cars on each boat to Havana and New
Orleans. Camden, with regular steamship lines operating to Baltimore and
Hawaii, dominates ocean transport on the Delaware side.
A continuous inland waterway extends along the Atlantic Coast for 115
miles from the head of Barnegat Bay to Cape May. It is used chiefly for
pleasure sailing and the shipping of sea products, petroleum, and lumber.
Air Travel: Newark Airport is the busiest in the United States and one
of the busiest in the world. Established in 1929 as the eastern terminus of
the Nation s air mail service, it registers 125 take-offs and landings of
transport planes daily. Four of the great transcontinental systems operat
ing passenger lines use it as their terminal. As such, Newark has become
virtually synonymous in the public mind with long-distance air travel.
The Newark meadows were selected for the metropolitan terminal be
cause their situation affords excellent landing facilities and quick transfer
to New York City. Access to Manhattan is greatly facilitated by the
Pulaski Skyway and the Holland Tunnel. The first regular passenger line
was established in 1929 between Newark and Boston by American Air
Lines. While most of the other large cities in the State operate busy com
mercial airports, Camden, serving Philadelphia, is the only other regular
transport stop in New Jersey. It has recently become a transcontinental
terminus.
io8 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Transatlantic Zeppelins have since 1924 used the United States Naval
Air Station at Lakehurst as their American terminal.
Wire Systems and Radio: Telegraph service, now extended to even the
smaller towns in the State, had its experimental origin in New Jersey. In
1838, six years before his celebrated success over a longer distance, Samuel
F. B. Morse tested the electromagnetic telegraph at the Speedwell Iron
Works near Morristown. At Princeton University, a few years before
Morse began his work, Joseph Henry, professor of natural philosophy,
constructed an electric apparatus that carried signals sounded on a bell
from his home on the campus to the Hall of Philosophy.
An important innovation in telegraph service was the introduction of
wireless newspaper bulletins at Atlantic Highlands lighthouse in 1899
during the America s Cup yacht races. Messages were transmitted from a
steamboat to the lighthouse, where they were relayed to New York City.
The telephone has quickly become an indispensable social and commer
cial instrument in the State, and perhaps more than any other modern in
vention has welded it into one large community. The New Jersey Bell
Telephone Company has created a State-wide system including approxi
mately 685,000 telephones in 1937. With 204 phones per 1,000 popula
tion reported in 1936, New Jersey ranked second only to California in the
extent of telephone service.
Conversations between all parts of the United States and Europe, Cen
tral and South America over shortwave radio telephone are transmitted
from the Bell station at Lawrenceville, and received from abroad at Net-
cong. The Radio-Marine Corporation maintains a transoceanic wireless
telegraph station at Tuckerton.
New Jersey, and specifically the city of Newark, was closely identified
with early experiments in radio broadcasting. WJZ broadcast a world
series baseball game on October 7, 1921, from the Westinghouse plant at
Orange and Plane Streets, Newark. This was the world s second station,
the first having been KDKA in Pittsburgh. The station was later sold to
become part of the National Broadcasting Company. The transmitter re
mained in Newark for a time, but was later moved to Bound Brook.
WOR, Newark s second station, started broadcasting February 22, 1922.
Built by L. Bamberger and Company and housed in its department store
building, the station has pioneered in many phases of radio. In the fall of
1922 it communicated with Self ridge s store in London, and a year later
reached Tokio. In 1924 the station asked all listeners to try to locate the
dirigible Shenandoah, which had slipped its moorings and become lost.
Soon telephone calls began to come in, and the ship s position was re-
TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 109
layed to the crew. WOR has pioneered in spot news and symphony orches
tra broadcasts, and developed many technical improvements. It is now the
home station of the Mutual Broadcasting Company.
The 1920 $ saw the establishment of several other stations, some of
which still survive, usually under different call letters. The State now has
13 broadcasting stations and a number of experimental laboratories.
The Press
NEW JERSEY editors put "first things first" and hoe their own row.
Their determination to emphasize local news and features against
the national and international content of New York and Philadelphia
dailies has produced in an essentially urban State a prevailingly suburban
type of journalism. Almost without exception, the New Jersey press daily
declares its independence from its metropolitan rivals.
The majority follow the lead of the Newark Evening News in report
ing not only the minutiae of their own cities but also social, political, and
cultural activities of hamlets within a 5O-mile radius. An example of the
strong New Jersey sense of local importance was a News headline on
November 2, 1937: "NEW YORK ALSO VOTES TODAY." The neces
sity for this provincialism, however, becomes apparent when circulation
figures of New Jersey and out-of-State papers are compared.
Neighboring newspapers have made greatest inroads in the heavily
populated suburban areas. One New York paper alone, a tabloid, has a
weekday circulation of 199,000 and a Sunday circulation of more than
400,000 in New Jersey. Likewise, one Philadelphia daily sends to New
Jersey 65,000 copies, an eighth of its total circulation.
In comparison, the 36 English-language dailies in the State, of which
only a very few print Sunday editions, have a circulation of approximately
800,000 on weekdays and 218,700 on Sundays (including that of the
Sunday weeklies). Improved delivery facilities are increasing the circula
tion of metropolitan papers in the State without causing a corresponding
decline in that of New Jersey s own papers. Readers of out-of-State jour
nals usually buy a local paper also.
This same influence of neighboring cities caused early New Jersey jour
nalism to limp decades behind that of other Colonies. At the outbreak of
the Revolution, the population of the Colony still looked to the nine
Pennsylvania papers three of which were printed in German and to
their four contemporaries in New York for information on the Old
World and the New. James Parker s effort to establish a local publication,
THE PRESS III
The American Magazine, at Woodbridge in 1758, brought him at the
end of two years only fines and imprisonment.
The first cry of a newsboy hawking his wares in New Jersey was heard
in the fall of 1776, when Hugh Gaine temporarily moved his New York
Gazette and Weekly Mercury across the river to Newark. His innovation
in salesmanship had been preceded, a year earlier, by the appearance of
a wall newspaper at Matthew Potter s inn at Bridgeton. Three or four
hand-written sheets, every Thursday morning, attracted a swarming chat
tering crowd of farmers, teamsters, and townspeople to the walls of the
old tavern. This lively sheet, called the Plain Dealer, came to an abrupt
end after it had dealt a bit too plainly with the practice of bundling.
The heat of partisanship during the Revolution led to the rise of a
local press. The New Jersey Gazette, the State s first real paper, was pro
duced by Isaac Collins, former "Printer to the King," from the identical
plant in Burlington where, several decades earlier, Benjamin Franklin
had printed the first currency for the Province. Backed by Governor Wil
liam Livingston and members of the State legislature, this weekly appeared
as a single folio sheet, 9 by 14 inches, four columns to a page, on Decem
ber 5, 1777. Typical of Revolutionary papers, it was pledged to support
the "Interests of Religion and Liberty" and opened its columns with
"pleasure and alacrity" to "Essays useful or entertaining, or schemes for
advancement of Trade, Arts and Manufactures."
Only three contemporary New Jersey papers date back to the eighteenth
century, and only one of these, the Elizabeth Daily Journal, was founded
early enough to participate in the Revolution. Washington and Hamilton
lent "friendly assistance" to Shepard Kollock, a Chatham printer, for the
establishment of his New Jersey Journal, forerunner of the present Eliza
beth daily.
Collins Gazette waned after the peace of 1783 and finally expired in
1786. The same year brought the New Jersey Magazine and Monthly
Advertiser to New Brunswick and the Mercury and Weekly Advertiser to
Trenton short-lived, ponderous, pedantic sheets that catered mainly to
the property-holding class. For years Kollock s Journal remained the only
publication in the State with an appeal to the common man.
The passionate controversy between Hamilton s Federalism and Jeffer
son s Republicanism gave rise to new partisan papers. The present Tren
ton State Gazette and the New Brunswick Sunday Times were both
founded in 1792 to champion political movements. In Newark, John
Woods, a former apprentice of Kollock, began, on May 13, 1791, weekly
publication of Woods Newark Gazette. This ardent Federalist advocate
ii2 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
was soon opposed by one equally vehement for States rights, the Sentinel
of Freedom, founded in 1796.
The Newark Daily Advertiser, established in 1832 as a daily edition of
the Sentinel, absorbed the parent organization in the following year. It
survived until 1906 on legal advertisements thrown to it by politicans,
although it had no circulation. Today s Newark Star-Eagle, the result of a
merger of the Daily Advertiser, the Newark Evening Star, and the Morn
ing Eagle thus lays claim to the title of the city s oldest daily.
The Sentinel (originally spelled "Centinel") was typical of that intense
personal journalism which frequently led opposing editors to the dueling
grounds. The paper built up Jefferson s political machine in Essex County
and drove the Gazette out of business. A vituperative editorial in the
Sentinel of January i, 1805 commented:
The Newark Gazette expired on Tuesday of a decline which it bore with Chris
tian fortitude. This legitimate child of federalism was generated by corruption, pro
gressed in infamy, and finally died in disgrace. ... Let the people say Amen ! Amen !
Undoubtedly the fiercest anti-Federalist, however, was Philip Freneau,
sailor, scholar, and poet of the Revolution. His New Jersey Chronicle,
founded in 1795 at Mount Pleasant (now Freneau), assailed the aristo
cratic theories of Adams and Hamilton and charged that they were head
ing the Nation toward monarchy. Jefferson later made Freneau editor of
his National Gazette.
But the readers interest extended beyond politics. The new century
saw the inception of a large number of country weeklies, which generally
held with the Camden Mail "that exclusive devotion to any one party does
not afford the widest field of usefulness for a newspaper." Some of New
Jersey s prominent weeklies date back to this demand for a respite from
politics: the Sussex Register (1813) of Newton, the Monmouth Inquirer
(1820) of Freehold, the New Jersey Herald (1829) of Newton, and the
Salem Sunbeam (1844). These papers were trail-breakers for suburban
types that have remained characteristic of the State.
These old sheets did not know the meaning of "local color." Neither
the city editor nor the society reporter had appeared. Though churches
existed in abundance, there are no records left of their harvest dances or
clam bakes. The advertisements alone permit a few glimpses into the late
stagecoach and early railroad days. Exceptions were items like the follow
ing, which were widely reprinted: "A sturgeon, seven feet long, leaped
through the cabin window of a sloop moored at Bridgeton while the
crew was asleep, and did considerable damage to the cabin."
The story of a "panther hunt" near Blackwoodstown in 1819 found
THE PRESS 113
equal credulity among the rural readers. One editor explained that "the
panther is of the feline species, a sort of first cousin to the tiger, and
ranges the depth of the remotest American forests."
Payment in kind was a common occurrence: Editor Barber of Wood-
bury announced in a front page notice that his woodpile was running low
and that a few loads from his debtors would be acceptable. The editor of
the Columbian Herald once informed his subscribers that he was willing
to take "cats and grain" for the $2 yearly subscription price. The value
of cats can only be surmised.
The State s first daily paper was the Newark Daily Advertiser, founded
in 1832 as a daily edition of the Sentinel of Freedom. The Advertiser,
which ultimately became the present Star-Eagle, backed the Whigs and
the candidacy of Henry Clay. The Advertiser remained alone in the field
for more than a decade before its success inspired in rapid succession
papers in Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson. Most of these, however,
were ephemeral. The Trenton State Gazette, an old post-Revolutionary
weekly that was converted into a daily in 1847, is the only survivor.
The State Gazette inaugurated the first telegraphic news service in New
Jersey. On January 13, 1847, the publishers announced with "the greatest
satisfaction" that, "simultaneously with the morning daily papers of
Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York," they were pub
lishing that day "the proceedings of Congress yesterday, transmitted by
the Magnetic Telegraph ... a feat never before accomplished or thought
of in New Jersey." The Newark Advertiser shortly followed suit. The
old Associated Press founded in 1848 and dissolved in 1899 was used
by Thomas T. Kinney, the Advertiser s editor and publisher, as early as
1851.
At the end of the Civil War the manufacture of newsprint from wood
pulp increased the possibilities of profitable publishing. The Jersey Jour
nal of Jersey City appeared in 1867, and in the next 12 years 10 of the
existing daily papers began publication. In the same period the Newark
Sunday Call (1872) was established. Though it issues no daily edition,
it has become the most important Sunday paper in the State. Its policy
of treating New Jersey as one large community in which weddings and
politics vie for the reader s interest has made it as much a part of Sun
day morning in New Jersey as toast and coffee. The Call has been par
ticularly energetic in vivifying the history and folklore of the State.
Under the management of the Kinneys, father and son, the Newark
Advertiser became the best-equipped paper in New Jersey. They intro
duced steam power, cylinder presses, and other advanced mechanical equip-
ii4 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
ment. A worthy contemporary until its cessation in 1894 was the Newark
Evening Journal, whose militant editor, William Fuller, opposed the Civil
War and the draft, and urged fair treatment of the defeated South.
After Richard Watson Gilder had lent a distinctive literary tone to the
Advertiser, Wallace Scudder in 1883 established the Newark Evening
News which within two decades ranked with such vigorous publications
as the Springfield Republican and the Hartford Courant. Comprehensive
presentation of New Jersey and a consistently progressive technical policy
make it one of the Nation s foremost six-day newspapers. Like the Call on
Sundays, the News on weekdays throws the searchlight on a wide arc of
its own dooryard. Its earliest editions, which often resemble abridgements
of several country weeklies, justify its claim to the title, "New Jersey s
Great Home Newspaper." In April 1938 the News received the Francis
Way land Ayer Cup, offered annually by N. W. Ayer & Son, Inc., to the
daily newspaper chosen as the most outstanding for typographical excel
lence.
More than half of New Jersey s daily and Sunday papers have been
founded since the invention of the linotype machine by Ottmar Mergen-
thaler in 1885. Activity was particularly strong in the northern section,
where papers were started in Paterson, Hoboken, Plainfield, and Hacken-
sack. Expansion after 1900 gradually filled journalistic gaps in the south.
The most recent dailies in the State are the Atlantic City World and the
Ocean City Sentinel-Ledger, both founded in 1935.
Weekly newspapers have continued to spring up over the State, many
of them in saucy defiance of established dailies. Bergen County, with 70
weeklies in 71 municipalities, is now said to lead the Nation in this jour
nalistic abundance. Practically every one of these journals follows a pat
tern possessing an incipient Walter Winchell and relieving the boiler
plate material with descriptions of the actions of a small-town mayor, or
the social coup of a debutante. Legal advertising forms a large portion of
their revenue. The State has no weekly as salty and indigenous as Craw
ford s Weekly in Virginia, but Carl Wittman s Fair Lawn and Paramus
Clarion strangely enough holds its conservative readers by attacks on
fascism, irresponsible government and big business.
As a whole, country weeklies still have a precarious existence, and not
all unsuccessful present-day publishers display the sardonic humor illus
trated long ago in the Camden City Directory by a picture of a tombstone
with the inscription: "Here Lies the Camden Local News Died April
1882 For Lack of Nourishment H. R. Caulfield, Ex-Publisher."
The contemporary personality of the press in New Jersey is distinctly
THE PRESS 115
native. The large newspaper chains are represented in the State only by
Paul Block s Newark Star -Eagle and Frank Gannett s Plainfield Courier -
News. The metropolitan tabloids are imitated in a modified form only by
the Newark Ledger and a brace of Sunday weeklies. Most of the dailies
are limited to two or three editions ; and only a few, including the Atlantic
City Press and the Trenton Times, have a Sunday edition. The Newark
Evening News is perhaps the only State paper which devotes appreciable
editorial or reportorial space to international affairs and national questions,,
not directly involving New Jersey.
In style, content, and appearance New Jersey newspapers pursue a
leisurely course, mainly uninfluenced by towering headlines, colored sheets,
or adventurous type experiments. Columns and features have a decidedly
local flavor ; sports writing covers even the activities of grammar schools ;
and syndicated material has firmly entrenched itself. Among the New
Jersey journalists who have had their products syndicated was the late
Howard Freeman, cartoonist of the Newark Evening News.
The general tone of the editorial pages is conservative. For a long time,
it was strongly marked by a tendency to support the National administra
tion, irrespective of political badge. Not more than half a dozen dailies
list their politics; most of them adopt the opaque classification "Inde
pendent." In general the papers of Newark and Jersey City have spoken
for Democratic policies, while those in the southern part of the State
advocate Republican policies. There have been few hard-fought news
paper crusades against economic and political ills. The most notable cam
paigns in recent years have been those of the Newark Star-Eagle for reduc
tion of Public Service Corporation electric rates and the Camden Courier
and Post for a municipal power plant.
New Jersey publishers have displayed marked ability in developing
the business side of publishing. For thirteen consecutive years the Newark
Evening News has led the six-day papers of the country in classified
advertising. Brisk advertising managers have corraled enough space to
make the average price of a New Jersey daily three cents, and to keep the
number of pages well above sixteen.
Newspaper owners have united in the New Jersey State Press Associa
tion, which cooperates with the department of journalism at Rutgers Uni
versity in placing young writers. Devoted chiefly to an annual survey of
the newspaper scene, the publishers organization has generally followed
the American Newspaper Publishers Association in formulating both
editorial and labor policies.
The American Newspaper Guild, now numbering 245 members in the
u6 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
State, has a wide appeal in New Jersey, for the Guild won its first im
portant victory in the Newark Ledger strike of 1935. The organization
extends over the State, but is strongest in Newark and Camden, and in
Hudson County. In these areas the Guild has made the most significant
advance toward securing for editorial workers salaries and wages equal
to those long established by typographical unions.
New Jersey s large immigrant groups have developed a vigorous and
colorful press. Concerned equally with events at home and in the father
land, the foreign- language papers perhaps represent the most definite
political opinion and the most cosmopolitan spirit in the State press.
Although reduced in scope of influence by the growing Americanization
of their readers, the papers still figure prominently in the politics and cul
ture of New Jersey.
Between 1850 and 1900 the Germans composed the largest group of
foreign-born. In 1852 the New Jersey Freie Zeitung, the best-known and
most influential of all the State s German newspapers, was founded in
Newark by Benedict Prieth, a liberal who had fled his native Austria after
the abortive revolution of 1848. It flourished as a daily for more than
seven decades, and only lately has been reduced to a weekly. Other Ger
man publications followed, until Hudson County called "the most Ger
man county in the Nation" had nine, including two dailies. Another
historic German publication is the New Jersey Staats Journal, started in
Trenton in 1867.
Only the Ukrainians have a daily paper in New Jersey today. Their
Svoboda of Jersey City, founded in 1893, has maintained a steady circu
lation of 14,000. Other groups, like their English-speaking neighbors,
look largely to New York and Philadelphia for their daily reading. A
number of weeklies, such as the Italian Tribune and the Polish Kronika
of Newark, the Magyar Herald of New Brunswick, the No winy of Tren
ton and the Polak-Amerykanki of Perth Amboy, serve their respective
language readers. Several papers published in English stress the interests
of English-speaking Jews. Among them are the Jewish Chronicle, New
ark; the Jewish Ledger, Atlantic City, and the Jewish Standard and the
Hudson Jewish News, both of Jersey City. The last named paper and the
Morgen-Stern of Newark also publish Yiddish editions.
General labor news is presented mainly by a northern New Jersey edi
tion of the weekly People s Press and the monthly Union Labor Advo
cate, of Elizabeth. In December 1935 the Paterson Press was launched as
the State s first cooperatively owned newspaper, financed largely by Pater-
son workers and by members of printing trades unions of New Jersey and
THE PRESS 117
adjoining States. The paper, an outgrowth of a successful open shop
campaign by the two Paterson dailies, succumbed in September 1936
from a shortage of funds. Although the Press did not get beyond the
weekly stage, it distinguished itself by a campaign, the most outspoken
in New Jersey press history, against too high electric rates.
_v ,v v J y > v > v y v v j v v v > y M V- V- V V V- V- V V ^ V V V ^ V V ^ V
Racial and National
s
A LTHOUGH the farmlands of New Jersey have attracted immigrants
j^\^ during three centuries, the greatest influx of foreign-born has been
to the industrial centers developed within the last hundred years. Close by
New York City and the Ellis Island immigrant station, New Jersey ab
sorbed wave after wave of Europeans until today it ranks fifth among the
States in its percentage of foreign-born residents.
According to the United States census for 1930, the State had 844,442
foreign-born whites, plus 1,413,239 native whites of foreign or "mixed"
parentage, constituting together about 57 percent of the total population.
Negroes numbered 208,828, about 5 percent of the total. Native whites
of native parentage were about 38 percent of the State s population, com
pared with an average of about 57 percent for the Nation.
Leading nationalities represented in the foreign-born white popula
tion, as recorded by the 1930 census, are shown below:
Percent of
Nationalities Number Total Population
Italian 190,858 4.7
German 112,753 2.8
Polish 102,573 2.5
Irish 63,236 1.5
Russian 62,152 1.5
English 51,629 1.3
Scotch 34,72i .9
Czecho-Slovakian 32,358 .8
Hungarian 32,332 .8
Scandinavian 27,895 .7
Swedish 13,360 .4
Norwegian 7,870 .2
Danish 6,665 - 1
Austrian 24,010 .6
Dutch 14,762 .4
Englishmen, Swedes, and Hollanders were first among the white new
comers to penetrate the wilderness that was to become New Jersey. To-
118
RACIAL AND NATIONAL GROUPS 119
gather they appropriated the property of the Lenni Lenape Indians, a
friendly pastoral people. In 1930 the State had an Indian population of
213, although no Indian reservation remains.
The Swedes moved into the Delaware Bay region in 1638, and there
after remained apart from the main stream of New Jersey history. Swedes-
boro, a village of some 2,000 inhabitants on Raccoon Creek, near Camden,
is a present-day reminder of these earliest settlers. A few Scandinavian
settlements along the seacoast, of which Barnegat City is the best known,
are sustained by the fishing trade.
The Hollanders, frugal and industrious, formed a substantial and last
ing element in the population. Numerous Dutch Reformed congrega
tions scattered through Bergen and adjoining counties testify to the stub
born Dutch zeal for religious authority that figured so prominently in
European and early American events. Some of the most genial customs
of American life, including sleighing and ice-skating, Christmas festivities
and other ceremonies, were introduced by the Dutch. Most of the more
recent immigrants live in Bergen and Passaic Counties, in communities
such as Prospect Park.
But the dominant factor throughout New Jersey in Colonial days was
the English. With the Scotch they founded the old towns of Elizabeth,
Perth Amboy, Middletown, and Shrewsbury. The military seizure of the
Colony from the Dutch in 1664 decided the future Anglo-Saxon rule of
New Jersey.
By 1790 the English numbered 98,000, in a total population of 170,000.
All the political, economic and cultural principles by which the Colonists
ordered their affairs had been transplanted from Great Britain. Long after
the Revolution had broken the power of London, these principles re
tained their influence. Although the British were at first mainly an agri
cultural and official element in New Jersey, the 86,000 foreign-born Eng
lish and Scottish residents of today are chiefly employed in industry and
commerce.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the English, Dutch, Scotch,
Germans, and Irish had fused into a relatively stable society. On the
outskirts of the social structure, though not definitely segregated, were
the Negroes. Aided by State emancipation laws, they had passed from
slavery into wage labor as gardeners, tannery workers, house servants,
coachmen, and building trades workers. Their barber shops and laundries,
catering establishments, and orchestras were patronized by both races.
