Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (13 page)

Money was only part of the foundation for the Commodore’s machine. As the County Republican leader, Kuehnle had control over the appointment of the county prosecutor and judges. Only loyal party people got into power. Working closely with the county sheriff’s office, Kuehnle set up a network that insulated his organization from the legal system. It was the sheriff who selected the persons who served on grand juries. The juries, handpicked by Smith Johnson, would never indict any of the Commodore’s people.

During Kuehnle’s years in power there was no Democratic opposition. Atlantic City’s population accounted for more than 60 percent of the population in Atlantic County. The remainder of the county was populated by people either dependent on the Atlantic City tourist trade or small farmers who tended to vote Republican. The strength of the Republican Party in Atlantic County was typical of South Jersey at that time. For more than 30 years after the American Civil War, the politics of the southern New Jersey counties was dominated by United States Senator William J. Sewell of Camden. Sewell, an Irish immigrant, had served as a major general in the Union Army and fought at both Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. After the war, he entered politics and served as state senator for nine years, becoming president of the Senate in 1880. The next year he was elected by the legislature to the United States Senate, where he served two terms. Sewell’s long public service and forceful personality made him a leader of the New Jersey Republican Party and the dominant force of the Republican Party in South Jersey. With Sewell in power, there was no hope for a Democratic Party anywhere in South Jersey. As Jonathan Pitney had learned, Democrats had no chance at real political power.

The Commodore wasn’t content just having control of Atlantic City politics. If he were to catch the attention of the state Republican organization, he would need to dominate things totally. In order to do that, he had to run up election margins in a big way. A key ingredient to his strategy was the manipulation of the resort’s African-American voters. From the time of the Civil War until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, the overwhelming majority of Blacks who voted in this country voted Republican, the party of Abraham Lincoln. The presence of such a substantial minority, with a predictable voting pattern, made Atlantic City’s African-American population a pawn in Kuehnle’s rise to power. He exploited them for every vote he could.

The Commodore became enormously popular in the Northside by providing for needy Blacks out of work during the winter months. The off-season could be a harsh struggle for many year-round residents of the Northside, and Kuehnle helped them make it through the winter. Under the Commodore, the Republican Party established its own private welfare system, dispensing free food, clothing, and coal and paying doctor bills. At Kuehnle’s prompting, the hotel and boardinghouse owners required all of their employees to register to vote. Any African-American worker who failed to register was harassed until he did. On Election Day, Kuehnle’s lieutenants went into the Northside and rousted Black voters out of their homes. Groups of about 20 Blacks at a time were taken in wagons from ward to ward voting repeatedly, for which they were paid $2 a ballot. The scheme of election fraud was denounced by a national magazine of the day as “the rawest ever known in the country.”

Republican election-day workers stood outside the polls with their pockets crammed with $2 bills. They each had a list of deceased and fictitious voters whose names appeared on the voter registration rolls. As the African-American voters entered the polls, they were assigned a name and given a sheet of carbon paper, the size of the regular ballot, together with a sample ballot. “There is your name and there is your address. Now, for God’s sake, don’t forget where you live.” The voter then took his carbon and the sample into the booth with him and marked the regular ballot on the carbon over the sample ballot. When he returned outside, if the markings were right, the voter received his $2. Voters who wanted a second try at the same poll would wait for another Black voter and exchange a hat or an overcoat and then receive another name under which to vote.

Atlantic County’s small population kept the Commodore’s machine from being a major influence in a statewide general election; however, it often was a decisive factor in a primary. The ability to crank out lopsided votes in a Republican primary made Kuehnle a power broker on the state level. Politicians respect votes no matter how they’re gotten and Kuehnle was wooed by every Republican seeking statewide office. Within the first decade of the 20th century, the Atlantic City machine was one of the key political organizations in New Jersey, able to influence the selection of candidates for governor, senator, and congressman. Kuehnle’s stature as a statewide leader increased his power at home. But not everyone was a fan of the Commodore.