Some owned stores on Broad Street in Newark.
Hard times following the industrial revolution and political persecu-
120 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
tion in Europe produced the second great wave of immigration. Between
1844 and 1850 the Irish population in New Jersey more than tripled,
largely because of the severe potato famine in the homeland. Despite their
traditional hostility to the Anglo-Saxon race, the Irish speedily adapted
themselves to their new environment, and rose swiftly to economic equal
ity with other nationalities. In Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, and Pater-
son they began as a laboring element in the factories, but before long
had acquired control of the building trades. To New Jersey they brought
a volatility unknown to the established nationalities. The Irish participated
significantly in trade unions and also formed the backbone of political
organizations that seldom supported measures of vital concern to the
workingman. The Irish have been the great fraternalists of the State, re
sponsible perhaps for the founding of more societies and orders than any
other group.
It was not, however, until the coming of the German "Forty-eighters"
political refugees from the reaction raging in Germany following the
attempt of the people to exterminate feudalism that any appreciable
change was made in certain long-established social customs in New Jersey.
For more than 200 years English Puritanism had kept watch over the
public morals of society. The "Forty-eighters," fresh from battlefields
where the great questions of economic and political liberty were being
decided, held a liberal attitude toward religion and the Sabbath. They
developed community singing, occasionally neglected business for intel
lectual pleasures, and enjoyed outdoor life to the fullest. In addition,
they became a progressive element in American politics and a force in
building the trade union movement.
The Germans applied their technical knowledge and energy to the
development of the country s resources. They became skilled workers in
many industries, particularly in the electrical field, and were mainly re
sponsible for the rise of the brewing industry.
More significantly, the Germans were pioneers in the movement for
free public education. Their love of music was reflected in the Sanger-
fest, an annual singing festival of the Germans in the northeastern part
of the United States which began in New Jersey in 1891. Largest of
German organizations in the State today is the German- American League.
In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, both Germans and Irish
were persecuted by the Know-Nothing Party, a secret society that in some
respects resembled the modern Ku Klux Klan and Black Legion. The
dour and bigoted Americans comprising this group objected to the Cathol
icism of the Irish and the political liberalism of the Germans. Although
RACIAL AND NATIONAL GROUPS 121
they organized thug onslaughts to drive the immigrants out of the coun
try, and even carried their alien-baiting to the polls, they failed to make
an appreciable reduction in the growing number of refugees and pioneers
from the Old World.
The immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
were motivated more by economic than political considerations. Leaving
their homelands, where life had been hard and crude, they converged on
the growing commercial and industrial cities of Newark, Jersey City,
Paterson, Passaic, New Brunswick, Trenton, and Camden. They estab
lished communities bordering on the very shadows of the factories, much
as their peasant ancestors clustered beneath the walls of the feudal manor.
Their economic position was modestly secure, but reports of their pros
perity were fantastically exaggerated by steamship agents in order to
bring thousands more from the Old World.
Poles began to come to New Jersey in large numbers in 1870. In Hud
son County alone they now number 23,000, most of them being employed
at heavy labor in the factories and oil refineries of Jersey City and
Bayonne. More than 5,000 Polish immigrants live in Newark, where
they are distributed among a variety of industries.
Polish women assume a large part of their families economic burden.
In Jersey City a large laundry employs nearly 1,000 Polish women, and
in the woolen mills of Passaic they number at least 5,000. Bad housing,
fatigue, and poverty have caused a certain physical deterioration among
these women, who in their native land are exceptionally handsome. The
Poles are deeply religious, and in the Greek and Roman Catholic churches
they find their chief opportunity for artistic expression. Like the Germans,
the Poles are a musical people, and singing societies and orchestras are
usually a feature of their many fraternal and national organizations.
Residents of Italian stock in New Jersey constitute more than 10 per
cent of the total of Italian stock in the United States. Late nineteenth
century arrivals for the most part, the Italians are found in every county
and in every industrial center. Some have entered agriculture, notably in
settlements near Vineland and Hammonton and generally throughout
south New Jersey. The cultivation of peppers, artichokes, and eggplants
is an Italian importation. In Chatham and Madison many Italians are
employed in greenhouses.
But the majority of Italians are found in factory and construction work.
In Paterson, national center of the silk-dyeing industry, more than 10,000
work in the dye houses. They are also numerous in the silk mills. Shrewd
in business and real estate investments, the Italians are also among the
122 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
most substantial members of the trade union movement. In Passaic County
they are the backbone of one of the Nation s largest local unions, Dyers
Local 1733.
Czecho-Slovakians are numerous in the Passaic County textile region.
Elizabeth has a number of Lithuanians. Hungarians, concentrated in and
around New Brunswick and Perth Amboy, account for more than 12 per
cent of all Hungarians in the United States. They were the nucleus for
the town of Roebling, one of the few company towns in New Jersey.
Turks, Syrians, and Armenians are also employed in the textile mills of
Paterson and Passaic.
One of the most prominent groups in New Jersey is that of the Jews,
chiefly immigrants from Poland and Russia. The earliest sizable Jewish
community grew up in Newark about 1844. This was a time of large
Jewish immigration, when thousands fled from Western and Central
Europe to escape enforced military duty and to live under more demo
cratic conditions. At first mainly pack peddlers, they later opened butcher
shops, drygoods stores and cigar factories, and within a generation had
become significant factors in the commercial and financial life of the
State. During the i88o s, religious persecution in Russia and Poland
brought an even larger number of Jews to New Jersey. Less readily
adaptable to new conditions than the earlier immigrants, they have never
theless become important as small merchants in the larger cities and, like
their German predecessors, have made a valuable contribution in the pro
fessional fields.
Today New Jersey, with 225,306 Jews (1927), is fifth in the United
States in Jewish population, and is exceeded only by New York in its
proportion of Jewish residents. The cultural and philanthropic institu
tions of the Jews form a network serving the entire State. In Newark,
where the Jewish population is approximately 75,000, they maintain 30
congregations and more than 250 charitable, social, fraternal, and com
munal bodies.
Of the 1,738 Chinese recorded in the 1930 census, the majority are
laundrymen and restaurant workers, although a few are engaged in other
forms of commerce. Only 439 Japanese were listed as residents in 1930.
The 208,828 Negroes of New Jersey (1930) are distributed mainly
in the industrial areas of Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, and Elizabeth,
though a few live in practically every rural district and small town. They
are also numerous in such residential towns as Montclair and Morris-
town, and in the resorts of Atlantic City and Asbury Park.
Large scale immigration during the nineteenth century squeezed Negro
RACIAL AND NATIONAL GROUPS 123
artisans and laborers out of industry, forcing them more and more into
menial and unorganized jobs at substandard wages. A growing poverty
pushed them into the worst sections of the cities, where disease and
apathy spread among them.
Negroes suffer serious exploitation and discrimination. In Jersey City,
for example, squalid houses in the most run-down sections cost Negro
families from $30 to $50 a month. Residential discrimination is common
throughout the State. Practically all public school systems south of Prince
ton have separate buildings or classes for Negroes (see Education ) .
Although Negroes constitute less than 5 percent of the State popula
tion, Negro deaths are 8 percent of the total; infant mortality, 12 per
cent; deaths from tuberculosis, 20 percent; unemployment, twice the
percentage for whites. Of all juvenile delinquents convicted, 24 percent
are Negroes. Having important bearing on these facts is the statement of
Egerton Elliot Hall, Rutgers University (1933):
No situation more clearly reflects the low economic status of New Jersey s Negro
population than its housing and neighborhood facilities. The President s Conference
on Home Building and Home Ownership reported: "At least three types of social
pathology have been observed to have a high and inescapable correlation with the
character of Negro residence areas. These are: (i) a high rate of delinquency, (2)
a high rate of mortality, and (3) a distorted standard of living."
In spite of these handicaps, the Negroes have registered a number of
positive advances. Illiteracy among Negroes in New Jersey was reduced
from 30 percent in 1880 to 7 percent in 1930. There are more than 500
Negro school teachers and as many professional workers in the State.
Despite discrimination, the Negro has played an important part in the
silk, rubber, steel and cigar-making industries and in agriculture.
In southern New Jersey is Gouldtown, a small village peopled chiefly
by descendants of four mulatto families who have intermarried for more
than 175 years, with only an occasional infiltration of other blood stocks.
Although situated in a poor and timber-exhausted land, the people of
Gouldtown have preserved a dignity that is reflected in the number of
teachers, ministers, and scientists who have come from the town. Lawn-
side, near Camden, the only borough in New Jersey governed entirely
by Negroes, began as a station on the Underground Railroad. The tract
of land was purchased in 1840 by Quaker abolitionists who divided it into
lots, which they sold to Negroes at low prices. From simple farmers the
inhabitants of Lawnside have grown into a group whose achievements in
self-government and in economic and social advancement have made them
interesting to Negro students and research workers from many parts of
the country ( see Tour 23 ) .
124 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
In the wild rugged country of the Ramapo Mountains in the north
live the so-called Jackson Whites, some 5,000 mountaineers as far re
moved from the urban life a score of miles away as those in eastern
Tennessee. The basis of the group was 3,500 white and black women im
ported from England and the West Indies by the British military author
ity in New York during the Revolution. After the war the women found
refuge in the New Jersey hills with exiled Indians from North Carolina
and they were soon joined by Hessians. Later Italians, Dutch, and more
Negroes added to the mixture.
Long isolation as economic outcasts in their hovels and at their miser
able jobs has made the Jackson Whites suspicious of city folk and appar
ently resigned to their fate as a racial oddity. They now constitute a
genuine social problem in a State that for the most part knows them only
as the subject of sensational newspaper stories (see Side Tour 9 A).
Many of the European groups, especially the Italians, Poles, and Hun
garians, have settled in particular quarters of the larger cities or have
founded separate towns and villages, where they keep alive the customs,
languages, and in some cases the modes of thought of their fatherlands.
The extremely large number of Italians in the State has made the study
of Italian a regular foreign language course in many of the larger high
schools.
The absorption of foreign groups is proceeding with varying degrees
of rapidity. In general, however, the Europeans wear American clothes,
talk "American," and in many cases have exchanged their own traditions
for those of their adopted country. The process has cost New Jersey many
colorful ceremonies and practices formerly common among immigrants.
The rousing German singing societies in Newark and Hoboken have vir
tually disappeared; Poles and Russians are gradually abandoning their
own Christmas and New Year s celebrations for the Santa Claus and horn-
tooting of Americans; and Italians no longer repair to the countryside
to celebrate religious festivals.
This drift is exemplified, perhaps, by the change of foreign names to
Americanized forms. Italians have been conspicuous in resisting Ameri
can nomenclature, holding to names such as "Salvatore" and "Mauriello"
that have a musical quality in contrast to the more usual clipped Anglo-
Saxon names.
Relations between the various races and nationalities, on the whole,
have been amicable in New Jersey. There have been occasional cases of
racial clash. Riots between Italians and Negroes were common during
the Italo-Ethiopian crisis, and several years ago the civil war in China
RACIAL AND NATIONAL GROUPS 125
had its repercussions in violent strife in Newark s Chinatown. Similarly,
adherents of the present regimes in Germany and Italy have indulged in
anti-Semitic activities and have in turn been subject to boycott.
The native-born American s natural curiosity to examine foreign cus
toms at first-hand has done much toward breaking down barriers. Those
who try "real" Italian spaghetti or "genuine" Hungarian goulash, or who
attend a Polish wedding or a Greek service as a spectacle, usually come
away with a more enlightened view of the minority groups. Schools and
churches have developed extensive programs both to promote Americaniza
tion and to explain foreign backgrounds to the Americans themselves.
In the large cities economic necessity has called forth considerable co
operation among the once-isolated groups. The depression itself proved in
most cases an important uniting force. Strong prejudices weakened before
common economic distress and the need for joint action, as in hunger
demonstrations in Newark in 1932 and the march of the unemployed to
Trenton in 1936. The revelation of deplorable living conditions among
industrial workers has brought community action for better housing and
improved facilities for recreation.
>Y DEFAULT, the title of official State demon has rested for nearly
a century with the Leeds Devil, a friendly native of Atlantic County
who has traveled extensively throughout southern New Jersey. Although
the exact date of his birth is not known, there is no doubt as to his
maternal parentage. A Mrs. Leeds of Estelville, a small community near
the Great Egg Harbor River, found that she was an expectant mother.
The expectations of Mrs. Leeds were neither great nor enthusiastic, and
in a petulant moment she cried out that she hoped the stork would bring
a devil.
In due time the long-billed bird made a perfect three-point landing in
either the Leeds cabbage patch or rose garden, depending on which school
of obstetrical thought the reader accepts. The sequence of events from
this point is somewhat confused. One version is that Mrs. Leeds told the
stork to take the baby back where it came from, and a few minutes later
the accommodating bird returned with a red-faced little devil tied up in a
napkin. The other story is that the human baby promptly assumed the
form of a demon and flew out of the window. At any rate, Mrs. Leeds
was surprised and perhaps regretted her hasty wish.
The young devil is believed to have spent his adolescence in the swamp
land, beyond the reach of truant officers and child guidance clinics. Soon
after attaining his majority he started going out nights and made himself
widely known to the population of southern New Jersey.
Cloven-hoofed, long-tailed, and white; with the head of a collie dog,
the face of a horse, the body of a kangaroo, the wings of a bat, and the
disposition of a lamb that is the Leeds Devil. He has never harmed a
soul, nor violated even a local ordinance. There is every reason to believe
that his nocturnal ramblings have been actuated by a sympathetic curiosity
about the affairs of man. One report is that he is writing a thesis, A
Plutonian Critique of Some Awful Aspects of the Terrestrial Life, in
preparation for a doctor s degree from the University of Hell. The more
scientifically minded people of the State therefore consider it unfortunate
that the devil s field work has been hampered by door-slammings and cur-
126
FOLKLORE AND FOLKWAYS I2J
tain-drawings. Only old Judge French showed any kindness to the demon
scholar. Every morning for years, it is said, the judge and the devil en
gaged in lively discussions of Republican politics, while breakfasting
together on South Jersey ham and eggs.
Practically everyone in southern New Jersey knows of one or more
persons who have seen the devil, but very few will acknowledge personal
.acquaintance. Councilman E. P. Weeden of Trenton was aroused on a
cold January night in 1909 by the sound of someone s trying to enter the
door. Thinking that one of his seventh ward constituents might need help
in a domestic crisis, the councilman jumped from his bed. He was amazed
to hear the flapping of wings; and from the second-floor window, he
could see impressions of a cloven hoof deep in the snow on the roof of
the porch. On the same night the devil visited the State arsenal, leaving
his characteristic hoofprints around the chicken house but not disturbing
a fowl. Although the Negro settlement at Pitman Grove was omitted
from the devil s itinerary, report of his travels was believed responsible
for a remarkable spurt in church attendance and a decline in beer drinking
that lasted for months.
A reward of $500 for the devil s capture was once offered by J. F.
Hope, a Philadelphian. Mr. Hope said that the devil was his own, and that
it was not a devil at all but a rare Australian vampire one of the only
two ever captured. The reward has never been claimed.
There is a tradition that each reappearance of the devil is an omen of
war. It was no surprise to residents of Atlantic County when the Italo-
Ethiopian conflict broke out just a few months after William Bozarth saw
the devil in the pine country at Batsto. Another person who vouches for
;a view of the devil is Philip Smith, a Negro slaughterhouse worker in
Woodstown. Smith, whose reputation for honesty and sobriety is unim
peachable, was looking out the window just before midnight on an eve
ning in 1935 when he saw the devil walking down the sidewalk across
the street. "Looked to me something like a giant police dog, kind of high
in the back," Smith related. "He walked past the grocery store and
disappeared."
Most of the State s ghosts seem to prefer haunting one particular spot.
Seven Stars Tavern, built in 1762 near Woodstown, is headquarters for a
number of ghosts, and has been called the champion haunted house of
New Jersey. The specter of the builder has been seen digging in a nearby
field, presumably for treasure hidden during the Revolution; two sisters
named Stevens said a woman s ghost visited their bedroom; and Blue
beard, a reputedly blasphemous pirate, had his neck twisted by the devil.
128 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
There was also a band of fighting ghosts, one of whom was called
Beelzebub; and a number of apparitions whose names alone survive the
Indian, the Peeping Woman, the Horse and Rider, the Hessian, and
others.
Absecon Island, near Atlantic City, is the wellspring of a group of
semi-supernatural tales centering around Lafitte, Kidd, Teach, and other
buccaneers. During violent storms the islanders are said to have lured
ships onto the dangerous Brigantine shoals in order to plunder them.
The decoy was a lantern hanging from a pole lashed to a jackass, which
was led back and forth. To a ship in the outer waters, the light would
seem that of a vessel peacefully riding out the storm in a harbor. The
shoals completed the work. The inhabitants then put off in boats and
salvaged the cargo of the wrecked boat, taking care to murder any surviv
ing members of the crew. Being deeply religious, the islanders taught
their children to pray that a ship would run aground.
In 1717 pirates were supposed to be "fifteen hundred strong at least"
along the coast, and one ship flying the skull and crossbones off Sandy
Hook was captured by a man-o -war out of Perth Amboy. Legendary
treasure has been sought in the region, but none has ever been found.
Blackbeard, who roamed along the Delaware, is said to have buried a
treasure at the base of a black walnut tree on Wood Street, in Burlington.
The hoard was guarded by a reckless Spaniard, who let himself be shot
with a charmed bullet and was buried upright. The ghost of a large black
dog that was buried with the man is sometimes seen on the street.
A different sort of treasure is reputed to be buried in the sand pits
near Downer, Gloucester County. Presumably brought there by runaway
slaves as a fund for trips on the Underground Railroad, it will be found
only by the direct descendant of such a slave, at a time when the Negro
race is again in dire need. The treasure is guarded by a giant rabbit, who
digs new hiding places faster than a brace of steam shovels whenever the
hoard is threatened.
Many stories center around a character who actually lived, Jonas Cat-
tell scout, guide, soldier, and sportsman extraordinary. He was born
near Woodbury in 1758, and during his 91 years he became southern
New Jersey s most eminent personality. Jonas first won renown early in
the Revolution, when he lured Count Donop s Hessians into a trap at
Red Bank. For 15 years after the war he was known as an unequaled
hunter and fisherman, and for 40 years thereafter he was whipper-in for
the Gloucester County Fox-Hunting Club. Even at an advanced age he
once covered 120 miles on foot in a little more than 24 hours.
FOLKLORE AND FOLKWAYS 129
During the last decade of his life the sturgeon episode occurred, and it
has never been doubted, because Jonas had a well-founded reputation for
strict integrity. One day his line jerked so hard that it nearly pulled him
overboard. Towed by a sturgeon whose tremendous size momentarily
dazed even this intrepid sportsman, his boat dashed madly upstream.
Recovering, Jonas shortened his line and finally jumped into the water,
grappled with his catch, and succeeded in heaving it into the boat. The
fish was so large that its tail drooped over the edge. It continued to strug
gle and the gyrations of the tail, acting as a propeller, drove the boat
forward at an unprecedented speed. Jonas finally had to release the mon
ster, since by then he was far from home.
Although no one else ever saw the fish, Jonas continued to lure it with
fresh joints of meat, and the two soon became friends. One time the
sturgeon took him for another ride. As they flew upstream, Jonas saw that
they were going to strike a low bridge, over which a herd of cattle was
passing. He cut the line, but the fish went on and crashed into the
bridge, from which a cow and her calf fell into the water. The sturgeon
gorged himself on the fresh beef. Soon thereafter cattle began to dis
appear from pastures bordering on streams, but no trace of the thief was
left behind. Angry farmers set a careful watch. One finally saw the
sturgeon crawl from a stream, using his tail for propulsion, and carry off
a cow. The cattle owners, however, could never capture the marauder.
They blamed Jonas as the patron of the fish, and he was kept in poverty
the rest of his life, doling out sums from his meager pension to pay the
huge meat claims.
A fishy odor also permeates the stones told about "Stretch" Garrison,
who had a farm on the Maurice River near Delaware Bay. One day he
happened to catch a shark. He slipped the anchor rope and let the fish
tow him for a while. The creature headed up the river at such a rate that
he ripped out the oyster beds for 50 yards on each side. There wasn t
much water in the river, but the shark kept right on and dug a new chan
nel for five miles up to Stretch s landing. By that time he was too worn
out to go any farther, so Stretch tied him up, and fetched a bridle, saddle,
and spade bit. After several months he finally trained the shark to gee and
haw. Stretch made a lot of money riding the shark up and down the river
every day delivering the United States mail.
Stretch was a scientific agrarian. He had trained a couple of cows to
plow, so he didn t need any horses. At night he would milk the cows and
pour the milk into a churn. The churn was rigged up to a treadmill on
which the cows stood. Before he left the barn, Stretch would put a forkful
130 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
of alfalfa hay in the rack in front of the cows, just out of reach. The
cows stood there pawing the treadmill all night trying to reach the hay,
and next morning the milk would be churned to butter. Continuous reach
ing made the cows grow bigger every day, and this gave Stretch an idea.
He had a young rooster named Big Boy, which he started to feed off the
top of a box. Next week he put the feed on top of a sugar barrel. Big Boy
did nothing all day long but jump up and down, stretching every muscle.
After a while he got big enough and strong enough to pull a truck Stretch
had to feed him from the roof of the porch, and had to use a concrete
mixer to prepare his feed.
One day Stretch mixed up a batch of concrete, colored it green, flavored
it with corn liquor, and fed it to Big Boy. The rooster ate up every bit of
it, and when it hardened he turned to stone. Stretch gave him to the city
fathers, who put him on top of the power plant and wired him for light
and sound; he made a fine fire siren. But they finally had to take him
down, because all the roosters in the vicinity were so jealous that they
crowed at him night and day.
New Jersey, as might be expected, has several tales about mosquitoes.
The first settlers of Bergen County found the district overrun with mos
quitoes, some of which were as large as sparrows. The Indians had trained
them to inoculate game with a secret preparation that paralyzed the animal
until the hunter came within arrow range. When it was found that insects
which had been fed on white blood made better hunters, the Indians en
couraged them to bite the settlers. The settlers retaliated by killing the
chief s most valuable thoroughbred. He immediately mustered his war
riors and attacked. During the height of the conflict the Indians brought
up their mosquito fleet, and the Dutch had to sue for peace.
Another legend tells of a group of men working all night in the salt
works at the Manasquan River Inlet who were besieged by mosquitoes.
The workmen crawled under a large iron kettle. The mosquitoes im
mediately began drilling into the metal; and as each proboscis appeared
on the inside, the workmen would strike it with their hammers, riveting
it fast. Finally, when a number had been hammered to the kettle, the
mosquitoes simply flew away with it after which the rest of the swarm
made short work of the men.