There was a small but vocal reform movement made up of the owners of family-oriented businesses and the large hotels along the Boardwalk. Some of the large Boardwalk hotel owners, like the White family of the Marlborough-Blenheim, were from Philadelphia with Quaker backgrounds. They opposed Kuehnle’s tactics and wanted Atlantic City to be a middle-class family resort without relying on “booze, broads, and gambling.” Others—a small minority—continued to dream of Atlantic City as a genteel resort for the upper crust as Jonathan Pitney had envisioned. Both the Quakers and the dreamers felt things had gone too far under the Commodore. They wanted the resort cleaned up and, though a tiny minority, were a source of tension in the community. This reform group made itself heard through the
Atlantic City Review
and its editor, Harvey Thomas. A coldly serious, steely looking, hard-hitting muckraker, cut from the same cloth as Lincoln Steffens, Harvey Thomas had been brought to town by a clique of wealthy Boardwalk hoteliers who resented Kuehnle and wanted him out of power.

There was a definite class distinction between the large hotel owners along the Boardwalk and the smaller hotels and boardinghouses throughout the town. The Boardwalk hotels featured themselves as hosts to the refined elements of society. “Booze, broads, and gambling” were offensive to them and their clientele. But the backbone of the resort were the blue-collar visitors who stayed in boarding-houses. They came to town to let loose and enjoy the pleasures they couldn’t find in Philadelphia. The boardinghouse owners were firmly in Kuehnle’s camp, while the Boardwalk hoteliers viewed him as a power hungry bully. Their chance to launch an attack on the Commodore came in the gubernatorial election of 1910.

The election of 1910 was a milestone for both Kuehnle and New Jersey. The Republican candidate for governor was Vivian Lewis, a favorite of the Commodore. The Atlantic County Republican Organization was the first to endorse Lewis’ bid for governor. Kuehnle was friendly with Lewis and knew his candidate could be counted on to overlook the way things were done in the resort. Lewis’ opponent was a scholarly reformer, Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned on a pledge to wipe out corruption at all levels of government.

Woodrow Wilson was the son, grandson, and nephew of Presbyterian ministers. While a religious background was common among politicians of his day, Wilson was a crusader who saw things in black and white. Impersonal in his relations, he attracted supporters in much the same way people latch on to an abstract principle. A visionary and idealist, he never permitted personal feelings to interfere with his policies and couldn’t forgive supporters who failed to measure up to his standards.

When Wilson entered New Jersey politics, the state was a prime example of what reformers throughout the country were battling. In New Jersey, according to one observer, “The domination of politics by corporation-machine alliances had reached its full flower.” The state was ruled by an oligarchy composed of the captains of industry, in particular, the railroad and utility interests. Republican and Democratic bosses working hand-in-glove had permitted these special interests to become entrenched in New Jersey’s political machinery. Throughout the state there was a deep-seated hostility to large corporations and the special privileges they received from state government. There were progressives in both parties who had managed to elect candidates to the legislature, but the governor’s office remained a captive of the special interests. By 1910, the party bosses knew the public was primed to elect a reform governor. The state Democrats were desperately seeking a new leader who could carry their party into power on the crest of the progressive wave that was rolling over the country.

Woodrow Wilson was there at the right time. A transplant from Virginia, Wilson had come to New Jersey to serve as president of Princeton University. His background as a Southerner and a minister’s son blended well with the contempt for machine politics that prevailed in educated Northern circles. Wilson was a political scientist and a noted author. His book
Congressional Government
, published in 1885, had attracted widespread interest and won lasting acclaim as a classic of American political analysis. From the mid-1880s to 1910, he was recognized as the country’s most authoritative writer on political science. Wilson was also the master of the spoken word and used his talents to generate support for the academic community in a way no university president before him had. While at Princeton, he attracted greater attention than any other college president in American history.