The large Negro colony in Atlantic City has invented a mythical char
acter, Darby Hicks. A new arrival from the South is terrified by being told
that Hicks is looking for him with a razor and two guns. Trying to find
this person and explain matters, he is sent from one place to another and
frightened by repeated warnings. Some high-strung men have been known
FOLKLORE AND FOLKWAYS 13!
to quit their jobs, buy guns and knives, and walk the Northside for
months looking for their unknown enemy.
A compound of medieval and ancient American lore survives among
the "yarb folk" of southern New Jersey. From native herbs and plants
they have developed a pharmacopoeia of simple vegetable cures. The per
centage of coincidental success has been large enough to justify a survival
of faith in their superstitions. Some of the remedies are:
Consumption : Boil two handf uls of sorrel in a pint of whey ; strain and
drink twice a day.
Corns: Apply bruised ivy leaves, and in 15 days corns will drop off.
Measles: Place a cut onion in the room of the sick child.
Warts: Rub with a radish; or rub with half a raw potato and then
throw potato over left shoulder.
To make hair grow: Wash every night with a strong concoction of
rosemary.
The old custom of growing a balsam apple into a bottle continues in
many rural places. This was done immediately after the flowering by care
fully tying the bottle on the arbor that supported the balsam vine. When
the apple was deep orange and almost ripe, presenting a beautiful appear
ance inside the glass, the stem was cut. The bottle was then filled with
whiskey and corked airtight. The contents were used for stomach dis
orders, swellings, and muscular pains.
Weather forecasts are based upon a variety of signs, some of them re
liable and others fantastic. Rain is believed due when a cat washes its
face, when birds fly close to the ground, when there is no dew in the
morning, when many snails come out, and when fish jump from the
water. The town of Washington is a center for predicting the character
of the coming winter ; local sages prognosticate on the basis of the arrival
of katydids and the behavior of caterpillars. A long or bad winter may be
expected when squirrels store an unusual quantity of nuts, or bees gather
a large store of honey or when moss is thick on the north side of a tree.
To the fishermen of south New Jersey, the sea gull is the outstanding
symbol of good luck, and to kill one is considered equivalent to commit
ting suicide. An injured gull that alights on a ship is royally treated; when
the bird recovers it is set free, always over the starboard side.
For the most part, the customs of the agricultural areas trace back to
the eighteenth century immigration from northern Europe, while those of
the industrial cities are derived from central and southern Europeans and
Negroes.
In south New Jersey, folk customs center mainly around annual farm
132 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
events and such social functions as weddings, births, and funerals. One
practice, said to be dying out rapidly, is that of a community gathering at
hog killing time, usually beginning on New Year s Day. The fattened
hogs are thrown on their backs, stuck with a long knife, and allowed to
bleed. After they are dipped into boiling water and scraped, estimates and
wagers are made on the weight. The carcass is cut up, the lard rendered,
and scrapple and sausage ground. After a plentiful supper the rooms are
cleared, fiddles and accordion are produced, and the guests take part in a
"hoedown" consisting of square and other country dances.
Berrying picnics are also popular. Quoits, charades, baseball games, and
bathing are among the recreations for which the plentitude of huckle
berries provides an excuse. Oyster suppers are an old custom in Gloucester
County, often begetting romance and marriage. Harvest home suppers are
a standby of many rural churches throughout the State; some, served in
the open, attract more than a thousand guests, among whom invariably
will be local politicians. In many towns the volunteer fire department
holds an annual fair, the main attraction being a chance on anything from
a basket of groceries to a new automobile. Salt Water Day, still observed
annually at Keyport, had its origin more than a hundred years ago, when
farmers made a yearly holiday visit to the seashore.
Among the Easter sunrise services, the one at Lakeview Memorial Park,
Burlington County, is especially impressive. This is conducted by the
Palmyra Moravian Church from a hillside altar overlooking a lake. To
the right of the altar stands a "singing tower" of chimes, and in the rear
is an immense cross brilliantly illuminated by lights of changing colors.
At the break of dawn, chorals are sung by a group attired in white sur
plices, accompanied by an ensemble of trumpets and trombones. The his
toric liturgy, which begins around 5 a.m., is attended by thousands.
In December at Atlantic City occurs the Eisteddfod, a six-day Festival
of Song that perpetuates an ancient Welsh custom derived from the trien
nial assembly of the Welsh bards and minstrels.
Hallowe en, aside from State-wide jollification, still produces two un
usual observances in Bergen County. The Welsh make a fire, and each
member of the gathering throws into it a white stone marked with his
name. He then retires for the night and looks for his stone in the morn
ing. If he does not find it, he is marked for the grave within the year
a superstition that may survive from ancient Druid beliefs. The Irish of
the same section have a much more cheery custom. Each family prepares
for the holiday supper a dish known as "callcannon," a conglomerate of
onions, potatoes, and parsnips. Placed in the mass are a gold ring and a
FOLKLORE AND FOLKWAYS 133
key. Whoever finds in his portion the ring, signifying early marriage, or
the key, meaning departure on a journey, will be the recipient of good
luck. On Thanksgiving Day, masked and costumed children parade the
streets in Jersey City and its environs begging for pennies.
The German-American societies of northern New Jersey hold an an
nual Plattdeutsches (low-German) Volksfest in North Bergen, usually
attended by from 12,000 to 15,000 persons. The program includes old
costume dances, skits, and athletic events.
Hammonton is transformed into an Italian town every July 16. From
20,000 to 25,000 persons flock there from four States to observe the Feast
of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Beginning early in the morning, mass is
celebrated each hour. The highlight of the festival is a religious proces
sion in which statues of favorite saints are carried through the streets.
In the early development of North Bergen, an area of farms and woods
beyond the boundary of the township was known as "the Jungles." This
territory, long since surrounded, now occupies three blocks near the cen
ter of town, and here arose the annual custom of crowning a "King of
the Jungle." The first authentically recorded coronation was in 1910.
On a specified day in summer, contestants strove with each other in
wrestling and in drinking ale, the winner being enthroned on a gaily be
decked barber chair. The defeated candidate then fanned the champion s
brow with brooms as he downed two more tankards to justify his exalted
position. In recent years the wrestling has been foregone for the brew now
supplied by enterprising politicians.
PUBLIC education in New Jersey developed somewhat slowly during
the first two centuries of the State s history. The progress achieved in
converting the Colonial log schoolhouse into the post-Revolutionary acad
emy was limited by the persistent idea that only those who could pay were
entitled to an education. In the last 70 years the united resources of the
State have replaced the academy with the present free school system.
The most important single advance in education was the legislative act
of 1871 which abolished all fees for instruction in public schools. Oppor
tunities for rich and poor were thus placed on a common level. The
hickory stick and the lash gradually went the way of the one-room build
ing. Even the kindergarten system, founded by enterprising women as a
means of making a living, was taken over by the State.
Cornerstone accomplishments in building an educational program were
the creation of a State-controlled system of training teachers in normal
schools, the consolidation of small, weak rural schools into larger and
stronger units, the development of a State-wide system of high schools,
and the founding of a State college with free scholarships. Federal funds
have made possible many additions to public school buildings in the past
five years. In the broadening field of adult education Perth Amboy and
the South Orange-Maplewood union have established notable lecture and
training courses that are being imitated throughout the State.
For the school year of 1936-37, the school system had an enrollment
of 779,713 pupils, of whom 192,757 were in high schools. The complete
educational program of that year cost $103,425,026 and employed 28,256
teachers. The average annual salary of day school teachers was $1,898 a
decrease of $245 since 1931. Publicly owned school buildings numbered
2,171, besides 31 rented structures. Value of buildings, land and equip
ment was listed at $341,111,987, and the net State school debt was about
$198,000,000.
Such has been the rise of what its opponents of a century ago bitterly
opposed as "a pauper system."
Once the early Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers had successfully
ti!
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, GLASSBORO
pushed the Indians away from the coasts, they turned to providing edu
cation for their young. Ministers held services in the log cabins and then
gave religious instruction to the children. On their insistence schoolmas
ters were brought from abroad to aid them.
The early log schoolhouse was about 16 feet square. Windows cut into
the log walls were covered in winter with sheepskin or oiled paper. There
was a huge fireplace at one end, and near the windows a rough desk for
the older children, who were learning arithmetic.
Frontier education was primitive. Reading was the main course, sup
plemented at times by writing, spelling, and arithmetic. The stern Dutch
and Puritan schoolmasters excelled in discipline, literally requiring their
pupils to toe the chalk line drawn across the schoolhouse floor. Slab
benches hardened the younger children against the usual punishment for
failing to toe the mark.
In the towns, the apprenticeship system in the crafts and trades aided
the progress of education. By contract the master was bound to teach his
apprentice not only his occupation but also "to read, wryte and cypher."
This led Moses Combs, an early Newark shoe manufacturer, to found a
night school for his apprentices; later the privilege was extended to
others. In Woodbridge as early as 1691 the town schoolmaster was en-
136 NEW JERSEY: TH-E GENERAL VIEW
gaged to teach until 9 o clock on winter nights, presumably for the bene
fit of apprentices and other workers.
Although these crude schools continued well into the last century, more
advanced institutions were founded in the older settlements for those able
to pay the cost. Newark Academy was opened in 1774, and the Trenton
Academy three years later. Princeton University had been established in
1746 by the Presbyterians at Elizabeth, and Rutgers was founded as
Queen s College by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1766. A Princeton
graduate opened a grammar school at Elizabethtown in the same year and
other college men followed his example.
The first move toward a free public school system in New Jersey was
made in 1813, when friends of education tried to obtain $40,000 from the
State for a school fund. After three years effort, the fund was started
with $15,000. Four years later the legislature authorized inhabitants of
townships to raise money for education of children unable to pay fees.
The State augmented its financial support in 1828 by allocating to educa
tion taxes from banks and insurance companies. In the same year, a con
vention of welfare associations at Trenton appointed a committee to
publicize the need for better schools. Nearly 12,000 children were re
ported devoid of education and one-fifth of the voters illiterate.
Although many citizens were moved by such findings, education was
still considered a luxury. It is related that the first school principal in
Newark was named primarily to curtail what the superintendent consid
ered waste of fuel. Incidental to his duties as janitor, he was to super
vise the course of study.
Clara Barton, later founder of the American Red Cross, was a pioneer
builder of the free school system in New Jersey during the middle of the
last century. Having obtained a teacher s certificate at the age of 15 in
her native Massachusetts, she offered her services without charge for three
months to aid the free school at Bordentown, a center of opposition to
"free schools for paupers." Her faith in the system was more than justi
fied by the quick growth of the school, which had an enrollment of 600
pupils in its second year.
Spurred by organizations and individuals, the State gradually assumed
its mounting obligation. New Jersey s first high school was founded at
Newark in 1838, the third oldest in the country. In 1841 the State board
of education was given general supervision over education, and in 1855
the first State normal school was founded at Trenton. Finally, 16 years
later, the legislature passed a bill declaring all public schools free. To
education was allotted the proceeds of sales from State lands under water.
EDUCATION 137
Shortly after 1870 a rapid expansion of high schools began in the north
ern and central counties. Much of the success of the movement was due to
the influence of President James McCosh of Princeton.
Since the Civil War, higher living standards for the wage earner have
fortified higher ambition for the schooling of his children. A ceaseless
demand has produced high schools in every town of importance, while
smaller neighboring districts have combined their resources to establish
high schools or have paid for tuition in nearby towns.
Through high expenditures and well-conceived planning New Jersey
has broadened the scope of its school system beyond that of many other
States. The State s educational expense per pupil is exceeded only by Cali
fornia, Nevada, and New York. The average cost for each student in av
erage daily attendance in 1932 was $126.39, against a national average
of $81.36. The outlay fell in 193637 to $113.99, a decrease of nearly
10 percent. As a result of the State s liberal educational program, the
proportion of illiterates declined from 5.1 to 3.8 percent in the period of
1920-30.
Expansion of schoolhouses and teaching staffs has been matched by
efforts to develop courses of study suitable to the special groups arising
from an industrialized civilization. The foreign-born white population of
New Jersey is now above 840,000 or about 22 percent of the whole, and
there are more than 1,400,000 white residents of foreign or "mixed "
parentage. Americanization courses have been installed in the regular
schools for the children and adult evening classes have been established.
In the central and southern parts of the State a separate elementary
school system is maintained for Negro children. This is not a State policy,
but depends rather upon the county and community, many small munic
ipalities in which there are few Negro residents being unable to afford the
double expense of a biracial system. Negroes attend all the institutions of
higher learning in the State, with the exception of Princeton University.
Despite the State s democratic educational program, Negroes often may
not teach in their own localities after graduation from the State Teachers
Colleges. Paterson, Newark, and Jersey City are among the noteworthy
exceptions to this practice. The State maintains the Manual and Industrial
School for Colored Youth at Bordentown, where 32 teachers give more
than 400 pupils occupational education and regular academic training.
For more than half a century school attendance has been required of all
children between the ages of 7 and 16. To this law has been added a
statute forbidding the employment of children under 14 years of age and
requiring those over 14 to be certified in fundamental schooling before
138 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
they may work. Continuation schools have been provided for part-time
workers; manual training, vocational, and agricultural schools have been
created in the farming and industrial areas to meet the demand for tech
nical and scientific training. An extensive program has been designed for
backward children, defectives, and cripples, as well as for the blind, deaf
and dumb.
The State has been a leader in attempting to give individual attention
to pupils, as opposed to the mass instruction of the past. Newark and
other large cities have been particularly quick to modify the old cur
riculum, to adopt modern methods of instruction, and to experiment
boldly in an effort to prepare their pupils for contemporary living.
Much remains to be done before equality of opportunity for every child
in the State is achieved. Although at present the wealthier cities and
towns are able to enlist the most qualified educators, many communities
lack funds to provide adequate teachers, buildings, and equipment.
Most school districts employ nurses who keep close watch on the pupils
to prevent epidemics and to safeguard general health. For 25 years school
districts have been required to engage physicians as medical inspectors to
ascertain physical defects of pupils. Dental clinics are being established
in increasing numbers, and health education has been incorporated into
the curriculum by State law.
The motor bus and the consolidated school have in the last 20 years
aided in overcoming some rural handicaps. Towns have pooled resources
to build consolidated schools and to obtain better instructors and equip
ment. The State has accelerated the consolidation of the rural free schools
and the extension of high school privileges by assuming three-fourths of
the cost of transporting children to school centers. There are still, how
ever, 320 one-room schools and 255 of two rooms each, housing more
than 10,000 children.
A commission named in 1932 by Governor A. Harry Moore to survey
school conditions recommended that the State should guarantee at least
$57 annually for every child of school age. Total cost to the State to sup
plement the funds of economically weak towns was estimated at $21,-
000,000 a year. Action on an equable distribution of State aid has been
delayed by the depression.
After making deductions for State institutions and losses through fail
ure of tax collection, property value decline and litigation, officers of the
New Jersey State Teachers Association estimate that in recent years State
aid to public schools has actually totaled not more than $5,500,000. This
is 6 percent of the cost of public education in New Jersey, compared with
EDUCATION 139
89 percent provided by Delaware, 66 percent by North Carolina and 33
percent by New York.
In recent years, the school tax system has failed to provide funds
promptly, causing a reduction of teaching facilities in weaker communities.
In 1934 the State had 485 fewer teachers than in 1931 although the num
ber of pupils had increased by 18,700. Salaries were delayed, courses cur
tailed, and the average teacher s salary fell from $2,143 to $1,821. In one
city 70 percent of the elementary pupils have been on part time. Cities
were forced to close summer schools and vocational evening schools, while
rural schools, hardest hit of all, were using textbooks published before
the World War, including geographies of pre-war Europe.
Much of the difficulty has been ascribed to the system of deriving
school funds almost exclusively from property taxes. Leading educators
urge that at least 20 percent of the burden be shifted to sources less likely
to dry up at the first indication of hard times.
Critics also object to State aid on the basis of the total daily attendance
of pupils in the public schools. Under this plan, by which each county
gets back a substantial portion of the money it raises for the State school
tax, the counties and communities least able to support public schools re
ceive the least assistance from the State.
New Jersey is one of five States with a State-wide tenure of office law.
A teacher cannot be removed nor his salary decreased after three years
of consecutive service, except on charges and after a hearing. However,
teachers from some communities assert that they have signed waivers re
linquishing the right to protest such dismissal or decrease in salary. Under
a law approved in 1919, pensions are provided for in the form of an
nuities from the teachers own contributions. Payment is made after the
age of 62 or following retirement, which is compulsory at 70.
The State board of education is a bipartisan body of ten, not more than
five of whom may be members of the same political party. The board ap
proves selection of county superintendents, can withhold funds from any
local board for failure to comply with State school laws, and issues teach
ers certificates, which are valid in any part of the State. Teachers cannot
be employed without certificates, and (with the exception of foreign lan
guage instructors) they are required to be citizens of the United States.
A teacher s oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States is
required under a law passed in 1935. No test case has resulted, and there
is no record of a teacher s refusing to comply with the law.
The State conducts six normal or training schools for teachers, situated
in Trenton, Montclair, Newark, Glassboro, Paterson, and Jersey City.
140 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
These are all four-year schools with authority to confer academic degrees,
and since 1913 all six have maintained summer schools.
New Jersey has two outstanding universities, Princeton and Rutgers. A
land-grant college since 1864, Rutgers was designated the State university
of New Jersey in 1917, and receives direct State aid and funds for free
scholarships. It ranks favorably with most State universities east of the
Mississippi and has made significant scientific and governmental contribu
tions to State progress. Its College of Agriculture maintains experimental
stations throughout the State. Established in 1918 as part of the State uni
versity is the New Jersey College for Women, which has developed rap
idly into one of the most progressive women s schools in the Nation.
Princeton, along with Yale and Harvard, is traditionally one of the
country s "Big Three." It has sent forth from its beautiful Gothic build
ings many men prominent in public affairs. Princeton has recently begun
to emphasize the social sciences and has undergone a campus democratiza
tion, largely inspired by Woodrow Wilson. The university curriculum is
particularly strong in architecture, politics, mathematics, and the classics.
Also at Princeton, although not part of the university, is the Institute
for Advanced Study, a small center for experiment and research in science
and the humanities conducted by some of the world s leading scholars.
Albert Einstein is a member of this group.
Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken (opened in 1871) holds a
distinguished place among the technical and engineering schools of the
country. It was the first college in the United States to grant the degree of
mechanical engineer. It has become a tradition to give only that degree,
but the M.E. carries with it training in civil, electrical, and chemical engi
neering, as well as the economics of engineering.
Organized in 1935, the University of Newark provides higher educa
tional opportunities for those in the lower income brackets in the crowded
northern New Jersey area. It represents a consolidation of New Jersey Law
School, Dana College, Mercer Beasley Law School, Newark Institute of
Arts and Sciences, and the Seth Boyden School of Business. In four years
it has achieved an acknowledged reputation as a leading liberal university.
The South Jersey Law School at Camden, Upsala College at East Orange,
and Newark College of Engineering are other well-known institutions.
New Jersey has many private schools of long-established reputation.
Among the outstanding religious schools are the College of St. Elizabeth
at Convent Station, Drew University at Madison, Seton Hall College at
South Orange, and Centenary Collegiate Institute at Hackettstown. More
than 70 schools in the State prepare students for colleges and universities.
EDUCATION 141
Among the better known preparatory schools are the Hun School at
Princeton, Lawrenceville Academy at Lawrenceville, Bordentown Military
Institute at Bordentown, and the Peddie School at Hightstown.
A widespread parochial school system under the direction of the clergy
covers the two Roman Catholic dioceses in the State. There were 263 of
these schools in 1935, with an enrollment of nearly 116,000 pupils.
New Jersey s libraries are an important adjunct to its educational sys
tem, aided by a law permitting taxes to be levied for their establishment
in any community. There are 337 municipal libraries and n county li
braries. The Newark Library, founded in 1888, achieved an exceptionally
prominent position under the leadership of John Cotton Dana. Only four
towns of more than 2,000 population are without library service. There
are 4,000,000 books in use, and many city libraries have provided outlying
rural sections with reading matter by means of the library truck. The New
Jersey Public Library Commission was established in 1900 to encourage
and aid library service throughout the State. It has headquarters at Tren
ton, where it acts as a clearing house for book requests, aids in establish
ing new libraries, and gives advice on all questions and problems that
affect libraries in New Jersey.
Several New Jersey museums contribute a broadening influence to edu
cation. Largest and widest in its service is the Newark Museum, one of
the first of such institutions in the country to specialize in science and in
dustry. It also has important art and historical collections. Noteworthy in
the historical field are the New Jersey State Museum at Trenton, the His
torical Museum at Morristown, and the Museum of the New Jersey
Historical Society in Newark. The Montclair Art Museum s collection
consists chiefly of paintings and sculpture, and the Paterson Museum fea
tures natural science. Among the museums developed by State colleges
and universities, the most important are the Stevens Institute of Tech
nology Museum at Hoboken, largely devoted to mechanics and science,
the Museum of Historic Art and various scientific collections at Princeton
University, and the geological and agricultural museums at Rutgers Uni
versity.
y j j j j j j v y M v v V V V V V V V V V V V- V- V V V V
ion
WORSHIP in New Jersey is as various as the population itself,
ranging from the guttural chants of the Greek Orthodoxy to the
carefully accented English of the Episcopalians ; from the enthusiastic dis
order of revival meetings to the heavy dignity of urban churches; from
crossroads houses of God to massive cathedrals.
In the city areas religious interest has become mainly a matter of Sun
day observance; seemingly the church exerts a diminishing influence over
its members private lives. To attract the individual s time and support, a
number of denominations in New Jersey, as elsewhere, have developed
forums, athletics, and entertainments similar to those of civic, fraternal
and labor organizations.
In smaller communities, especially those of the rural south and the resi
dential north, the church has preserved an important measure of prestige
and control. It remains strong enough in many small towns to enforce local
Blue Laws ; ministers in certain communities may reprove publicly women
who smoke and men who drink. Frequently the churches continue to be
the principal charitable and social welfare agencies.
Historically New Jersey has a reputation for ecclesiastical tolerance and
liberalism. It was one of the four original Colonies that successfully re
sisted attempts of the Church of England to create an established church.
The several individual churches, however, achieved a local hegemony no
less stringent than that of an official church. Despite the brave statement
entered into the records of West New Jersey in 1676 that "No men, nor
number of men upon earth, hath power or authority to rule over men s
consciences in religious matters," the separate churches remained until
well after the Civil War jealous institutions that would brook no other
loyalties.
Early Dutch immigrants established in 1662 at Bergen (now Jersey City
Heights) the first duly instituted church in the Colony, the Bergen Re
formed Church of the Dutch Reformed denomination under the jurisdic
tion of the Classis of Amsterdam. This denomination, however, was ham-
142
TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEWARK
144 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
pered in its growth after 1664, when the English conquest of New Jersey
carried with it the adoption of English forms of faith.
The English settlements in New Jersey, following the fall of the Dutch,
were largely made by Puritans from New England and Long Island, who
quickly thwarted the Catholic hopes of James, Duke of York, and the Pro
prietors plans to establish the Church of England in the Colony. Con
necticut Congregationalists founded Newark in 1666 as a theocracy, where
voting privilege necessitated membership in the church. While the founda
tion for two centuries of Calvinist domination was being laid in northern
New Jersey, Baptists pushed down from Rhode Island in 1668 to establish
the first Baptist church south of that State at Middletown.
The Colony s spirited wrangles with the Crown brought disfavor upon
the proponents of the Church of England. The church was finally founded
at Perth Amboy in 1698, but was almost immediately made the scapegoat
in continued disputes with royal authority. It soon disappeared as the offi
cial church and was later re-established as the Episcopal Church.
In 1675 Quakers began to settle West New Jersey and established there
the oldest Friends colony in America. Adopting the southern plantation
way of life, the Quakers practiced the tolerance they preached. They op
posed war, argued against slavery (although their wealth depended upon
the continuance of the system), and set other Colonials an example by
keeping their treaties with the Indians.
New Jersey s tolerance did not extend to Roman Catholics. The Colony
legislated in 1700 against priests, instructing that they be "deemed in
cendiary and disturbers of the public peace and safety, enemies of the true
Christian religion, and adjudged to suffer perpetual imprisonment." Under
determined missionaries such as Father Ferdinand Farmer and Theodore
Schneider, Catholicism stubbornly grew, but as late as 1785 probably no
more than 1,000 Roman Catholics were in the State. Not until 1814 was
the State s first parish established in Trenton.
The Lutherans did not become an important group until 1732 when
church members from the Palatinate in Germany settled in the Mahwah
district of northern New Jersey, Oldwick, Long Valley and New Bruns
wick. In 1750 the northern Palatine Lutherans united their forces and
built the present stone church in Oldwick.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the Colony was geographically
divided into four religious units. The Dutch Reformed members were pre
dominant along the Hudson River; heirs of the Puritan tradition ruled
Newark and its environs; Perth Amboy and the central section harbored
the greatest mixture of creeds; and south and west, with the exceptions
RELIGION 145
of small groups of Baptists and Presbyterians, the land was controlled by
Quakers.
Among the minor sects that developed in New Jersey during the Colo
nial period were the Seventh Day Baptists and the Universalists. The for
mer sect was founded in 1707 at Piscataway by dissenters from the local
Baptist congregation. Although the sect was weakened in 1789 when the
Shrewsbury church as a body moved to Salem, West Virginia (then part
of Virginia), its national headquarters are still in Plainfield.
In 1770 the Reverend John Murray established the Universalist Church
of America. Murray, it is said, was wandering through the woods of
southern New Jersey after a shipwreck, when he came upon a lonely
church in the woods. Instructed by one Thomas Potter, who had built the
church with his own hands in order to expound the universal fatherhood
of God, Murray forthwith preached the first Universalist sermon in Amer
ica. At about the same time Moravians emigrated from Bethlehem, Penn
sylvania, to Hope, but according to historians, "by trusting too much to
the honesty of those with whom they had business, suffered in their pecu
niary affairs. In 1808 they returned to Pennsylvania."
Methodism started later than most of the other major sects. Although
George Whitefield had held evangelistic meetings in New Brunswick in
1740, there was no real impetus toward that faith until 1770 when Cap
tain Thomas Webb of the English Army set up an active group at Burling
ton. The following year a society was organized in Trenton, where in
1773 the first Methodist church was built. The most important force in
the early period of the church was Bishop Francis Asbury, who toured the
southern part of the State with remarkable success in organizing congre
gations.
The Revolution found Roman Catholics incensed by Crown persecu
tions ; Quakers, Baptists, and Presbyterians opposed to England ; while the
Episcopalians, a good proportion of the noncombatant members of the
Society of Friends, and some east New Jersey Calvinists remained loyal.
The revolutionary clergy apparently played an important part in the war,
for Royal agents reports frequently contained reference to "rascally minis
ters" and "perfidious preachers."
The constitution of 1776 was accounted a liberal document by its fram-
ers. In guaranteeing freedom of religious worship, it stated, however, that
no Protestant should be denied either civil rights or trial by jury on account
of his religion. It was not until the adoption of a new State constitution in
1844 that laws excluding Roman Catholics from public office were re
pealed.
146 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
The membership of Christian denominations increased rapidly between
the Revolution and the Civil War. Methodists inaugurated their celebrated
camp meetings which by 1820 were common affairs; these culminated in
the establishment of Ocean Grove in 1869, a religious resort where even
now on the Sabbath the gates are closed and bathing and automobile
traffic are prohibited on this day. The Episcopal and Baptist Churches en
joyed corresponding growth, and Roman Catholic membership was greatly
increased by immigration following the Irish famine of 1845.
An idealistic, Utopian spirit swept over the State in the 1830 $ and 1 840*5,
giving rise to a variety of sects and schisms. In 1837 Mormons settled at
South Toms River where they carried on evangelical efforts for a decade
and a half before joining their brethren in Utah. The liberal Hicksite
teachings shortly afterward caused a lively row among the usually peace
ful Quakers. Similarly, exceptionally fervent and frequent evangelism and
unauthorized public prayer meetings interrupted the peaceful progress of
the long-established churches.
Although Jews first settled in Monmouth County in the eighteenth cen
tury and Benjamin Levy, prominent London Jew, served as a Proprietor
of West New Jersey, it was not until the middle of the following century
that they were of sufficient number to found a temple. Sixty Jewish fami
lies in Newark organized Congregation B nai Jeshurun in 1848, the first
in the State, and the next year a congregation by the same name was
founded in Paterson. Until 1880 most Jewish immigrants were orthodox
believers from Western Europe, principally Germany. Quick to be inte
grated with modern America, they naturally formed the nucleus of the
reformed Jewish movement in this country. Orthodox Jews began to out
number the reformed in the late nineteenth century when Russian and
Polish persecution drove thousands out of European ghettos into the indus
trial regions of America and New Jersey.
European immigration after 1880 altered considerably the prevailingly
English character of the Christian church throughout the State. Roman
Catholicism expanded with the sizable increase in Italian population, and
the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church made considerable gains. The Ger
man Lutheran Church, although founded in Colonial times, was sig
nificantly enlarged by political and military refugees from Germany. Negroes
from the South after the Civil War also increased the membership of the
Baptists and Methodists.
The last major denomination to be founded in New Jersey was the
Christian Science Church, which first held informal meetings at Long
Branch in 1893. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, of Jersey City,
RELIGION 147
formed in 1896, was soon followed by others in Newark, Camden, and
Orange.
The United States Religious Census of 1926 (the latest available)
counted 101 denominations in New Jersey, of which 65 are named and
the remainder listed as "all others." In that year there were 3,497 churches
and 1,983,781 members. Church property was valued at $162,654,034.
Sunday schools numbered 3,064, with 489,651 students and 49,980 teachers.
The Roman Catholic Church has the largest membership in the State
with a total of 1,055,998. (U. S. Census of 1926.) A Papal decree of
December 1937, creating the Archdiocese of Newark to include the entire
State, attested official recognition of the size and importance of the
Catholic Church in New Jersey. Archbishop Thomas J. Walsh was placed
in charge. The Catholics principal sectarian activity is an elaborate parochial
school system augmented by Seton Hall College for men in South Orange,
St. Elizabeth s College for women at Convent Station, and Georgian Court
College, also for women, at Lakewood, as well as smaller institutions of
higher learning.
Roman Catholics have perhaps the most spectacular public demonstra
tions of faith of any group in the State. Especially notable is the produc
tion of Veronica s Veil, a Passion Play staged annually since 1914 during
Lent under the direction of Rev. Joseph N. Grieff at St. Joseph s Parish in
Union City. The cast requires 300 members. The Holy Name Society of
the Roman Catholic Church holds annual parades in all large communi
ties. In Newark as many as 50,000 march.
Protestant membership totals about 900,000. More than two-thirds of
this membership is divided among the denominations (figures from 1936
denominational reports ) :
Presbyterian 175,134
Methodist Episcopal 149,204
Protestant Episcopal 9 I >557
Baptist 62,998
Dutch Reformed Church in America 3 8 375
United Lutheran 37,458
Christian-Congregationalist 1 7,036
The Protestants do not subsidize an elaborate educational system. They
have, however, several important theological centers, notably the Presby
terian schools at Princeton and Bloomfield; the Dutch Reformed semi
nary, one of two in this country, at New Brunswick; and the Methodist
institution at Drew University, Madison. Several small schools are sup-
148 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
ported by the Episcopal Church. The Baptists support the International
Baptist Seminary in East Orange where foreign-born students are trained
and ordained as missionaries to their native countries. The scope and in
tensity of the struggle between modernist and fundamentalist in the schools
appears to have intensified the generally conservative trend of Protestantism
in the State.
The Jewish population of 225,306 is served by 188 houses of worship
(membership figures not available). Each synagogue or temple is an inde
pendent organization and its government is congregational. Divided into
Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox sects, Jews differ more upon ques
tions of custom, ceremonial and theology than upon tenets of faith. Ortho
dox Jews, the largest group, stem chiefly from Russia and Poland; while
conservatives, usually representing the second generation, come also from
Eastern Europe and from Central Europe. The reform movement is con
fined mainly to Jews of German descent, with an accretion drawn from
Jews of Middle and Eastern European origin or descent.
Both the reformed temples and the orthodox synagogues engage in con
siderable philanthropic work, much of it nonsectarian. Jewish religious
instruction centers in the reformed Sunday Schools and the orthodox and
conservative in the Talmud Torahs, schools where thousands of youths
study the Hebrew language and Jewish ceremonies and customs.
Among the Negro population (208,828) the church is the most impor
tant and the financially strongest institution. Since 1812, when the free
Negroes organized the First Baptist Church at Trenton, the number of
Negro churches has increased to 412, with a membership of 71,221 repre
senting 19 denominations. The Baptist is the largest group with 159
churches and a membership of 41,129. The group next in importance, the
Methodist, established the Mount Pisgah A. M. E. Church at Free Haven
(now Lawnside) in 1813. St. Philips Church, another historic body, was
organized at Newark in 1856. The Negro church is becoming more of a
social center, and its ministers more and more interested in social and
political affairs. The rapid influx of Negroes from the South has caused a
large increase in the number of meeting places. In urban centers this
sudden increase in membership has been largely responsible for the "store
front" churches, buildings formerly used as stores.
In addition to the larger denominations there are many religious sects
of varying strength. In the south, the Quakers, with 3,546 orthodox and
Hicksite members and 29 meeting houses, still hold a prominent position.
The Greek Orthodox Church with 9 churches and 5,424 members and the
Russian Orthodox with 12 churches and 9,783 members are strongest in
RELIGION 149
the industrial cities of Newark, Bayonne, and Passaic. The last-named city
is the scene of a struggle for control of the Russian Church between mem
bers sympathetic to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Russians
opposed to this regime.
New Jersey has been fertile territory for strange religious offshoots. The
Pillar of Fire Movement, organized in 1901 at Denver, has had its national
headquarters since 1908 at Zarephath near Bound Brook. The Pillar of
Fire doctrine is described as Methodistic in character, dedicated to "true
scientific research as against false speculation of modernism and higher
criticism destructive to orthodox Christian faith." Disciples practice their
faith with such unrestrained vigor and enthusiasm that they are known
locally as "The Holy Jumpers."
The sensational cult headed by the Negro, Father Divine, maintains a
number of "Heavens" throughout the State, principally in the metropoli
tan area. The funds for the original "Heaven" in Sayville, Long Island,
are said to have been furnished by a resident of Newark, one Pinninah,
who is now called Mother Divine. From apparently inexhaustible funds
Divine provides free banquets to the destitute, purchases blocks of real
estate, and finances his $1.50 a week lodging houses. "He s God! Peace,
it s wonderful! Thank you, Father!" is the chant of his thousands of
Negro and white followers. Sometimes frenzies in New Jersey "Heavens"
have terminated in clashes with the police.
Another unusual sect is that of Jehovah s Witnesses, scattered about the
State but strongest in the northern section. Its members object to the vac
cination of school children and condemn as idolatrous the practice of salut
ing the flag. Opposition to the flag salute has been taken to the courts as
a test of civil liberties, and the Witnesses have won their point in an ap
peal to the United States District Court.
The ramifications of "Jersey Justice" have on occasion interpreted in a
narrow fashion the religious liberties apparently granted by the State Con
stitution, which ranks high for its liberality. In the celebrated case of
Eaton v. Eaton in 1936, despite constitutional guarantees to the contrary,
the Court of Chancery denied a mother the custody of her children on the
ground that her communistic and atheistic views were contrary to public
policy of the State. The decree was upheld by the Court of Errors and
Appeals, although the latter body, in its opinion, did refer to her beliefs
as "irrelevant."
Organized religion, as such, exerts practically no State-wide political
influence, although the Catholic Church successfully opposed legislation,
for the sterilization of defectives. Affected by their neighboring metro-
150 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
politan areas, churches in the northern part of the State show a general
trend toward liberalism, while those in the southern section are more con
servative. The clergy as a whole has limited its support chiefly to the more
widely accepted labor reforms, the peace movement, and good government
drives.
Attempts to make concrete this type of liberalism have cost several New
Jersey ministers their churches. The Reverend L. Hamilton Garner, an out
spoken liberal, was forced from his Newark pastorate at the Universalist
Church in 1937 after he had sponsored a community forum in which left-
wing speakers participated. For similar reasons the Reverend Archey Bali
was obliged to leave his Methodist pulpit in Ridgewood.
Two of the best-known New Jersey clergymen have won secular and
civil prominence, respectively, as exponents of a more conservative type
of religion. The Reverend William Hiram Foulkes, pastor of Old First
Presbyterian Church of Newark, was in 1937 elected Moderator of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States. In the same year the Reverend
Lester H. Clee, pastor of Newark s Second Presbyterian Church, became
titular head of the New Jersey Republican Party after losing a close race
as its gubernatorial nominee. Clee became known first for his enormously
successful Bible classes and then, while a State legislator, as the spokes
man for the Clean Government faction from Essex County.
Interchurch cooperation has made considerable progress throughout the
State. The New Jersey Council for Religious Education, successor to the
New Jersey Sunday School Association, founded in 1858, operates as a
unifying force among Protestant denominations. New Jersey is the only
State in which the national and State units of the religious groups have
set up such a cooperative staff plan. In several communities Protestant de
nominations have accepted either the John D. Rockefeller or Federal
Council of Churches plan for union and have pooled their material, as
well as spiritual, interests.
Thanksgiving and other national holidays are occasions for joint Jewish
and Christian services; seminars and institutes on marriage, crime, and
other sociological questions usually invite a complete clerical representa
tion. In Newark and the larger cities there has been a marked advance in
cooperation between Negro and white religious organizations. The cause
of world peace, however, has accounted for the greatest measure of reli
gious unity; no peace meeting in New Jersey is complete without the
benediction of priest, rabbi, and minister. Pacificism not only has welded
the churches together but also has been the strongest force for uniting
religious and lay groups on a program of common action.
The Arts
Literature
FROM the time of Philip Freneau and Francis Hopkinson in the late
eighteenth century, New Jersey has often shared in the leadership of
American letters. In much the same manner that these Revolutionary poets
led the way to the great poetic flowering of New England, Stephen Crane
a century later influenced the modern American novel. More recently, the
Humanism of Paul Elmer More at Princeton inspired the growth of a defi
nite and influential school of American criticism. Between these peaks in
New Jersey literature lies a chain of plateaus which represents a consist
ently solid contribution to American literature.
Those who, in the pre-Revolutionary era, looked to the printed word
for inspiration and enlightenment were fed, for the most part, upon a
native diet of theological dissertations, moral tracts, and political polemics.
Against this dreary mass of what Charles Lamb termed bJblia-a-biblia, or
books that are not books, only the writings of the gentle Quaker preacher,
John Woolman (1720-72), shine out conspicuously with the glow of
creative literature.
Woolman, born at Ancocas (later Rancocas) in the province of West
Jersey, served as a tailor s apprentice in his youth and then for a time had
his own shop in Mount Holly. At the age of twenty-three he joined the
Quaker ministry, spending the rest of his life as an itinerant crusader
against the social evils of his time chiefly the evil of slavery. His Journal
embodies a remarkable picture of Colonial society. "Get the writings of
John Woolman by heart" was Lamb s counsel, and Ellery Channing spoke
of the Journal as "the sweetest and purest autobiography in the language."
The Revolutionary War produced Jonathan Odell (1737-1818), a na
tive of Newark, whose rampant Toryism caused him to be driven from
Burlington to New York in 1776. There he wrote three verse satires in
which he characterized the Revolution as "a hideous hell-broth made up of
lies and hallucinations." Prime objects of Odell s vicious attacks were two
able patriot pamphleteers: William Livingston (1723-90), a vigorous
152 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Elizabethtown Whig and the State s first Governor, and John Wither-
spoon (1723-94), president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton),
and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Witherspoon also wrote
widely on religious topics.
Although Philip Freneau (1752-1832) was a master of vitriolic political
writing and a notable influence in shaping the course of post-Revolutionary
democracy, it is as the first significant American poet that his fame en
dures. A few years after his birth in New York City, his family purchased
a summer residence known as "Mount Pleasant," near Middletown Point,
New Jersey. This became the poet s permanent home in later life, and
near it he perished in a blizzard. Notable among his poems, in addition to
some excellent patriotic verse and songs of the sea, are The Wild Honey
suckle, which has been termed "the first stammer of nature poetry in
America," and The Indian Burying Ground, the earliest treatment of an
Indian theme by an American poet.
A contemporary pamphleteering rival of the man whom George Wash
ington is said to have characterized as "that rascal Freneau," and also a
musician and poet of more than ordinary talent for his time, was Francis
Hopkinson (1737-91), who married a daughter of Colonel Joseph Bor-
den of Bordentown and after about 1773 made his home in that city.
Hopkinson s satiric masterpiece was the ballad, The Battle of the Kegs,
which described the launching of an early ancestor of the torpedo against
British ships during the Revolutionary War.
In Washington s army during its retreat across New Jersey after the dis
aster at Fort Lee in 1776 was the Englishman who has been called "the
pen of the American Revolution"; and at Newark this man began to
write the first of his Crisis pamphlets, with its famous opening sentence,
"These are the times that try men s souls." In this and a dozen or more
later issues of The Crisis, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) did a splendid
service in revivifying the flagging spirit of the Revolution. When he lived
in Bordentown, from 1781 to 1787, he was chiefly occupied with writing
on finance and economics. Paine returned there for a brief period in 1802,
momentarily forgotten in the political quarrels of a Nation which he had
helped to found.
Among the earliest of playwrights and novelists to make use of Ameri
can material, as well as the first historian of the theater and of the arts of
design in the United States, was William Dunlap (1766-1839), a native
of Perth Amboy. Here the first eleven years of his life were spent, and
here he was buried after his death in New York City. Briefer still was the
residence in his native State of a far more famous literary figure, James
THE ARTS 153
Fenimore Cooper, born at Burlington in 1789. Though his family moved
to Cooperstown, New York, soon thereafter, the novelist made use of his
native locale in The Water Witch, a tale of the New Jersey coast.
A frequent visitor who journeyed down from his home on the Hudson
River was Washington Irving (1783-1859). He began his serious literary
work in Newark during 1806-7 as a participant in roistering and baccha
nalian dinners at the Gouverneur Kemble mansion, Cockloft Hall. The
conviviality of his companions, known significantly as "The Nine Wor
thies" and "The Lads of Kilkenny," inspired the satiric Salmagundi pa
pers, the success of which set the pattern for Irving s career. He also
wrote poetry describing the Passaic River and the surrounding countryside.
As in the other arts, New Jersey s progress in literature slowed down
between 1830 and 1860. Almost the sole original spark in the mass of
indifferent writing of this period came from the Englishman, Henry Wil
liam Herbert (1807-1858). From his cottage on the Passaic River near
Newark, where he lived from 1845 until his death, he issued under the
pseudonym of "Frank Forester" a large number of stories and sketches
having to do with life and sport in the open. He also wrote several his
torical novels, less sententious and romantic than the prevailing mode.
With the Civil War a new literary leadership rose out of a profound
change in the writers point of view. The young critics, novelists and poets,
who were to influence American taste for a generation, were acutely sensi
tive to the problems of a Nation passing from agricultural infancy to in
dustrial youth. Beginning with Richard Watson Gilder s inquiry now
considered mild and culminating in the harsh portraits by Stephen Crane,
the theme of social exploration dominates the period up to 1900.
In certain respects Richard Watson Gilder (18441909) may be con
sidered the first of the moderns, typifying in breadth of artistic and literary
appreciation and in the solid virtues of conscientious citizenship two
streams of American impulse toward a more civilized life. Born in Bor-
dentown, he left the State while still a child and did not return until the
Civil War period. After some reporting experience on the Newark Daily
Advertiser, he engaged with Newton Crane in the founding of the New
ark Morning Register. In 1870 he was appointed assistant editor of Scrib-
ner s Magazine, under J. G. Holland ; and eleven years later, at the death
of Holland, the magazine became the Century and Gilder its editor in
chief.
In this position, which he held until his death, Gilder brought his creed
of citizenship to bear upon the problems of late Victorian America. He
was an early advocate of rapprochement between North and South, a stern
154 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
opponent of Tammany corruption and an active participant in an early
slum-clearance campaign in New York City. Gilder was an unfailing cham
pion of high standards and "good taste," and his editorial attitude had a
marked influence on the literary scene in America. Of his numerous vol
umes of verse, two of the best were tributes to his wife The New Day,
a series of love sonnets, and its sequel, The Celestial Passion. Though
New Jersey saw little of him after the i88o s, the State may justly claim
him as a distinguished native.
Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908) combined shrewd business
ability with considerable talent as poet and critic. His charming worldli-
ness manifested itself in his conversational powers, shown at their best in
literary gatherings at his homes in Newark, Elizabeth, and Irvington,
where he lived from 1860 to 1870. Hither came Gilder and his sister
Jeannette, a pioneer in the writing of literary news; Mary Mapes Dodge,
excited by her plans for children s literature; Richard Henry Stoddard,
at the start of his career as poet and critic ; and the translator-poet, Bayard
Taylor, who was then completing his notable translation of Goethe s
Faust. Stedman s Victorianism, on the one hand, and his grasp of sound
literary principles, on the other, greatly influenced these youthful "squires
of poesy," as they romantically styled themselves. His gift of graceful
lyricism is expressed in such poems as "Pan in Wall Street" and "Creole
Lover s Song"; his anthologies of American and British poets are compre
hensive; and with George E. Woodberry he edited the standard edition
of Edgar Allan Poe.
Through the accident of illness, a little house on Mickle Street in Cam-
den became one of those literary havens that recompense aging poets for
their early struggles. Walt Whitman (181992), after ten years in Wash
ington as a newspaper correspondent, a war hospital nurse, and a Govern
ment clerk, in 1873 suffered a paralytic stroke and retired to Camden,
where his brother lived. He spent eleven years in his brother s house in
Stevens Street, and the last eight years of his life in his own home at No.