Wilson’s tenure as president of Princeton University gave him a pulpit from which to speak out on political issues of the day. Shortly after the 1904 election, Wilson emerged as a spokesman for conservative Democrats in opposition to William Jennings Bryan. In 1906 he received several votes in the New Jersey Legislature as a minority Democratic candidate for United States Senator. There was even talk of him as a dark horse candidate for President or Vice President in 1908. As spokesman for the anti-Bryan Democrats, Wilson won the attention of a number of Wall Street financiers and politicians who began boosting him as a presidential candidate. Several prominent editors, including George Harvey of
Harper’s Weekly
, Henry Watterson of the
Louisville Courier Journal
, and William Laffin of the
New York Sun
went out of their way to give Wilson positive exposure.

George Harvey became a loyal supporter of Wilson after hearing him make an address at Princeton. In 1906, Harvey began printing a headline across the cover of each issue of
Harper’s Weekly;
it read, “For President—Woodrow Wilson.” The publisher wanted to be a kingmaker and assigned a staff writer to begin “advertising” Wilson with a view to making him Governor of New Jersey in 1910 and a presidential candidate in 1912. Harvey took it upon himself to run interference for Wilson’s candidacy, making the initial contact with the state’s Democratic boss, former U.S. Senator James Smith.

Jim Smith was an old-time political boss, likeable and gentlemanly, who had held a prominent position in both the business and political life of New Jersey for more than a generation. From his headquarters in Newark, he dominated the powerful Essex County Democratic machine and was the state’s most powerful Democratic power broker. Smith didn’t need much convincing. New Jersey’s Democrats were a minority and if they were to have any hope of succeeding in the election of 1910, they had to run a reform candidate. The nomination for governor was offered to Wilson with no strings attached. If elected, he would have a free hand as governor.

Wilson was a dynamic campaigner. Sounding much like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, he pounded away at his opponent’s weaknesses. He reminded voters that his opponent had been handpicked by the Republican machine and would be no more than a caretaker for the special interests. Wilson campaigned against the boss system and asserted he could break it up through political reforms and by helping independent men gain election to the legislature. His candidacy held out the promise of not only the regeneration of the Democratic Party, but of all state government.

During his campaign, Woodrow Wilson appeared in Atlantic City before a group of prohibitionists and reformers. The rally had been organized by Kuehnle critic, newspaperman Harvey Thomas. Speaking before a crowd of 2,000—mostly out-of-towners—Wilson promised that one of the first places he would root out corruption and bossism was in Atlantic City.

The Commodore saw this preacher’s son for the very real threat he was. Kuehnle knew that a zealous moralist in the governor’s office would be trouble for Atlantic City. It’s likely there was more than one all-night strategy session at the Corner presided over by the Commodore. The Republican organization pulled out all the stops in an effort to elect Vivian Lewis. In less than six months time, there were 2,000 new voters registered in Atlantic City and the turnout on Election Day was a record one, with Lewis carrying the town handily. Much to the Commodore’s dismay, Wilson was elected together with Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature. Upon checking the election returns in Atlantic City, Woodrow Wilson noticed that his Republican opponent had received more votes than the city had registered voters.

Governor Wilson was determined to drive Kuehnle from power. Riding the crest of popularity created by his victory, Wilson had the legislature form a committee to investigate election fraud, focusing on Atlantic City. The “Macksey Committee,” named for its Chairman, Assemblyman William P. Macksey, found an abundance of evidence. The committee held 19 sessions at which it took testimony of more than 600 witnesses, producing more than 1,400 pages of sworn statements. The committee’s findings could have served as a basis for another political treatise by Wilson.

To no one’s surprise, the Macksey Committee learned that votes were purchased on a broad scale, primarily in the Northside. One witness called by the committee testified of his confrontation with a Republican poll worker who was doling out cash to African-American voters outside one of the voting places. “You are getting that man to vote in somebody’s name. Every one of you ought to go to prison.” To which he was told, “If you don’t get out of here they [referring to the Blacks] will trample you to death.” The dialogue continued, “I said, ‘Before they trample me to death there will be a few dead negroes here.’ He says, ‘Don’t call them niggers.’ I said, ‘I didn’t call them niggers, I called them negroes, but if you are buying your votes you are worse than a nigger for buying votes.’”