330 Mickle Street.
During much of this time he was able to get about, going down to
Timber Creek, a stream some ten miles below Camden, and enjoying walks
and talks with intimates. Whitman s Camden period was not, however,
merely the passive twilight of a creative life. Here he wrote some of his
best prose in Specimen Days and Collect (1882-83), and prepared five
new editions of Leaves of Grass (1876-92) to three of which were added
new groups of poems Two Rivulets (1876), November Boughs (1888),
and Goodbye, My Fancy (1891). Artists, writers, and others who had felt
WALT WHITMAN S TOMB, CAMDEN
the refreshing catharsis of Whitman s work frequented the house in Mickle
Street; he was hailed by the literary elect of many foreign countries. Pos
sibly no literary man ever lived to see a greater transformation of opinion
regarding his own writings.
The Camden days marked the turning point of Whitman s career in two
other respects. Now, for the first time, his writings earned him a measure
of freedom from financial worries. An article, too, published in the West
Jersey Press in 1876 which described him as "poor . . . old . . . and
paralyzed" brought a prompt influx of gifts and money from friends and
sympathizers all over the world. Both the reading public and the critics
began to see fundamental decency in Whitman s honest naturalism. A last
attempt in 1882 by sanctimonious editors to bowdlerize Leaves of Grass
aroused a courageous and successful defense of the poet by many leading
critics and editors. The "deathbed edition" of Leaves of Grass closed
Whitman s Camden period.
Whitman s years in Camden became the theme of a vast body of writ
ing, including Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890-1891, by J. Johnson and
156 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
J. W. Wallace, Walt Whitman in Mickle Street, by Elizabeth Leavitt
Keller and With Walt Whitman in Camden, by Horace Traubel. Trau-
bel s work is one of the most scrupulous and most minute records of an
author in action since Boswell s Johnson. He (1858-1919) was a native
of Camden, editor of a journal of liberal opinion, The Conservator, which
he founded in 1890 in Philadelphia.
Stephen Crane (1871-1900), perhaps the State s outstanding native
literary figure, represents chiefly a revolt against formalism and smugness
in fiction, but his gifts are too varied and individual to be easily classified.
At the age of twenty-five he published The Red Badge of Courage, a
novel of the Civil War that attracted Nation-wide attention. Then, setting
out to learn of war at first hand, he joined a Cuban filibustering expedi
tion, and suffered experiences that were later epitomized in The Open
Boat, which H. G. Wells called the finest short story in the English
language.
Meanwhile, his reputation as a writer on war brought him commissions
as war correspondent in the Greco-Turkish and Spanish- American Wars.
The private publication of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets aroused a storm
of criticism similar to that later evoked by Dreiser s Sister Carrie. Wholly
different was the reception accorded his Whilomville Stories, an authentic
record of New Jersey village life. In his two volumes of free verse, Black
Riders and War Is Kind, Crane proved himself a master of epigrammatic
compression. The last period of his life was spent in England, where he
became the intimate friend of Joseph Conrad. He died of consumption,
and was buried at Elizabeth, New Jersey. The Stephen Crane Association
was formed to acquire his birthplace at No. 14 Mulberry Street, Newark.
Lean, tall, slow-speaking, and hollow-eyed, Stephen Crane challenged
the mores of his day with a sometimes grim, sometimes half-smiling, in
tegrity. It is his honesty of viewpoint and method, together with his
interest in the effects of environment on character, that earned for him the
title of "father of the American psychological novel," though actually his
work barely preceded that of Dreiser.
Since the Revolution, New Jersey as a theme had been neglected by its
authors. In the late seventies and eighties, however, many writers, both of
New Jersey and elsewhere, began once more to use its historic and re
gional possibilities. Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902), who lived a large
part of his life in many New Jersey towns, principally Morristown, vivi
fied in Stories of New Jersey the discovery and settlement of the State and
its part in the Barbary War and the War of 1812. He is best known for
the short story The Lady or the Tiger? and for Rudder Grange and other
THE ARTS 157
novels which experimented with folk material. While Bret Harte (1836-
1902) was in Morristown from 1873 to 1876 he wrote the rousing Revo
lutionary poem "Caldwell at Springfield," celebrating the parson who fur
nished the soldiers with Watts hymnals for gun wadding and created the
battle-cry, "Give em Watts, boys!" (see Tour 10).
The Revolution and the military exploits of General Philip Kearny at
tracted the poet, Thomas Dunn English (1819-1902), who lived in
Newark from 1878 until his death. His most popular work, however, is
the sentimental lyric, "Ben Bolt," which was blared at him so often as a
song that he wished he had never composed the verse.
The salty Swedish fishing and ocean lore of Barnegat City formed the
basis for F. Hopkinson Smith s The Tides of Barnegat. This novel, writ
ten by a Pennsylvanian, is generally regarded as a highly successful treat
ment of New Jersey folk material. Among other out-of-State writers who
dipped into the State s history and personality were Joaquin Miller, author
of a ballad on Washington s crossing of the Delaware, and Mark Twain,
whose travel notes leave something to be desired in the way of compli
ment toward New Jersey.
Mary Mapes Dodge (1838-1905) played literary fairy godmother to
thousands of American children. She began as one of the pioneers in
juvenile writing with Hans Brinker: or, The Silver Skates during her two
decades in Newark and continued as the editor of the children s periodical,
St. Nicholas. For three generations her books and magazine were as in
dispensable to a well-rounded childhood as a Fauntleroy suit or a Buster
; Brown haircut. Equally essential to the experience of youths were the hun
dreds of "seventy-five centers," especially the Rover Boys series by Ed
ward L. Stratemeyer (1862-1930) of Newark. Edith Bishop Sherman of
South Orange later expanded the juvenile field by using events in the
growth of the State for background in her stories.
Besides exercising a notable influence upon American literary standards
as editor of Harper s Magazine for fifty years, Henry Mills Alden (1836
1919) of Metuchen gave ample evidence of his own ability as a writer in
three published volumes God in His World, A Study of Death, and
j Magazine Writing and the New Literature. Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855-
96) of Nutley was also a magazine editor who achieved success in author
ship, his output comprising a quantity of graceful vers de societe, two
novels, and several volumes of short stories.
Hamilton Wright Mabie (1845-1916), who lived in Summit after
1888, wrote graceful critical essays and charming myths for children. He
was one of the earliest scholars to popularize Shakespeare.
158 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
New Jersey claims a literary naturalist and scientific archeologist of
some prominence in Charles Conrad Abbott (1843-1919). Trenton was
his birthplace, and its adjacent countryside his hunting grounds. A few
miles south of the city on the banks of the Delaware was the old Abbott
homestead, "Three Beeches," which he occupied after 1874 and until
the time of his death. His delightful essays on outdoor life found a host
of readers.
Many Princeton men have been in the vanguard of the quest for prin
ciples that would govern both critical and popular writing in the twen
tieth century. Two particularly influential essayists were Henry van Dyke
(1852-1933) and Paul Elmer More (1864-1936). Van Dyke typified
the accomplished man of letters in his roles as essayist, minor poet, short-
story writer, lecturer, and religious author. More s several volumes of
Shelburne Essays gave him rank as one of America s foremost critics, and
made him the lawgiver and spokesman of the Humanists. His insistence
upon a grounding in the classics and a classical approach to literature,
however, more deeply affected critical than creative writers.
The political influence of Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) has over
shadowed his very real contribution to literature. During his Princeton
period, first as professor and later as president, he wrote six books on
literary, historical and political subjects, including the five-volume History
of the American People. While Governor of New Jersey, Wilson wrote
the highly significant The New Freedom. This most explicit statement of his
theories of government, intended to foreshadow his own administration, be
came the bible of pre-war liberals and is yet an important source for
progressive thought; its tenets were incorporated in the platform of the
Nonpartisan League. The clarity and deliberateness of Wilson s writing
profoundly affected subsequent political literature.
The Princeton Stories of Jesse Lynch Williams (1871-1929) represent
a high- water mark in collegiate fiction. Published in 1895, they marked
the first public appearance of a talented young author who had been active
in the university s literary and dramatic life. In 1900 he returned to his
alma mater to edit for three years the Princeton Alumni Weekly. His later
works plays and stories were written chiefly in New York.
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) of New Brunswick, through his death on a
French battlefield and one short poem, Trees, achieved a posthumous
recognition seldom accorded a minor poet. His life, after he had grad
uated from Columbia University and had taught Latin for a year in a
Morristown high school, was chiefly that of a hard-working literary critic.
In 1913 he became a Catholic, a conversion that influenced his writing in
THE ARTS 159
prose and poetry and led to one important literary work, Dreams and
Images: an Anthology of Catholic Poets.
Randolph Bourne, whose life-span covered the same years as Kilmer s,
was a native of Bloomfield. In the foreword to the posthumously pub
lished Untimely Papers (1919), James Oppenheim writes of Bourne, "He
was a flaming rebel against our crippled life, as if he had taken the cue
from the long struggle with his own body." Most of these papers are
articles first published in The Seven Arts, of which Bourne was contribut
ing editor. A group including Van Wyck Brooks, also a native of New
Jersey, began publishing this journal advocating an American cultural
life transcending nationalism. Randolph Bourne, already a contributor to
other new liberal periodicals the Dial, New Republic, and Freeman
became a leader. His earlier books, The Gary Schools and Education and
Life, had shown him a disciple of John Dewey, but the collapse of liberal
pragmatism in face of the national crisis convinced him that a new and
more creative program was necessary. With courage, sensitivity, and in
telligence he opposed the growing war sentiment in America, criticizing
particularly those intellectuals "whom the crisis has crystallized into accept
ance of war." The Seven Arts suspended publication in September 1917,
the subsidy withdrawn because of the editor s anti-war position. In 1918,
the last year of his life, he began The State, fragments of which are in
cluded in Untimely Papers. This, with The History of a Literary Radical
(edited by Van Wyck Brooks, 1920), gives some indication of what
Bourne s later work might have been. Unfinished though it is, The State
seems now to many critics a prophetic indictment of the institution when
it becomes a symbol of force rather than an expression of a people s life.
The magnet of New York began to draw writers away from New Jersey
as far back as the days of Gilder and Stedman. Dorothy Parker, Alexander
Woollcott, Robert Hillyer, and Edmund Wilson are associated with New
Jersey only by the accident of birth. Conversely, others, such as Mary
Wilkins Freeman, Joseph C. Lincoln, and Honore Willsie Morrow, have
made their homes here but have continued to write of other locales.
Contemporary literature in New Jersey reflects the diverse elements of
American writing rather than any specific qualities inherent in the State.
Princeton is the nearest approach to a literary center and there the flavor
of a more sedate period lingers in the essays of George McLean Harper,
the novels and essays of Katherine Fullerton Gerould, the travel books
and biographies of James Barnes, the historical works of William Starr
Myers, and the educational writing of Christian Gauss to mention only
a few diverse authors.
160 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
New Jersey novelists did not follow the lead of F. Scott Fitzgerald,
who based This Side of Paradise on his student experiences at Princeton.
They eschewed interpreting the spirit of the "jazz age" a decade ago, as they
now for the most part avoid the problems of industrial and social con
flict. Josephine Lawrence of Newark has come closest to current issues
with a few novels that examine the domestic and business pattern of the
middle class. Before he devoted himself exclusively to writing on dogs
and travel, Albert Payson Terhune of Pompton Plains wrote several novels
with a background of pre-war liberalism.
Greater diversity of temperament and interest characterizes the present-
day poets of the State. Amelia Josephine Burr and Mrs. Dwight W. Mor
row, of Englewood, representing the older tradition in both form and
subject matter, have produced several volumes of charming and graceful
verse.
William Carlos Williams, physician and author of Rutherford, has pub
lished The Great American Novel, A Voyage to Pagany, Life Along the
Passaic River, some translations from the French, and a considerable
amount of rather distinctive poetry. In 1926 he was awarded the Dial
prize of $2,000 for services to American literature, and in 1931 he won
a prize in poetry. His verse, free in form, is generally marked by social
implications.
A liberal in politics and poetry, Louis Ginzberg of Paterson often em
bodies a touch of mysticism in his delicately constructed lyrics. The Rev
olutionary tradition of recording the State s history and development in
verse is revived in the Jersey Jingles by Leonard H. Robbins of Montclair,
as well as in the work of Joseph Folsom of Newark.
Preoccupation with the national scene has tended to blind New Jersey
writers to the regional characteristics of their own State. No one has yet
done for New Jersey what, for instance, William Faulkner has done for
Mississippi or Robert Frost for New Hampshire. Appreciation of the local
scene has been left, as a rule, to the journalists. No poet has yet written
a ballad on the Pineys or the Jackson Whites. An outstanding story of
mill life in Passaic or Paterson remains to be written, and, save for The
Tides of Barnegat, the fishermen and oystermen of the coast are material
left unused by creative writers. This virtually unexplored field requires
only the touch of skillful authors to demonstrate its value as a source of
American literature.
THE ARTS l6l
Theater
New Jersey s theatrical history is for the most part a tale told by yel
lowed programs, dog-eared newspapers, and fading recollections. As else
where, the brightest glory of the local stage is that of its yesterdays. Today
the poor professional player seldom ventures into New Jersey but follows
the way to Manhattan, and the amateur is the hope for tomorrow and
tomorrow.
No brief candle, however, has the theater been in the State. It has
flickered and glowed for more than a century and a half and still sheds a
beam that lights good deeds in the theatrical world. As the theater is al
ways dying elsewhere, so is it always dying in New Jersey. And as it never
quite dies elsewhere, so it never quite dies in New Jersey.
Death by ecclesiastical edict was almost the fate of the Colonial theater
in New Jersey. Until the post-Revolutionary relaxing of official and self-
appointed censorship, traveling English companies, vaudeville troupes,
animal acts and jugglers waged an uneven battle against the church. The
puritanical fathers injudiciously permitted church presentations of Biblical
dramatizations, which whetted the congregation s taste for the few Shake
spearean companies that appeared in the State. The first professional pro
duction on record was that of a Shakespearean play by the Hallams, an
English touring company, in Perth Amboy in 1752. The meager profes
sional theater that did exist before the Revolution was limited to the few
large towns, and was virtually in thrall to the British stage.
Apparently the Revolutionary veterans were confronted after the war
with an earlier-day "jazz age." Peace brought a feverish quest for the
types of amusement that previously had been banned. It is possible that
British soldiers contributed to the upheaval, for according to legend
Newark s earliest theatrical performance was a production of Hamlet
enacted by British officers at Gifford s Tavern.
The earliest recorded play of American origin to be produced in
Newark, and probably in New Jersey, was an untitled piece concerning a
miserly character named Gripus, written in 1792 by Captain Jabez Park-
hurst and acted by his students at the South Street School. Although more
or less permanent companies acted in Newark, Perth Amboy, Trenton, and
other cities between 1790 and 1810, plays continued to be produced only
in taverns, schools, and churches.
The career of William Dunlap (1766-1839) of Perth Amboy fore
shadowed with prophetic accuracy the future power of the major influ-
162 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
ences on the New Jersey theater, namely the church and the Manhattan
stage. Dunlap, who lived in New Jersey until 1777, was one of the ear
liest American playwrights to handle native material and the country s
first professional playwright. His best known play is The Life of Majof
Andre, one of the first uses of a native theme by a native dramatist.
The novelty and high quality of this tragedy gave Dunlap a command
ing position in the growing theatrical world. He introduced the plays of
the German Kotzebue in translation and pioneered in applying the Gothic
"terror spirit" to American subjects, which led to the development of the
conventional mystery play. He was a more skillful writer than manager,
however, and when the Puritans attacked the theater in 1805 Dunlap s
unstable company was among the first to succumb. He nevertheless con
tinued to write plays, and in 1832 he climaxed his career with A History
of the American Theater, the first documented story of the growth of the
stage in America.
The religious reaction against the "new freedom" that had helped to
ruin Dunlap gradually brought to an end the first flowering of the native
stage. From about 1820 to 1845 the wrath of the pastors and deacons vir
tually swept bare the stages of the State. In place of Shakespeare, Sheri
dan, and Lessing, Newark and other cities subsisted on wandering troupes
of minstrels, bell ringers, and circus performers.
It required the combination of the Mexican War, the religious waver
ing of the 1 840 $, and the arrival of less inhibited German and Irish
immigrants to create a theatrical Renaissance. The opening of the Concert
Hall in Newark in 1847 with The Youthful Queen, or Christine of
Sweden, ushered in the smoky, romantic Opera House period. Until
shortly after 1880 the local stage largely forsook classic British plays for
Continental European melodramas that culminated in the corrupt Ameri
can imitations known as thrillers and tear jerkers.
Despite the many towns on the New Jersey "road" between 1850 and
1870, the erection of theaters progressed slowly. Greer s Hall in New
Brunswick first resounded to the snarls of the bloodhounds in Uncle
Tom s Cabin in 1854, and in Hoboken Niblo s Garden had a respectable
stage for German and American melodramas and romances. Perth Amboy
had no theater before 1860, and road companies had to wait until 1867
before they could play Trenton s plush-and-gilt Taylor Opera House in
stead of the wooden-benched Temperance Hall.
Temperance and puritanism persisted in the face of such increasing lux
ury and freedom. The Trenton Gazette grudgingly welcomed the city s
new theater with the following: "The influence of the theater is generally
THE ARTS 163
pernicious, socially and morally. Nevertheless, we think a place of dra
matic amusement can be maintained in this community without detriment
if it can be carefully supervised." The bluenoses were not only vigilant
about the "new drama" but also powerful enough to make performances
of Pilgrim s Progress and The Curse of Intemperance as frequent as those
of the thrillers After Dark and The Streets of New York.
The emotionalism of the puritanical propaganda plays overflowed into
the romances and contributed to their debasement into cheap and senti
mental or hair-raising melodramas. Such plays as Under the Gaslight,
East Lynne, and In the Nick of Time formed the repertory of the stock
companies that developed after the Civil War and brought the theater to
previously ignored places such as Bordentown, Paterson, Elizabeth, and
Orange.
Occasionally in Newark, where the stock company tradition dated back
to the less swashbuckling days of 1847, a troupe rose successfully to the
requirements of Shakespeare, Otway, or Boucicault. Mrs. Emma Waller
played so great a Lady Macbeth and Lady Teazle there in 1867 that she
quickly became a New York and national sensation. While not usually
productive of such players as these, the local stock companies were at
least responsible for the building of theaters that afterward housed greater
actors.
The first shower of stars burst upon the State s playhouses in the mid
i88o s. Booth and Barrett in Shakespeare, Joseph Jefferson in Rip Van
Winkle, and the Salvinis in Greek tragedy all played Newark, Trenton,
Hoboken, and other towns later scorned by touring companies. This
galaxy simultaneously dignified the one-night stand and broke the cold
grip of social disapproval of the theater. After mayor, minister, and
banker had received Edwin Booth as an artist, it was a little more difficult
on general principles to run Mrs. Jar ley and her "celebrated galvanic,
man-unmotive, non-suspension wax works" out of New Brunswick as a
menace to public decency.
Actors of smaller stature followed in the wake of these great names of
the American theater. Annually eight horses galloped down the main
streets of Bordentown and Burlington to announce the arrival of Uncle
Tom s Cabin; pictures of chorus ladies in tights revealed that the boyhood
musical delight, The Black Crook, had come back to Perth Amboy; and
posters flamed from every wall in Paterson to rekindle the town s interest
in The Still Alarm.
As serious American playwrights gradually developed, more and more
troupes turned after 1890 to the work of Augustus Thomas, Charles
164 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Klein, Clyde Fitch, and William Gillette for respite from the earlier
blood-curdling histrionics. Companies in New Brunswick, Morristown,
Newark, Passaic, and Trenton used their new problem plays to train actors
for the greater stock companies in New York.
A new group of American stars accompanied the maturing of the
American drama. Minnie Maddern Fiske, Maude Adams, Otis Skinner,
and Walker Whiteside gave Newark and other large towns their first real
opportunity to see excellent native actors in native plays. To these greatest
days of the road, the State contributed Robert B. Mantell (1854-1928)
of Atlantic Highlands, one of the hardiest and most traveled Shake-
speareans of the century. For more than 50 years Mantell not only played
the large stands but also carried Shakespeare to high schools, churches,
and other groups unable to afford Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Often
he was the only important actor playing the classics outside New York.
While the road still lived New Jersey became a genuinely important
factor in the American theater as a try-out center. The gay resort life of
Atlantic City seemed to Belasco, Frohman, and Brady an ideal setting for
testing shows prior to Broadway first nights. After Ziegfeld had suc
ceeded there with the world premiere of his first Follies in 1907, Atlantic
City built three theaters to appease the squabbling Broadway managers.
Shortly afterward, Newark joined the "subway circuit," giving New
Jersey many more genuine "first nights" than those enjoyed across the
Hudson. Producers later booked Asbury Park and Long Branch for sum
mer openings.
In those days of rich theatrical glory there was born in New Jersey the
modern struggle between stage and screen. The Fort Lee bluffs anticipated
Hollywood by raiding Broadway for its stars and thus became the first
motion picture production center in the world. Between 1907 and 1916,
21 companies and 7 studios here laid the foundation for the present-day
cinema industry. Primitive in method and naive in conception, the Fort
Lee producers nevertheless developed Mary Pickford, John Bunny, and
Broncho Billy Anderson, as well as the comedies of "Fatty" Arbuckle and
Mabel Normand, the adventures of Pearl White and the romances of
Theda Bara and Clara Kimball Young.
Oblivious to the motion picture threat, the stage soon yielded to the
pressure of a more immediate foe. Once again the roll of war shaped the
course of the theater in New Jersey; the road began to crumble, stock
companies disintegrated, and the upstart "flickers" invaded the old opera
houses. The muster of men, however, contained the seeds of birth as well
as those of death for the theater. Although amateur or little theaters had
THE ARTS 165
been in sporadic operation in the State since before 1900, they first became
important when they furnished the cluster of New Jersey training camps
with entertainment and diversion. After the war, little theaters became
as necessary to the well-bred community as plans for a soldiers and sailors
monument. At the same time, under the leadership of Jesse Lynch Wil
liams Theatre Intlme at Princeton, the State s colleges elevated the thea
ter from a career to a profession by instituting extensive dramatic training
courses and workshops. Even before this development in the college, the
Thalians of Barringer High School in Newark had offered musical and
dramatic productions of such unusual finish that between 1912 and 1918
they were recognized as one of the Nation s outstanding little theater
groups.
By the time the old opera houses had been wired for sound pictures,
the growth of little theaters in New Jersey was recognized as the virtual
savior of "live entertainment." Moreover, the movement converted the
emphasis on theater from the passive playgoing of thousands to the active
contact of hundreds with dramatic production and its problems. In the
last decade the groups have continued to increase so that their aggregate
audiences challenge the size of those of the professional theater.
There are now approximately 100 amateur and little theater groups in
the State. Their presentations range in interest and taste from the smart
drawing room comedies of the Montclair Dramatic Club and the Green
Door Players of Madison to Bury the Dead and other plays of social pro
test presented by the Newark Collective Theater. Many of the more im
portant groups (such as the Chatham Community Players, the Monmouth
Players of Deal, the Group Players at Trenton, and the Playhouse Asso
ciation of Summit) specialize in recent Broadway successes. The university
! theaters, notable the New Jersey College for Women Theater Workshop
and the Stevens Theater of the Stevens Institute of Technology, have led
i the way in experimenting with less well known plays and unorthodox
stage techniques. At Millburn the Paper Mill Playhouse promises to de
velop into an art center with proved theatrical productions as its nucleus.
A particularly valuable offshoot of the little theater movement is the New
Jersey Junior League Children s Theater, which presents juvenile produc
tions in Newark, Elizabeth, Orange, Englewood, and Plainfield.
While this new theater was spreading over the State, the old theater
suddenly staged a spectacular last stand in Hoboken. There in the winter
of 1928-29 Christopher Morley and Cleon Throckmorton added a chap
ter to American theatrical history by reviving the thriller of the i86o s,
After Dark, and the musical comedy, The Black Crook. The novelty of
166 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
these productions to a new generation and the lure of Hoboken s cele
brated beer came near to overshadowing the New York stage for the en
tire season. The beer continued to run the following year but not the
plays. Theatrically, however, the work of Morley and Throckmorton cre
ated a fresh interest in mid- Victorian entertainment.
Theatergoing in New Jersey today is chiefly a matter of buying two sets
of tickets one for the play, and one for the train to New York. The
"road" has been reduced to Newark, Atlantic City, and occasional events
in Montclair, Trenton, and Princeton. In recent years the New England
practice of converting barns into summer playhouses has penetrated into
New Jersey mountain and shore resorts, with particular success in Maple-
wood and Deal. Because of their inherent impermanence, however, these
ventures cannot be expected to "save the theater" in New Jersey.
That never-ending task first assumed by the little theaters has recently
been undertaken by the Federal Theater Project of the Works Progress
Administration. During 1936, 1937, and 1938 the project has presented
its varied repertoire of more than a dozen plays to thousands, many of
whom were seeing their first professional performance. As the amateur
groups continue to convert playgoers into participants, the Federal Theater
widens the potential theatrical audience. Individually realizing a greater
measure of dramatic appreciation for the State, jointly they seek to lay a
new foundation for the rehabilitation of the professional theater.
Music
The story of music in New Jersey is primarily a story of the growth of
public interest and appreciation. The musical habits of the population
have progressed from the community psalm singing of Colonial times,
through bleak periods of Victorian disapproval and disinterest, to the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century movements for widespread enjoyment
and participation. To this growth the men of music themselves com
posers, interpreters, and critics have contributed in an unusually high
degree.
The number of important New Jersey musicians has perhaps been lim
ited by the historic location of the great conservatories and concert halls
in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The State s proximity to these
centers has, however, provided an exceptional opportunity for hearing
fine music. Similarly, New Jersey has attracted from the nearby music
capitals many of the Nation s inspired and farsighted musical educators.
Lowell Mason, Dudley Buck, and William Batchelder Bradbury estab-
THE ARTS 167
lished a lasting New Jersey tradition of leadership in the popularization
of music. The State s geographical advantage may also partially explain
its having many influential musical historians and critics. Their work ex
tends from the incidental comments of William Dunlap and the singing
texts of James Lyon before 1800 to the monumental critical histories by
Oscar G. Sonneck and John Tasker Howard.
Music in New Jersey almost literally began between the leaves of the
Colonists prayer books. And for a century and a half there it remained.
Gradually psalm singing expanded into oratorios and concerts of sacred
music. Chinks in the religious armor were timidly filled by itinerant mu
sical companies who volunteered, to the displeasure of the church, ballad
operas and "variety entertainments" in noisy taverns. No such opposition
inhibited the growth in aristocratic homes of spinet concerts and vocal
performances accompanied by the flute, which later developed into so
ciety choral groups. Despite this inroad as well as the use of gay tradi
tional music for dances, the direction of music in New Jersey up to the
Revolution was almost unswervingly celestial.
From the unsorted mass of Colonial folk tunes, ballads, and instru
mental imitations of European music emerged two New Jersey claimants
to the title of "first American composer." Characteristic of their own
period, Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791) and James Lyon (1735-1794)
wrote occasional and patriotic music. Neither was an innovator or a na
tional influence.
The year 1759 was the annus mirabilis specifically of New Jersey music,
generally of American music. For in that year Lyon composed an ode for
his commencement at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) and Hop
kinson copied his own song, "My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free,"
into a notebook containing his favorite songs. Unable to discover the
exact date of Hopkinson s composition, musical historians have differed
on the question of his priority over Lyon as the composer of the first
American song.
Hopkinson, who lived in Bordentown from 1773 until his death, was
a musical amateur, especially able on the harpsichord and therefore in
terested in chamber music. In November 1788 he published Seven Songs
-for Harpsichord or Forte-Piano, said to be the first book of music pub
lished by an American composer. The songs, which were dedicated to
George Washington, show a strong English influence. While appealing in
their freshness they are important mainly as an indication of contemporary
taste. Hopkinson also wrote the score for The Temple of Minerva, an
allegorical-political masque or opera, privately presented in 1781.
168 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Virtually unmentioned by musical historians until the twentieth cen
tury, Lyon was first in a long line of influential New Jersey music teachers.
Six of this Newark minister s songs appeared in the collection of hymns
and songs known as Urania, published in 1761. Among them was his
adaptation of White field s Tune, the first record of a native treatment of
the tune which was to be used for America. In 1792 Lyon published
Directions -for Singing, Keys in Music and Rules of Transposition, one
of the earliest American musical texts. His work as a teacher carried him
as far north as Massachusetts.
The book for The Archers, the first commercially produced American
opera, was written in 1796 by William Dunlap of Perth Amboy. Dunlap
later sandwiched cursory musical criticism into his art and literary his
tories.
The earliest recorded concert in the State was in 1799, when permis
sion had to be obtained from the local magistrate in Newark. Singing so
cieties, recreational rather than commercial ventures, formed the backbone
of musical enterprise until about 1850. There were half a dozen choral
clubs in Newark by 1840, and others were scattered throughout the State.
They sang the works of Handel, Bach, and Mozart, which also were the
most popular program pieces for the few instrumental groups.
Such organizations aroused a lasting interest in music in the upper
levels of society and created fertile ground for the mid-century drive for
popular musical education. It was fortunate for New Jersey that in 1853
Lowell Mason (1792-1872), the dynamo of the movement to make music
a part of the public school curriculum, chose to live in Orange. Fresh
from his successful preachment of music for the masses in New England,
Mason continued his educational work in New Jersey by lectures and
concerts, and by training large choral groups. He was largely responsible
not only for the spread of musical participation but also for the con
tinuance of the religious influence. Known as "the father of American
church music," Mason returned to the earliest New England traditions
and composed many hymns that set the pattern for the stately hymnology
of the American Protestant Church. Among his better-known works are
"Nearer My God to Thee" and "From Greenland s Icy Mountains." In
1855 New York University awarded him the first honorary degree of
doctor of music in America.
While Mason was broadening the audience for music, William Batch-
elder Bradbury (1816-1868) plunged into the equally necessary task
of training music teachers. He organized the first convention of music
teachers in Somerville in 1851, and later, as a resident of Bloomfield, he
THE ARTS 169
became an important adjunct to Mason s Nation-wide work. Also a force
in the Sunday School music movement, Bradbury edited many song col
lections, among which The Golden Cham sold 2,000,000 copies.
Contemporaneous with the growth of American singing clubs and
school music was the rise of the German singing societies. The Concordia,
Germania, and Schwabischer Sangerbund added a gay and lusty note to
the rather formal and still churchified American singing. These groups,
fed by large waves of immigration, became the workingman s chief con
tact with music in Newark, Trenton, Hoboken, Bayonne and Jersey City.
National Sangerfeste attracted thousands of participants to northern New
Jersey, long recognized as the American center for German music. Bands
and small orchestras quickly followed the vocal groups and in 1855 a
touring opera company played Weber s Der Freischutz in Newark. In
the same year was founded the Newark Harmonic Society, the city s most
famous singing group.
When this society was directed in 1865 by Leopold Damrosch, perhaps
the greatest conductor of his day, and when five years later he selected a
large number of singers from Newark and Jersey City for the first of his
May Music Festivals, New Jersey music achieved maturity and national
significance. Although Damrosch and Theodore Thomas later brought
their symphony orchestras to the large cities, they did not inspire the de
velopment of instrumental groups comparable to the singing societies.
The impulse to popularize music gained new strength after the Civil
War. George James Webb (1803-1887), who lived in Orange from
1871 until his death, used Mason s technique with large choral groups,
particularly children, but concentrated on secular music. He introduced
many patriotic and folk songs into the societies repertoire and deliberately
minimized the use of hymns and anthems. Nevertheless, Webb is remem
bered chiefly for his hymn, Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.
Dudley Buck (1839-1909) of West Orange attempted to do for in
strumental music what Mason and his successors had accomplished for
choral work. A celebrated organist and choral harmonist himself, he chose
the lecture-recital as his medium of expression and later devoted himself
to teaching. Buck was more than a popularizer, for his symphonic cantatas,
The Golden Legend and The Light of Asia, are viewed as landmarks in
the post-Civil War liberation of American music from the dominance of
European models and influence.
New Jersey s contribution to this musical declaration of independence
was enhanced by the work of Samuel A. Ward (1847-1903) of Newark
and William Wallace Gilchrist (1846-1916) of Jersey City. Ward, a
170 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
founder of the famous Orpheus Club of Newark, wrote the music for
America, the Beautiful, recognized as the most esthetically satisfactory of
American patriotic songs. Gilchrist, who was blessed with an almost un
natural gift for winning musical prizes, wrote symphonies that have been
described as "facile, yet touched with originality."
While the German singing societies were yet in their heyday (1880
90) and native groups were in the ascendance in New Brunswick, Tren
ton and Perth Amboy, the arrival of other nationalities from Europe en
riched the musical life of the State. Verdi and Rossini began to be heard
in the gay Italian taverns of Newark and Paterson; more somber Slavic
tones issued from the native instruments brought to Perth Amboy and
Bayonne from Poland and Russia; and in many cities there mingled with
the precise Protestant hymnology the majestic simplicity of Catholic music
and the plaintive chants from Hebrew synagogues.
The twentieth century development of the phonograph and the radio
has thus far retarded the desire and lessened the necessity for personal
participation in music. The instruction of Mason, Buck, and Bradbury,
which laid the foundation for intelligent listening, survived mainly in the
schools of the State. The mechanization of music did, however, stimulate
popular interest in the great artists who began to appear in New Jersey
on concert tours. Newark led the way in 1912, under the leadership of
C. Mortimer Fiske and Louis Arthur Russell, with a music festival featur
ing Metropolitan Opera stars. While choral groups declined, long years
of piano, violin, and vocal instruction pressed upon reluctant children be
gan to flower into small orchestras, string quartets, and amateur opera
companies.
Pierre Key s Music Year Book for 1938 lists 59 private organizations
actively devoted to the promotion and enjoyment of music in New Jersey.
Among these are 15 orchestras, 12 music schools, 23 choral societies, and 2
opera companies. Musical and community organizations in the larger cities
and wealthy suburbs regularly sponsor subscription concert series for half
a dozen important musical events.
Among the more prominent vocal groups are the Bach Society of New
Jersey, which annually in May presents Bach s B Minor Mass in Newark,
the Essex County Opera Association, the Montclair Operetta Club, and the
Opera Club of the Oranges. The Essex County Symphony Society annu
ally holds a music festival in Newark, presenting leading singers and
instrumentalists. The closest approach to a State-manned symphony orches
tra is the New Jersey Orchestra, drawn principally from the Oranges,
Montclair and Millburn. In December 1937 the Griffith Music Foundation
THE ARTS iyi
was established by the Griffith Piano Company of Newark to coordinate
and augment the existing musical activities of the State.
The activities of several educational institutions have enriched musical
life in the central part of New Jersey. The Princeton University depart
ment of music, under the direction of Roy Dickinson Welch, has lately
been enlarged and strengthened, notably by the addition of the well
known composer-teacher, Roger Sessions. Rutgers instruction and con
certs comprise a major portion of musical affairs in New Brunswick. The
Westminster Choir School at Princeton, where the noted composer, Roy
Harris, is a member of the staff, has achieved national recognition for the
excellence of its training, and the Princeton Theological Seminary is rec
ognized as an innovator in ecclesiastical music. To the south, both Camden
and Atlantic City support local groups and concert series.
In recent years the work of the Federal Government and of the State s
churches has increased the scope of musical appreciation. By January
1939 the 27 orchestras and bands of the Federal Music Project of the
Works Progress Administration had given 17,742 concerts to 10,884,690
people. Church music ranges from hymn singing in small towns to the
production of Bach masses and Handel oratorios in urban centers. Partic
ularly noteworthy in this field has been the revival of impressive perform
ances of Gregorian chants under the auspices of the Roman Catholic
Diocesan Institute of Sacred Music in Newark.
The Federal Government has also contributed to the discovery and
codification of a considerable body of New Jersey folk songs. Herbert
Halpert of the Federal Theater Project has recorded more than 500 songs,
including indigenous American songs, sea chanties, children s game songs,
fiddle tunes and a large number of ballads of British origin. He has con
centrated on the songs of the Pineys, swamp dwellers of southern New
Jersey. In the character of these recordings, Halpert believes he has evi
dence for the theory that southern New Jersey is the meeting place of the
northern and southern American folk song tradition.
Never rich in composers since the Federal period, New Jersey today has
a small number representing current differences in style and approach.
Dean of the group is Henry Holden Huss (1862- ) of Newark, re
nowned as teacher and pianist, composer of several concertos in the con
servative romantic moid. George Antheil (1900- ), who was born in
Trenton, has been called the enfant terrible of modern American music.
Although his Ballet Mecanique shows a vigorous and original talent, he
has yet to surmount a reputation for the merely spectacular. Midway be
tween these extremes are Philip James (1890- ), a native of Jersey City,
172 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
composer of several overtures; and Harriet Ware of Plainfield, whose
songs, cantatas, and piano pieces have made her one of the Nation s lead
ing women composers.
Other well known New Jersey musicians include Ernest Schelling
(1876 ), born in Belvidere, who holds high rank as both a com
poser and conductor, particularly of music for children; Paul Ambrose
(1868 ), organist and composer, of Trenton; Mark Andrews of Mont-
clair, a talented and original director of choral groups throughout the
State; and Jerome Kern (1885- ) of Newark, whose gift for melodious
composition, displayed in Show Boat and other popular operettas, sug
gests him as a latter-day Victor Herbert.
Among the State s prominent singers are Richard Crooks, Metropolitan
Opera tenor, who was born in Trenton and now lives in Sea Girt, and
Paul Robeson (1898 ), the noted Negro concert singer and actor, a
native of Princeton, who attended Rutgers College. Crooks made his pro
fessional debut at Asbury Park in 1910 with the late Mme. Ernestine
Schumann-Heink.
When American music began to merit detailed record and interpreta
tion, three New Jerseymen assumed the major share of that task. William
J. Henderson (1855-1937), born in Newark and educated at Princeton,
belonged to the notable group of musical critics in New York whose taste
influenced music from Boston to San Francisco. In addition to his work
on the New York Sun, he wrote a large number of books that popularized
concert and operatic music. Perhaps the greatest of American music
scholars was Oscar G. Sonneck (1873-1928) of Jersey City, whose most
valuable work was his studies in early American musical history. He was
later chief of the music division of the Library of Congress and also
pioneered in the study of American Indian music. Yielding little to Son-
neck in scholarship, John Tasker Howard (1890- ) of Glen Ridge
wrote Our American Music in 1930, the first full-length history of native
music, with unusual consideration for the general reader. Howard s work,
more essentially American in its critical attitude than Sonneck s, is un
questionably a vital chapter in the unassembled volume of American cul
tural history.
Architecture
New Jersey has produced two local styles of domestic architecture. First
was the low sandstone Dutch Colonial house, a style developed in the
Hackensack Valley, where it flourished until about 1800. During the
I i&g
THE DEMAREST HOUSE, RIVER EDGE
same period, the brick and glass industries in the southern part of the
State produced a second indigenous type of building best termed Swedish
Colonial. Throughout the nineteenth century the State was affected by a
succession of European influences, and it was not until the 1890 $ that
New Jersey again began to work out architectural problems in terms of its
own requirements. The result has been a new and refreshing approach in
design, evident in suburban planning arid resort development, but of late
more particularly in industrial buildings.
Paradoxically, the Dutch style did not begin to develop in the north
until after the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664. Introduction
of slave labor in that year made the quarrying of brown sandstone prac
ticable and was responsible for its use in the walls of the earlier home
steads. Cut from shallow quarries, it was laid in beds of clay mortar taken
from the surrounding fields and mixed with straw, which became hard
and weathertight when dry ; when pointing-up was necessary in later years,
it was done with lime mortar, leaving conspicuous white joints. Sometimes
the builders used finished cut stone only on the front facade and for the
corner quoins, filling in the remainder of the walls with coursed rubble,
as in the Demarest house at River Edge, but generally the stonework
was cut in regular coursed bond (as in bricklaying).
174 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
The predominant characteristics of the Dutch Colonial style are a long
sweeping roof line, with deep overhanging eaves at front and rear, and
close-cropped gable ends. Small houses were given a pitched roof; larger
ones a gambrel roof with the upper pitch much shortened and flattened
and the lower one lengthened and curved. In the later period the over
hang was sometimes extended and developed into a porch at front and
rear. The wall faces of the gable ends were shingled or covered with sid
ing for protection. Often the bargeboard along the raked roof line was
carved with ornament.
These houses nearly always faced south regardless of the direction of
the highway, so that the eaves afforded day-long shade from the summer
sun. As families outgrew their homes it was customary to add a wing
larger than the original building. Thus the original structure of the Vree-
land house (1818) in Leonia became the kitchen wing of a new and
more pretentious dwelling. Frequently a second wing was added at the
opposite end, forming a symmetrical composition, as in the Ackerman
and Hopper houses on Polifly Road, Hackensack.
The charm and beauty of these houses have been enhanced by time, and
the deep overhang of the eaves gives them an air of comfort and domestic
security that is not often equaled in other types of American Colonial
building.
Although the influence of the Swedes on the Dutch diminished after
1655, the architecture of the southern region of the State may be re
ferred to as "Swedish." The predominant local building material was clay
suitable for brick. The development of the glass industry, along with that
of brick, resulted in the production of a glazed brick characteristic of the
houses of West Jersey, and to this day a heritage in State industry. By
1700 William Bradway had built a house, still standing at Stowe Creek,
in which a pattern of two-colored glazed brick was used, and by 1725
this practice had become quite common locally. Occasionally red and
white bricks were used, but usually the body of the wall was red, bearing
geometric patterns in dull blue. Often the owner s initials and the date of
erection were worked into the gables in large letters and figures. This
peculiarity appears to have culminated locally in 1754 with the ornate
gable designs of the Dickinson house at Alloway.
These early brick houses are tall, narrow and rather urban in character.
Dutch influence on the architecture of the Swedes first appeared in a small
one-story house with gambrel roof, such as the William Penn house
(1685) in Burlington. It became usual, however, to add a second story,
leaving the projecting eaves along front and rear; this produced the
THE ARTS 175
"pent eaves" that became a fixed characteristic of the so-called Swedish
style. Outstanding examples are the William Hancock house (1734) at
Lower Alloways Creek and the Oakford house (1736) at Alloway.
The settlers of Salem, familiar with the English Renaissance style, in
troduced this tradition in the southern part of the State as early as 1675,
and throughout the eighteenth century the tall narrow Dutch-Swedish
houses tended to grow more nearly square. In 1804 the Morgan house
was built in Pilesgrove, a fine example of Post Colonial brickwork. The
Jacob Fox house in Washington (1813) continued the development still
further, but its tallness recalls an earlier tendency. The William Johnson
house at Lower Penns Neck (1815) marks the complete domination of
the Georgian Colonial over the Dutch-Swedish style. One of the few sur
viving public buildings of this period is the Burlington County Court
house in Mount Holly. Built in 1797 and 1808, the main courthouse is
flanked by small one-story offices in separate buildings.
The influence of the English Renaissance appeared first at Elizabeth in
1664 with the arrival there of English settlers from Long Island and the
mother country. They likewise applied the sturdy traditions of English
building and the early forms of Georgian Renaissance to their local mate
rials. By 1700 the development had been carried as far west as Morris-
town and it dominated the section until after the beginning of the nine
teenth century. In homes, public buildings, and churches it produced
forms which differed little from those of New England.
Queen s Building at Rutgers University (1825), designed by John Mc-
Comb, architect of the New York City Hall, is striking by contrast for its
austere simplicity and lack of French influence. Deep-set shuttered win-
dows are spaced evenly across the smooth sandstone wall surfaces, and the
slight break in the facade, which marks the central motif, is crowned with
a low pitched eave pediment. The center of the roof is marked by a square
Georgian lantern.
The old ecclesiastical architecture of New Jersey varied considerably
with the character and background of the communities. The settlers from
the north, although thoroughly imbued with the Georgian tradition, were
seldom satisfied with that style for their churches after 1800. Although
they erected fine churches in the Georgian manner, such as the First Pres
byterian Church (1787) in Newark, they often succumbed to adorning
them later with Gothic details. The Gothic windows of Old Trinity in
Newark were substituted for Norman windows in 1809; and lancet win
dows were introduced about 1830 in St. James Church at Piscataway, a
charming Colonial structure. Less pretentious Colonial churches are the
ij6 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Presbyterian Church (1790) in Springfield, and Old Tennent Church
(1751) near Freehold, both of frame construction. Not far removed from
the feeling of Quaker meeting houses, their design is noteworthy for small
fenestration and for the carved detail of cornices and doorways.
The Friends who settled widely throughout New Jersey developed a
definite and rigid form of architecture, constructing their meeting houses
with an eye to substantiality, economy and simplicity. Though the meet
ing houses vary in size, they have maintained a definite form for two cen
turies: generally plain rectangular brick structures, two stories high, with
solid shutters on the first floor and louvered shutters on the second, two
entrances on the front with a small porch, covered or uncovered. They
are almost invariably set in a clearing behind sycamore trees. Good exam
ples are the Chesterfield Friends Meeting House (1773) at Crosswicks
and the one in Burlington (1764).
The State contains many examples of the Greek Revival style that be
gan in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century, and which at
tained national popularity under the leadership of Benjamin Latrobe,
William Strickland, Robert Mills, and others. Architects copied ancient
Greek details as closely as possible, and in numerous buildings sought to
reproduce the lines of Greek temples. This severe style appears in several
houses in Flemington, notably the Redding mansion, but its use was lim
ited mostly to courthouses and churches. The Sussex County Courthouse
(1847) in Newton and the Presbyterian Church (1851) in Pluckemin
are typical examples.
From about 1850 to 1900 New Jersey suffered the ills of Victorian bad
taste. The State has its share of fretwork, spindles, checkerboard panels
and the mansard roofs of the period. Many a fine old house was ruined to
conform with the taste of the time. Ringwood Manor, an old Colonial es
tate, was so changed and enlarged that all traces of the original design
have been removed.
During this period the Victorian Gothic style developed. As in other
States, architects of the so-called practical school began reproducing early
English Gothic structures with questionable success and complete inaccu
racy. Much of their work, the style of which has unfortunately set a prece
dent for church architecture, remains in the cities. Of brick or brown
sandstone, or a combination of both, these buildings are gloomy reminders
of an uninspired period. St. John s Episcopal Church in Elizabeth is a sur
vival of this work.
Toward the end of the century the influence of H. H. Richardson and
Louis Sullivan had sadly degenerated. Their followers indulged in bizarre
WROUGHT IRON BALCONY ON COLONIAL APARTMENTS, BORDENTOWN
reproductions of modified Romanesque and Byzantine types, whose bold
mass and intricate detail appealed to the prosperous builders of the early
twentieth century. For nearly a generation this heavy manner character
ized residences, banks, churches, and other public buildings. Notable ex
amples are the Peddie Memorial Baptist Church and the Prudential In
surance Company buildings in Newark, and W. A. Potter s Alexander Hall
in Princeton.
"Collegiate Gothic" appeared in New Jersey in the buildings of Prince
ton University during the first decade of the twentieth century. Based
upon the design of the university buildings at Cambridge and Oxford,
the style is a modification of English Tudor. The use of local fieldstone
with limestone trim instead of the usual combination of brick and stone
of England gives the walls a very beautiful texture. The Commons at
Princeton (Day and Klauder, architects) with traceried fenestration and
delicate Tudor-Gothic finials and ornament is an excellent example of the
style.
School architecture throughout the State is highly specialized. Rigid
178 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
State laws for heating, ventilation, and lighting offer little opportunity
for variation on standard forms. Successful solutions to this problem are
the Dwight Morrow School in Englewood by Lawrence L. Licht, archi
tect, and the Hawthorne High School designed by Fanning and Shaw.
Another is Licht s Trenton Central High. A combination of the Georgian
Colonial and Classical Revival styles, it consists of a three-storied red
brick main building, with a Greek portico and an octagonal cupola, and
two large wings repeating these motifs on a smaller scale.
Among the newer churches, two of the most interesting are the First
Church of Christ, Scientist in Montclair and the Second Presbyterian
Church in Newark. The former achieves dignity and charm by uniting a
classic portico with a main building of Georgian Colonial design, while
the latter is a fine example of modernized Gothic, exhibiting considerable
grace despite an unconventional squatness.
Skyscrapers are not numerous. In Newark are the National Newark and
Essex Bank Building, definitely neoclassic in form and treatment with
modern detail on the plane surfaces; the Raymond-Commerce Building,
treated in a pseudo-modern manner of Gothic ancestry, with much point
less ornamentation; and the American Insurance Company Building, of
Colonial brick with limestone trim and Georgian Colonial detail. The
New Jersey Bell Telephone Company Building (Voorhees, Gmelin and
Walker, architects), while not strictly a skyscraper, is tall and massive;
it is designed in a simplified modern style with strong accenting of verti
cal lines and strongly modeled ornamental relief.
Trenton s skyline is marked by moderately high but undistinguished
buildings. Passaic, Perth Amboy, and other smaller cities each have raised
one structure that citizens sheepishly refer to as "our local skyscraper."
Elizabeth has a 15 -story Courthouse Annex, labored and awkward in con
ception, while citizens of Camden have with much justice dubbed their
22-story nondescript City Hall and Courthouse Annex, "The Milk Bot
tle." On high ground in Jersey City is the Medical Center, one of the
most impressive groups of tall buildings in the State. Of severe modern
functional design, the cluster by John Rowland compares favorably with
the Medical Center across the Hudson River.
Unique in the State are the fluttering towers and turrets of the board
walk hotels in Atlantic City and other coast resorts, where rooms facing
the water are at a premium and verticality in building perhaps is justified.
Even more suggestive of New Jersey as a playground are the gay and
ribald architectural grotesques of Deal and Elberon, summer resorts ex
traordinary. These immense barnlike castles of shingles or stucco, girdled
THE ARTS 179
by tiers of porches and sprouting myriad turrets, string along the water
front and nearby highways for miles.
Recent public buildings for the most part follow classical precedent,
with many stylistic modifications. The tendency toward simplification of
ornament and the adaptation of smooth plane surfaces in public buildings
is evident in several new post offices. Housing facilities range from the
two-room pine shack of the southern truck farmer to the baronial estates
of the commuting stockbrokers in the north. The average urban home is
the multiple dwelling, two-, three-, or four-family house, shingled and
porched, and often with a tiny plot of grass. Thousands of city dwellers
live in that peculiarly uncomfortable and unhomelike environment an
apartment above a business establishment, which may be anything from a
fish market to a garage.
Newark, Trenton, and Jersey City have a large number of apartment
houses, few of which attain a height sufficient to warrant elevators. Many
are built around an inner court. Their romantic balconies, crenelated para
pets, and random gargoyles attest the triumph of haste over taste in the
building boom following the World War. East Orange has a row of luxu
rious apartment houses, conservative in design and mostly of red brick
with white trim, suggesting a kind of suburban Park Avenue.
The problem of slum clearance has been attacked with varying success.
In Newark the Prudential Life Insurance Company erected two sets of
attractive tile-brick apartment houses, with recreation areas. One develop
ment is exclusively for Negroes. In 1937 the United States Housing Act
established a fixed rental rate for all Government housing projects. The
Stanley S. Holmes Village in Atlantic City, completed before this act had
gone into effect, maintains a relatively high rental rate; but Westfield
Acres, a series of small apartment buildings in Camden financed by the
Public Works Administration, may prove to be a genuine step toward
low-cost housing.
An interesting attempt at planned housing is the Radburn community
(Henry Wright and Clarence Stein, architects) where streets are laid out
for comfortable suburban living and the safety of children. The design of
the dwellings is, however, discouragingly monotonous, and the scheme is
cramped.
Jersey Homesteads, begun as a Resettlement Administration project, con
sists of two hundred small flat-roof houses of four to six rooms, built of
cinder block and concrete with a judicious use of glass. They appear un
attractive but are comfortable and are equipped with modern conveniences
unknown in even the better class tenements. The cooperatively owned
i8o NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
garment factory is a well designed one-story steel and glass structure. The
school building is a low flat-roof brick and concrete structure, designed
by Alfred Kastner in the modern "international" style. Vigorous treatment
of mass, effective concentration of detail, and ample fenestration fulfill
both aesthetic and functional requirements.
Industry until recently has contributed little to the New Jersey scene
except the depressing warehouselike mills of Paterson and Passaic and the
ugly red-brick factories scattered throughout Newark and other indus
trial centers. The five buildings of the CIBA Pharmaceutical Products
Company at Summit (1937) designed by J. Floyd Yewell are an excel
lent example of attractive functional design. They are of light buff brick
with purplish red brick facing on the window piers, suggesting continu
ous fenestration. The entrances are of glass brick and limestone, in pleas
ing harmony with the wall materials. An example of planning for indus
trial use is the imposing glass and steel one-story plant erected by General
Motors at Linden (1937), and the fine sleek plant of the Coca-Cola bot
tling company in Harrison (1936).
In the last few years the so-called "modernistic" style has spread rap
idly through Newark, Jersey City, and other cities, where store fronts in
the business sections are fast assuming rainbow hues in glossy plate glass
and gleaming chrome; neon light signs are integral parts of the design,
their glowing tubes forming the names of the owners as well as panels
and bands in the composition. The effect is neat, clean, and highly appro
priate. The Newark Coca-Cola plant (1936) is a notable example of the
modern trend. Its stuccoed walls are faced with black and ivory carrara,
and the doors and windows trimmed with stainless steel.
A notable example of modern industrial design is the massive office
building of the Kimble Glass Factory at Vineland. The building, designed
by William Lescaze, is constructed of brick and structural glass with lime
stone slab facing. The highly functional plan provides a spacious main
office chamber which serves as a central core around which are arranged
various minor offices, conference rooms, and lounges. The simple masses
of the building give outward expression to a well-organized plan. The
furnishings of the interior were designed by the architect.
Transportation needs have provided the State with a number of impres
sive engineering projects, notably the Pulaski Skyway, a series of finely
proportioned cantilever bridges, and Bayonne Bridge, longest steel arch
span in the world and one of the most beautiful. Also worthy of mention
are the Pennsylvania Railroad s stone arch bridge over the Raritan at New
Brunswick, and the reinforced concrete arch bridge that carries US i
THE ARTS l8l
across the same river. With New York and Pennsylvania, New Jersey
shares two splendid suspension bridges, George Washington Memorial
Bridge to New York and Delaware River Bridge to Philadelphia. The ap
proaches to George Washington Bridge were designed by Cass Gilbert.
The new hangar under construction (1939) at Newark Airport is ex
pected to provide a setting more suggestive of the terminal s importance.
Of the State s railroad stations the Pennsylvania s in Newark is most
important architecturally. Now a bus, trolley, and tube-train terminal for
the city, the massive gray Indiana limestone building is of simple design,
with a minimum of ornamentation and a maximum of intelligently
planned space. The municipal bus terminal in Hackensack, a broad build
ing of white brick and glass, is a good adaptation of the modern func
tional style.
Painting, Sculpture, and Crafts
Early art in New Jersey sprang from the industrial pattern of the Col
ony. Numerous Colonial craftsmen are honored anonymously today for
their furniture making, tavern decorating, sign painting, and weaving.
Their products are scattered through the homes of the State, particularly
in the south, and in the countless antique shops that line highways and
village main streets.
The deposits of pure quartz sand in southern New Jersey attracted Euro
pean glass workers, and by 1750 the glass industry at Wistarburgh had
become the Colony s most notable craft. It produced Wistar glass objects,
delicately colored bottles and bowls and brilliantly surfaced glasses and
globes. Remarkable for their purity of color and the originality of their
wave and whorl designs, the broad-based Wistar products are among the
most valued collectors items. In 1775 another German family, the Stang-
ers, founded a glass works at Glassboro which became equally famous for
its wares.
Pottery began with the works established by Daniel Coxe at Burlington
in 1688 and increased steadily in beauty and importance throughout the
Colonial period, culminating in the founding of the Fulper Pottery Com
pany in Flemington in 1805 and the American Pottery at Jersey City two
decades later. Stoneware, crocks, flowerpots, and brown glazed ware from
these potteries, as well as from those established later at Trenton, rank
among the choicest in the Nation.
Representative of the minor crafts were Elias Boudinot s silversmithing,
distinguished for its fine engraving; staidly colorful quilting of the Dutch
182 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
housewives along the Hudson; dignified wrought-iron gates and fireplace
pieces from the northern mine section; and accomplished cabinetmaking
of the Egerton family in the Hepplewhite style in New Brunswick around
1790.
In formal art, the most notable Colonial figure of New Jersey was
Patience Lovell Wright (1725-1786) of Bordentown, the first American
to achieve fame as a sculptor. She won international recognition for her
figures in wax, one of which, a full-length statue of William Pitt, was
placed in Westminster Abbey, the first American work so honored.
As Americans gradually became interested in painting and sculpture
New Jersey produced a number of artists whose work shows the preva
lent influences of the first half of the last century. Typical of this group
was Charles Parsons (1821-1910), a water-colorist and engraver for Cur
rier and Ives. During this period William Dunlap of Perth Amboy, an un
successful historical painter, published A History of the Rise and Progress
of the Arts of Design in the United States, which proved so valuable that
he has been called "the American Vasari."
Asher B. Durand of South Orange throughout his long life from 1796
to 1886 earned the titles of "the Nation s most distinguished engraver"
and "the father of American landscape painting." After a brilliant start
at engraving copies of portraits, he turned in 1834 to landscape painting.
The microscopic eye of the engraver working directly from nature fostered
a passion for nicety of expression. This trend characterized his work and
set the tone of the Hudson River school, which he helped to found.
The outstanding figure of the middle years of the last century was
George Inness (18251894), who spent many years of his life in Mont-
clair and some time in Perth Amboy. At first he was more or less in sym
pathy with the tradition of the Hudson River school and practiced a
method akin to Durand s. But his art, as developed here and abroad,
steadily broadened and deepened, becoming especially noteworthy for the
richness of color. Under the influence of Corot he began to sacrifice de
tail to mass and to abandon the panoramic treatment in favor of accented
composition.
Inness advanced the trend in landscape painting from the purely ana
lytic form of Durand and his followers to a genuinely romantic stage. He
sought to emphasize quality and force of emotion rather than scenic
fidelity. Nature in all seasons and all aspects of the sky attracted him in
his quest for harmony of form and mystical feeling. In his later years he
passed into a genuinely mystical period, favoring canvases of eerie fogs
STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, NEWARK
184 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
and strange lights instead of the earlier landscape and pastoral compo
sitions.
Inness produced many masterpieces which rank him with the leaders of
the Barbizon school ; yet he remained essentially individual. In addition to
his celebrated views of the Delaware Water Gap, he painted much of the
New Jersey scene, particularly around Montclair. Six representative paint
ings now hang in the Montclair Art Museum. Contemporary critics are
virtually agreed that Inness is one of the foremost American landscape
painters.
By the middle of the nineteenth century cities were becoming suffi
ciently conscious of their past to install busts, shafts, and other memorials
in parks and public buildings. Art schools began to develop in Newark
and its suburbs; associations for the collection and exhibition of pictures
were formed; and in several cities there was considerable sentiment for
the erection of museums.
New crafts developed from changing industry. The looms of Paterson
wove especially beautiful silk fabrics ; terra cotta factories in Perth Amboy
turned out decorative products of a high order. Leather workers in New
ark produced fine hand-tooled work, and jewelry manufacture in that city
was lifted above a commercial enterprise by skill in designing and unusu
ally gifted workmanship. In the wake of these followed several other
craft industries which included the world-renowned Lenox china of
Trenton, the Edgewater tapestry looms, whose hand-woven products have
been praised as "American Gobelins," and the fine stained glass and eccle
siastical brasses made by the J. and R. Lamb Studios in Tenafly.
Among those American artists who revolted against European conven
tions toward the end of the century was George Inness Jr. (1864-1926),
also of Montclair. A landscape painter like his father, he was like his
father again forward looking in his attitude toward painters problems.
Ralph Blakelock (1847-1919) of Orange was even more radical in his
approach. His fantastic and imaginative art reached its height in his moon
light studies which have been termed "as individualistic as those of Albert
Pinkham Ryder." Blakelock shared the elder Inness s interest in color and
emotion but lacked the benefits of his original emphasis on detail.
Two New Jersey sculptors of the same period who helped break the
bands of neoclassic traditions, which had so limited American work,
were J. Scott Hartley (1845-1912) and Thomas Ball (1819-1911), both
of Montclair. The latter is especially significant for his equestrian "Wash
ington" and the "Emancipation" statue in Boston.
The outstanding sculpture in the State today is not, however, the work
THE ARTS 185
of New Jersey men. It includes the Newark figures of Gutzon Borglum,
the Princeton Battle Monument by Frederick MacMonnies, and the Tren
ton Battle Monument by John Duncan.
As art has become liberated, first from the church and then from the
whims of wealthy patrons, intelligent education has stimulated public in
terest. A trio of New Jersey men stands in the front ranks of the twentieth
century drive for more general appreciation of art. John Cotton Dana
(1856-1929) was the first museum director to promote the cause of con
temporary American artists by purchasing and maintaining a representa
tive collection in the Newark Museum. He was also an early exponent of
the doctrine that industry affords scope for artistic accomplishment and
appreciation. At Rutgers University John C. Van Dyke (1856-1932) for
many years used his rank as one of the Nation s most respected art critics
to awaken popular sentiment by lectures, prolific writing, and exhibits of
his private collection. The sole survivor of the three is Frank Jewett
Mather Jr. (1868- ), whose creative attitude toward the history of art
has earned him equal repute as art historian and director of the Museum
of Historic Art at Princeton University.
The 1936 edition of Who s Who in Art lists 180 painters and sculptors
in New Jersey and 14 art associations. The most active of the latter are
the Newark Museum, the Art Center of the Oranges, and the Montclair
Art Museum. Since 1936 the New Jersey State Art Committee has held
regional and State-wide exhibits. In addition to most of the larger cities,
many small towns such as Leonia, Westfield, and Hopewell periodically
sponsor showings. The Modern Artists of New Jersey have expanded
local conventional exhibitions by sponsoring travel exhibits, lectures, pub
lic forums, and demonstrations, and have secured gallery representation
for the works of young and little known artists.
The Museum of Historic Art at Princeton University presents a pano
rama of the history of art from Egyptian and Chaldean times to about
1800. Notable are its collections of Italian Renaissance painting, medieval
stained glass, ceramics, and seventeenth century prints. The chapel at Rut
gers has an extensive collection of early and middle American portraits by
Thomas Sully, John Vanderlyn, Henry Inman, and others. Among the
many historical paintings of the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark
are Gilbert Stuart portraits of Captain James Lawrence and Aaron Burr.
A worthy contemporary heir to the State s distinguished landscape tra
dition is John Marin (1890- ) of Cliffside, who has been called by
some critics "the outstanding water-colorist of his generation." Other resi
dent artists representing many trends in current art movements include
186 NEW JERSEY: THE GENERAL VIEW
Grant Reynard (1887- ) of Leonia, a conservative water-colorist ; John
Grabach (1886- ) of Irvington and Maxwell Simpson (1896- ) of
Elizabeth, modern experimentalists in many mediums; and Wanda Gag
(1893- ) of Milford, a noted illustrator. To these should be added the
versatile and perceptive George (Pop) Hart (1868-1933), who chose
Coytesville as his home but whose globetrotting resulted in an exception
ally varied body of water-color and charcoal work. Two painters who have
done much to promote popular interest are F. Ballard Williams (1871- )
of Glen Ridge, national chairman of the American Artists Professional
League, and Raymond O Neill (1893 ) of Roselle, chairman of the
New Jersey State Art Committee in 1937.
New Jersey members of the National Academy of Design number
seven. Of these Williams of Glen Ridge, Charles S. Chapman (1879- )
of Leonia, Hayley Lever (1876- ) of Caldwell, Van Dearing Perrine
(1869- ) of Maplewood, are painters. Ulric H. Ellerhusen (1879- )
of Towaco and Frederick G. R. Roth (1872- ) of Englewood are
sculptors, and Allen Lewis (1873 ) of Basking Ridge is a worker in
the graphic arts.
Associate members of the Academy include five painters, Junius Allen
(1898- ) of Summit, William J. Baer (1860- ) of East Orange,
Harvey Dunn (1884- ) of Tenafly, Henry Rankin Poore (1859- ) of
Orange, Harry M. Walcott (1870- ) of Rutherford, and Howard Mc-
Cormick (1875 ) of Leonia in the graphic arts.
PART II
Cities and Towns
Atlantic City
Railroad Station: Union Station, Arkansas and Arctic Aves., for Jersey Central,
Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, and West Jersey R.R.
Bus Stations: 9 N. Arkansas Ave. for Atlantic City Bus Co. Lines, Atlantic Coast
Lines, Martz, Safeway Trail ways, Lincoln Transit Co.; ion Atlantic Ave. for
Quaker City, Capital Coach, National Trailways, Martz; Maine and Caspian Ave.
for Atlantic and Shore Railroad Co., Shore Fast Line; Tennessee and Atlantic
Aves. for Gray Line, Pennsylvania-Reading Motor Lines, Greyhound Lines, Public
Service; 122 S. Maryland Ave. for White Way Tours, Sight-Seeing buses.
Taxis: 5O0 for any point in the city, two passengers; io0 for each additional pas
senger.
Streetcars: Fare 70.
Rolling Chairs: For rent along boardwalk; 750 an hour for two persons, $i for
three.
Traffic Regulations: Turns may be made in either direction at intersections of all
streets except where traffic officers or signs direct otherwise. Watch street signs for
parking limitations and one-way streets. Parking meters on Atlantic Ave. and all
cross streets, and on Pacific Ave.
Accommodations: Approximately 1,200 hotels and boarding houses; many hotels
open all year, others open June 15 to October i. Rates higher in summer; com
plaints on overcharges should be sent to Chamber of Commerce.
Information Service: Atlantic City Information, Inc., 12 S. Arkansas Ave.; Atlantic
City Press Bureau, 2327 Boardwalk; Chamber of Commerce, 2306 Pacific Ave.;
Shore Motor Club of South Jersey, Hotel Ambassador, Pacific Ave.; Publicity Bu
reau, Boardwalk at Tennessee Ave.
Radio Station: WPG (noo kc.).
Theaters and Motion Picture Houses: Three theaters; 15 motion picture houses.
Swimming: Beach front, free; Hygeia Pool, Rhode Island Ave. and Boardwalk;
Ambassador Pool, Brighton Ave. and Boardwalk; President Pool, Albany Ave. and
Boardwalk; $i.
Golf: Country Club of Atlantic City, Linwood and Ocean City Clubs, on US 9,
reached by bus and streetcar from Virginia Ave., greens fee $2 ; Brigantine Golf
Club on Brigantine Beach, green fees 750, Sat. and Sun. $i.
Crabbing and Fishing: Steeplechase Pier, Pennsylvania Ave. and Boardwalk; foot
of Washington Ave. at Thoroughfare, Margate; 400 N. Massachusetts Ave.; N.
Iowa Ave. and Thoroughfare; free. Boats from Trolley Terminal Wharves at Inlet,
$2 per person, $5450 a day for chartered boats.
Baseball: Sovereign Ave. and Bader Field adjoining airport, four free diamonds.
Tennis: Albany Ave. Blvd. at airport, 12 courts, 250 per person; N. end of New
Hampshire Ave., 10 courts, free, lockers 250; Drexel Ave. bet. Kentucky and New
York Ave. for Negroes, 6 courts, free.
Riding: On beach October to May, $1.50 per hour; academies along shore road in
Bargaintown, Northfield and Absecon, summer, $i per hour.
Yachting and Speedboating: At Inlet, Longport Trolley Terminal, $i; Steeplechase
Pier, 500.
Bicycling: On Boardwalk before 9 a.m.
Trap shooting: Westy Hogan s Shooting Lodge, Absecon Blvd., open all year.
Ice Skating: Convention Hall, November i5~April 15; adm. 250.
Skee-Ball Stadium: 2429 Boardwalk, 50 per game.
189
190 CITIES AND TOWNS
Annual Events: Horse show, May; Ice Carnival, Convention Hall rink, July-Sept.;
Evening Star Yacht Club s Moth Boat Championship Regatta, August; Showmen s
Variety Jubilee (modified beauty pageant), first week in September; Absecon Yacht
Club s Margate-Longport Regatta, early September; Football, Convention Hall, No
vember; Ice Hockey (Eastern Amateur League), Convention Hall, November 15
April 15.
ATLANTIC CITY (15 alt., 66,198 pop.) is many things to many peo
ple. To an estimated 16,250,000 persons annually it is the ideal vacation
place; a carnival city as characteristic of this country s culture as Brighton
or the Riviera are of Europe s. To some it represents the concentrated
Babbitry of America on parade. To those of the city s 66,198 inhabitants
who profit from the pleasure of the 16,250,000 it is simply a year-round
business.
Atlantic City has developed neither as a super-resort of New Jersey nor
as another Coney Island, but as a glittering monument to the national tal
ent for wholesale amusement. As the pitchman who sells kitchen gadgets
on the boardwalk says at the end of his spiel: "I don t coax anybody. If
jp and get it!" And fr<
the millions come by bus, train, automobile, plane and yacht through-
you want it, come up and get it!" And from all corners of the country
out the year. Each season brings its characteristic crowd: honeymooners,
teachers, elderly retired couples, vacationing white collar workers, minis
ters, businessmen and their families. Uncoaxed, they come and get it. Of
the whole American population, only trailer-travelers who wish to bring
their trailers into the city limits are prohibited by city ordinance. The
hotels and rooming houses have no desire to see "The World s Health
and Pleasure Resort" re-established on a freewheeling basis.
Except for the fact that the city fronts the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic
City s geography is unimportant to the visiting host. Yet it plays a vital
part in their pleasure. The Philadelphians and Camdenites who come
mostly for a day or a week-end s bathing seldom learn that the peculiar
coast curve shields the section from devastating northeastern storms. Nor
do the New Yorkers, who are more likely to spend a week or a fortnight,
often realize that the Gulf Stream comes near enough Atlantic City to
temper its winter climate. Finally, few of the visitors from all over the
land notice that their mecca is actually an island: for the immense marshes
crisscrossed by highways and railways, over which every visitor gets his
first skyline glimpse of Atlantic City, hide deep channels that completely
cut off this densely populated strip of beach from the mainland.
These natural considerations are subordinated to one of the most fasci
nating man-made shows playing to capacity audiences anywhere in the
world. Here Madame Polaska reads your life like an open book; here
Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray sit for eternity in horror-stricken suspense on
an electric chair that fails to function; here an assortment of the World s
Foremost Astrologers reveal the future at so much a glimpse; here hun
dreds sit and play Bingo ; here the bright lights of Broadway burn through
a sea haze; here Somebodies tumble over other Somebodies and over
Nobodies as well.
Atlantic City is an amusement factory, operated on the straight- line,
AMUSEMENT PIERS AND BOARDWALK, ATLANTIC CITY
mass production pattern. The belt is the boardwalk along which each spe
cialist adds his bit to assemble the finished product, the departing visitor,
sated, tanned, and bedecked with souvenirs.
The boardwalk is unique. Sixty feet wide for much of its length, it is
of steel and concrete construction overlaid with pine planking in herring
bone pattern. Twenty miles of planks are used each year to keep it in re
pair. Along its four-mile length the city side is lined with huge hotels,
broken by blocks of shops, restaurants, exhibit rooms, booths, auction
houses, an occasional bank and even a private park. Architecturally the
motifs are mixed, but functionally they unite in presenting a glittering,
luxurious front.
The shops are a melange. Like the super-salesmen who operate them,
they sell anything Ming vases from China, maple furniture from Grand
Rapids, laces from the Levant, jewelry from Newark, shawls from Persia,
and ladies ready-to-wear from New York. Confectionery shops, where
one of Atlantic City s famous products, salt water taffy, is made and sold,
radiate a sickly sweet fragrance among motion picture houses, circus side
shows, frozen custard emporiums, shooting galleries, restaurants, and hot
dog and hamburger stands. Commercially, the boardwalk achieves its
greatest dignity in the permanent display shops of leading national adver
tisers and the smart shops studding the first floors of the large hotels.
The visitor may tire physically of the boardwalk, but he seldom leaves
192 CITIES AND TOWNS
it. More than a dozen business firms and the city provide pavilions and
benches where visitors may watch the passing show or gaze into the vast-
ness of the ocean.
Thirsts are quenched at automatic soda fountains where a nickel in the
slot sets in motion the mechanism that puts a paper cup abruptly under a
spout that stops flowing when the fluid is exactly one-quarter of an inch
from the top of the cup. The drinker has his choice of loganberry, choco
late, cherry, lemon and lime, fruit punch, La Pep, champagne ("non
alcoholic," the sign adds apologetically), root beer, ginger ale and grape.
Many continue the procession in rolling chairs, propelled mostly by
Negroes, who are not paid for waiting time but only for every hour they
push. Tips the uppermost consideration of the 14,000 summer workers
in Atlantic City mean more to these men than to almost any other work
ers. Cryptically, they call a small tip "a thin one" and none at all "a flat."
The miles of fine white sand eventually draw the majority of visitors
away from the miles of tough gray planks for a sun bath or a turn in the
surf. The universal appeal of the sea, the tang and smell of salt water and
sea air are probably the resort s most valuable possessions. The wide strip
of white sandy beach is dotted with cabanas, umbrellas, beach chairs, and
gaily togged bathers against the deep green of the Atlantic and the tur
quoise sky. The corps of 71 trained lifeguards is none too many when a
Sunday crowd swells the beach population to more than 500,000.
The half dozen amusement piers extend well out into the ocean at wide
intervals. "A vacation in itself" is the slogan of the largest pier; "six-ring
circus" would describe the piers more accurately. One admission price ad
mits the pleasure-seeker to any or all the goings-on: two moving picture
houses with entirely different shows, a vaudeville house, science exhibits,
a deep-sea diving horse, health talks, a chamber of horrors, a zoo devoted
to baby animals, and a dozen or so other attractions. When eyes and legs
grow weary, indoor rest rooms and outdoor solaria provide comfortable
deck chairs.
Few visitors pass up the everlasting joy of selecting souvenirs and
forget-Atlantic City-nots. First place among mementoes goes to various
knickknacks made of suedelike yellow leather purses, memorandum books,
hanging receptacles for whisk brooms, moccasins, and handkerchief boxes.
All, of course, are inscribed Atlantic City; each souvenir store is equipped
with tools that can engrave Atlantic City on anything from the back of a
turtle to a steel plate. Next in popularity are seashells ranging from com
mon clams to exotic crenulated oddities.
Young honeymooners are the most lavish buyers of mementoes. They
buy something for everyone back home and have each piece suitably in
scribed: "To Mother, from Anna and Joe"; "To Grandma, from Anna
and Joe"; "To Brother Pete, from Anna and Joe," and so on down the
family tree. One favorite item is a gaudy pillow slip embroidered with a
picture of a little cottage surrounded by flowers growing out of an orange
lawn cut down the center by a green path. Beneath the cottage scene is an
appropriate bit of verse:
ATLANTIC CITY 193
To one who bears the sweetest name,
And adds a lustre to the same,
Who shares my joys
Who cheers when sad
The greatest friend I ever had.
Long life to her for there s no other
Can take the place of my dear
MOTHER
Atlantic City, N. J.
The summer millions dwindle to winter thousands, and the pace of At
lantic City perceptibly slows down after the annual September beauty pag
eant. It is then that the city wins its reputation as a health resort. To bene
fit from the mild climate and healthful sea air come elderly folk, who
find respite from cold winters on the warm boardwalk and in the chatty
living rooms of scores of rooming and boarding houses. The city becomes
more sophisticated as a more urban group of business and professional
people arrive to catch an off-season vacation. On the winter holidays and
during the frequent conventions, however, there is a sharp, sudden return
to the carnival summertime spirit, disconcerting indeed to the entrenched
oldsters.
Backstage of the boardwalk, there is a gradual falling from the splen
dor of Atlantic City s front. Narrow side streets leading from the beach
are crowded with phalanxes of small hotels, boarding houses, restaurants,
and saloons. The majority are frame buildings and, unlike the boardwalk,
recall that Atlantic City was founded in mid- Victorian times.
The first longitudinal street that parallels the boardwalk is Pacific Ave
nue, a heavy traffic thoroughfare. Here, among restaurants and small re
tail shops, stand many of Atlantic City s civic and religious buildings. A
feature of this street is the jitney service, a steady stream of touring cars
that pick up passengers at designated corners and carry them to any desti
nation on Pacific Avenue for io0. For an additional io0 the driver will
deviate into side streets.
Atlantic Avenue, second street from the boardwalk and paralleling it,
is the city s chief business section. This is the one street where visitors can
forget that they are in America s leading seashore resort, for it is much
like the main streets of other cities of the same size. It is broad, and its
many large buildings, including the city s one metropolitan department
store, impart an air of mature solidity. Westward Atlantic Avenue abruptly
becomes the Chelsea residential section, where large villas and attractive
bungalows are fronted with well-tended lawns.
North of Atlantic Avenue the city deteriorates into a dingy section
somewhat improved by recent slum clearance and street repairing. This is
the Northside, home of Atlantic City s Negro inhabitants 23 percent of
the total population and, next to that of Newark, the most important
Negro population of the State. They form a reservoir of cheap labor for the
hotels, amusement piers, restaurants, riding academies, and private homes.
194 CITIES AND TOWNS
In addition to the large group of unskilled workers there are many profes
sional and business people. The colony supports 15 churches, a Y.M.C.A.,
a Y.W.C.A., a special playground, a public library branch, and The Eagle,
a weekly newspaper. They have three elementary schools, and hold posi
tions in the city and county governments. By tacit understanding the Ne
groes frequent certain portions of the beach at certain hours.
At the Inlet in the northeastern end of the city are several basins and
harbors where pleasure craft and the fishing fleet tie up. The city s fishing
industry, third largest of the State with approximately 3,000,000 pounds
shipped annually, predates the amusement business. Every afternoon at
about 4:30 the fleet of some two-score 5O-foot boats brings in the catch.
An even greater income, however, is obtained from the renting of boats
and crew for pleasure fishing.
The history of Atlantic City is a fabulous success story of a city that
knew what it wanted to be from its very infancy. Before 1852, when con
struction of the Camden and Atlantic Railroad began, Atlantic City was
an island waste 5 miles off the mainland and separated from it by a series
of bays, sounds, and salt meadows. It was known as Absecon (Ind., place
of swans) Island or Absecon Beach where, historians say, "The frequency
of shipwrecks and the undisturbed isolation of the island must have made
it an attractive spot for refugees from war or justice." One historian re
peats a story "that in the cupola of the first church . . . was stationed a
look-out during the hour of service to acquaint the congregation of a ves
sel drifting in, in order that the Barnegat and Brigantine Beach people
should not forestall them in reaching the scene of disaster and appropri
ating the best of what the waves would wash in."
Once the climate and beach of the Island were appraised, it was not
long before a railroad from Camden was under construction. The rail
road company assigned one of its engineers, Richard B. Osborne, to lay
out the city. To the streets running across from the beach to the marshes
he gave the names of the States; for those paralleling the beach he bor
rowed the names of seven seas: Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Baltic, Adri
atic, Mediterranean, Caspian. Let Mr. Osborne give his own reasons: "Its
proud name is for the nation; it has made her prominent, and will, every
year of her existence, prove more and more appropriate as she reaches her
manifest destiny the first, most popular, most health-giving and most in
viting watering-place ..."
The year 1854 was a crowded one. The city was incorporated March 3.
At the first election 1 8 of the 21 voters pushed their ballots through the
slot of a cigar box, fastened with tape. In the same year the first train ar
rived from Camden, bringing 600 passengers. Many dined at a still un
completed hotel. Other hotels were soon being built.
Meanwhile the Camden and Atlantic Land Company had bought land
at $17.50 an acre and, as a contemporary newspaper reported, planned "to
sell it some day for as high as $500 per lot." By 1877 tne pressure of traf
fic was so great that a second railroad to Camden, 54 miles away, was
built in the fast time of 98 days. This was known as the Narrow Gauge
Railroad because of its 3l/ 2 -foot gauge, 14 inches less than standard. The
ATLANTIC CITY 195
West Jersey Railroad, known as the Electric, opened in 1906; it now
maintains only a daily run to Newfield.
The boardwalk was the joint conception in 1870 of a local hotel man,
Jacob Keim, and a conductor on the Camden and Atlantic, Alexander
Boardman. They agreed that the beach was the principal attraction of At
lantic City and noticed that this attraction was nullified by cool or cloudy
weather. They had their fellow citizens sign a petition to council, and on
June 26, 1870, the first boardwalk was completed. It was set directly upon
the sands, and was only 8 feet wide. The present structure, the fifth, dates
from 1896.
The next milestone in the history of the resort was the invention of the
rolling chair in 1884. M. D. Shill, a Philadelphia manufacturer of invalid
chairs, gocarts and perambulators, came to Atlantic City and opened a
store to rent out baby carriages to summer families. He also rented out
invalid chairs for convalescents and cripples. Within a few years these in
valid chairs evolved into the double chair with a pusher. Triple chairs
followed, completing the fleet of comfortable sightseeing chairs of today.
In 1895 the picture postcard was naturalized in Atlantic City. In that
year the wife of Carl M. Voelker, a local resident, visited Germany and
returned with the idea. Mr. Voelker turned them out in his printing shop
as an advertising medium for the beach front hotels, and the fad spread
across the country.
During these late years of the nineteenth century the making of salt
water taffy became a thriving industry. The name was derived from asso
ciation rather than ingredients. The product is really a form of pulled
taffy and is sold now by three large firms operating chains of stores along
the boardwalk.
Atlantic City s showmanship achieved real individuality with the cre
ation of the amusement pier, the first of which was built in 1882. The
economic principle was the same as that of the skyscraper, except that it
operated horizontally, the aim being to occupy little space on the board
walk, yet to pack as much amusement behind the entrances as was physi
cally possible. After the first of these ingenious structures dipped its
spindly legs into the Atlantic s surf, others followed quickly. Their con
struction was facilitated, it is said, through the accidental discovery of a
Negro laborer, who, while working in Delaware Bay, noticed the effect
of water running swiftly from a hose upon the sand. His discovery of
jetting was used in sinking foundation piles for the piers.
With the establishment of the amusement pier, Atlantic City s mold
was almost unalterably shaped. Since the turn of the century the resort
has largely devoted itself to improving and modernizing the basic amuse
ment equipment and refining its technique of entertainment.
The city has shown itself determined to preserve an individuality, in
spite of, or because of, its estimated 16,250,000 visitors. It retains the
adopted metropolitan way of referring to streets as "blocks" instead of
the South Jersey-Philadelphia "squares." It has capitalized on its latitudi
nal southern location to simulate a Dixie hospitality.
Politically and commercially it has become the vortex of eastern South
196
CITIES AND TOWNS
V
To \t
U. S. 40 to Pennsyille
^ N. J. 48 to Penusgrove
N. J. 42 to
SCALE IN FEET
1000 200 ,3000:
U. S. 40 & *
To
ATLANTIC CITY
ATLANTIC CITY
197
198 CITIES AND TOWNS
Jersey. Although Mays Landing is the county seat of Atlantic County,
officials transact most of their business in branch offices at Atlantic City,
Since the World War, civic leaders have encouraged the development of
manufacturing, aware that their city, like any large resort, is subject to
sudden loss of public favor through epidemics or natural disasters.
POINTS OF INTEREST
1. The MODEL AMERICAN VILLAGE, on the Boardwalk between
Bellevue and Texas Aves., displays three houses, set at various angles to
the "Highway," on a large semicircular lawn. One house is Tudor in de
sign, constructed of masonry; another is a frame Cape Cod Colonial; the
third is a frame and stucco modern type. The number of rooms varies
from 7 to 12, and the cost of the houses from $5,000 to $15,000. Each is
furnished and equipped in accordance with the period and price. In the
rear is a town hall with stores on the ground floor and a village green in
front. The exhibit is sponsored and equipped by a hundred leading manu
facturers and builders of the country.
2. The CONVENTION HALL AND MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM
(tours with official guides hourly, 250), on the Boardwalk between Geor
gia and Mississippi Aves., is said to be the largest of its kind in the world.
Its auditorium seats 41,000 persons; the ballroom accommodates 5,000.
An organ with 32,000 pipes, also a world s record, has been built into the
structure. During the year the auditorium is transformed alternately into
an ice-skating rink, a football gridiron, a polo and horse-show field and a
steeplechase course. RADIO STATION WPG maintains its studio on the
upper floor.
3. MILLION DOLLAR PIER, Boardwalk and Arkansas Ave. (one ad
mission price for all attractions), is 1,700 ft. long and the second largest
pier in the city. It was named by its original owner, Capt. John L. Young,
now deceased, as soon as a million dollars had been spent on the still un
completed structure in 1906. In 1938 the name was changed to Hamid s
Million Dollar Pier. The captain s former home (open) on the pier, be
yond the beach line, had the unusual post office address of No. i Atlantic
Ocean. The house is three stories high, and is equipped with a conserva
tory. Shrubbery and flowers grow in the surrounding garden. From the
ocean end of the pier a fish net haul is made twice daily, at noon and 4
p.m. Species of fish which find their way into the big net include shark,
tarpon, drumfish, barracuda, ray, sea robin, and others.
4. The CENTRAL PIER (free), Boardwalk and Tennessee Ave., has
in recent years concentrated on commercial exhibits. Once the city s long
est pier (2,700 ft.), it has been destroyed three times by fire and is now
less than one-third of its original length. The chief current exhibits in
clude those of the Texas Company, the Beechnut Company, the Atlantic
City Convention Bureau, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the Bicycle
Trades Exhibit. There is also an arcade of small shops.
5. The STEEPLECHASE PIER (free), Boardwalk and Pennsylvania
Ave., caters to children with swings, merry-go-rounds, and other juvenile
THE MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM, ATLANTIC CITY
amusement. It was built 800 ft. long in 1890, destroyed by fire in 1932,
and rebuilt to 1,500 ft. to serve as a fishing and yachting center. It was
originally George Tilyou s "Funny Place" where Coney Island oddities
were burlesqued.
6. The STEEL PIER (one admission price for all attractions), Board
walk and Virginia Ave., is 2,000 ft. long, the largest of all. Among its
novelties are three diving horses that, four times a day, gallop up a runway
45 ft. high and dive into a pool of water, a girl rider perched on each
back. The late Dr. W. F. Carver, an Indian scout, originated this spec
tacular entertainment 50 years ago. His daughter now trains the horses.
Other attractions are two movie houses and a zoo for baby animals.
7. The GARDEN PIER (free), Boardwalk and New Jersey Ave., looks
like the oldest but is actually the youngest pier on the boardwalk. It was
built in 1915 and its incongruous Spanish architecture is somewhat atoned
for by its fireproof construction. Garden Pier specializes in public enter
tainment; it provides bimonthly boxing and wrestling and semiprofes-
sional basketball in the winter, and stage shows and occasionally opera in
the summer.
8. The HEINZ PIER (free), Boardwalk and Massachusetts Ave., is the
highbrow of the boardwalk. Operated since 1898 by the canned-food pro
ducer, it features art exhibits, lectures, and educational-promotional dis
plays. A series of eight model kitchens includes the little Dutch Kitchen,
200 CITIES AND TOWNS
the English, the Spanish of Don Quixote s time, the American of the time
of Evangeline, the Civil War, and the modern dietary laboratory.
9. The ABSECON LIGHTHOUSE (not open), Pacific and Rhode
Island Aves., is the Eiffel Tower of Atlantic City wherever the visitor
looks he sees the i6y-ft. structure, much like an oversize factory chimney
with a glass cage perched on top. When erected in 1854 it stood 1,300 ft.
from the water front. Within the next few years the Atlantic began to en
croach on the shore line until the waves broke within 75 ft. of the light
house. Massive stone jetties were built to protect it, and as a result the
ocean retreated until now it is two long blocks away. The light was abai>
doned in 1932.
10. The MASONIC TEMPLE, NE. corner Hartford and Ventnor
Aves., is a square four-story building of Byzantine architecture, con
structed of limestone and marble. The facade is adorned with six massive
engaged columns. The cornerstone was cut from marble brought from the
legendary quarries of King Solomon.
n. The WORLD WAR MEMORIAL, corner Albany and Ventnor
Aves., is an open circular cella, with surrounding peristyle of Doric col
umns, designed by Carrere and Hastings. The marble walls are pierced
with four doors; in the center is a heroic bronze monument, Liberty in
Distress. The work of Frederick W. MacMonnies, it is a reproduction of
the sculptor s work at Varredes, France, commemorating the first battle
of the Marne. Liberty, naked but for knotted garments hanging from her
elbows, her feet mired in writhen corpses, supports an inert male figure
across her right thigh. Her distress is the one matter about which there is
no question whatever.
12. STANLEY S. HOLMES VILLAGE (open), Illinois and Baltic
Aves., is the first slum clearance project attempted in New Jersey, and
alleviates to a slight degree the housing conditions of Atlantic City s Ne
groes. Continuous structures of red brick, two and three stories high, con
tain 277 apartments and cover three square blocks. The buildings have
large windows with steel frames, a central heating plant, and entrances
that lead to the street and to spacious courts in the rear. The average rental
(including gas, electricity, heat and janitor service) is $8.08 per month
for each room. Tenants are selected from self-sustaining families only.
The village has been 100 percent occupied since one month after its
opening on April 16, 1937. Considered one of the most successful projects
in the country, it returned more than 10 percent over the cost of operation
during its first 141/2 months. Rental arrears amounting to $117.49 m J une
1938 have since been paid up.
POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS
Somers Mansion, 18.7 m. (see Tour 18); Batsto, 30 m., Pleasant Mills, 30.3 m.
(see Side Tour 23 A) ; pine and cedar swamps, 32.9 m. (see Tour 35).
Railroad Station: W. 8th St. and Ave. C. for Jersey Central R.R.
Buses: Fare 50.
Streetcars and Busses: Fare 50.
Taxis: Fare 350 within city limits.
Ferry: S. end of Ave. C for Electric Ferry to Staten Island; car and passengers 250,
pedestrians 50.
Toll Bridge: Hudson County Blvd. and W. yth St. for Staten Island; car and pas
sengers 500, pedestrians 50.
Traffic Regulations: On Boulevard, stop on nearest corner on red or amber light;
i -hour parking in business district (Broadway) between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Accommodations: Rooming houses.
Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 51 E. 22nd St.
Motion Picture Houses: Six.
Swimming: Bayonne Y.M.C.A., W. 33rd St. between Ave. C and Boulevard; Indus
trial Y.M.C.A., 259 Ave. E; open-air pool, W. 63rd St. and Boulevard; Newark
Bay at County Park, Ave. C and W. 4Oth St.
Tennis: City Park at W. i8th St.; County Park, Ave. C and W. 4Oth St.
Baseball: City Stadium, W. i4th St. and Ave. A.
BAYONNE (40 alt., 88,979 pop.) is the eastern end of the Nation s long
est oil-pipe lines the oil-refining center of the State. It is an isolated com
munity of low, crowded buildings, lying on the tip of the peninsula that
separates New York Bay from Newark Bay. Although it is closer to New
York than are Newark or Elizabeth, it lags in reflecting the influence of
the metropolis. Bayonne, in fact, at present has no hotel. Houses pack the
streets so tightly that there is not even space for a cemetery.
On all sides but its northern boundary, where it merges into Jersey City,
Bayonne is surrounded by water. On the map the city looks like a boot.
The toe is Constable Hook and it juts into New York Bay where oil tank
ers rock at company wharves. The sole of the boot is Kill van Kull. The
heel is Virgin Point, where Kill van Kull joins Ne 
