Walter Evans Edge (November 20, 1873October 29, 1956) was an American diplomat and Republican politician who served as the 36th governor of New Jersey, from 1917 to 1919 and again from 1944 to 1947, during both World War I and World War II. Edge also served as United States Senator representing New Jersey from 1919 to 1929 and as United States Ambassador to France from 1929 to 1933.
Early life
Edge was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 20, 1873. His father, William Edge, worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. His mother Mary (Evans) Edge, died when he was two years old. At the age of four Edge moved to Pleasantville, New Jersey, where the family of his stepmother, Wilhelmina (Scull) Edge, operated a small hotel. His formal education went only as far as the eighth grade in a two-room public school in Pleasantville.
As a youth, Edge demonstrated a desire to succeed in business and he acquired an interest in politics. At the age of ten, he and another boy started a four-page weekly newspaper devoted to social news, the Pleasantville Bladder, which had a circulation of approximately one hundred.
At the age of sixteen, Edge took a part-time job with John M. Dorland, who operated an Atlantic City advertising business. Dorland solicited advertising from Atlantic City hotels for Philadelphia and New York newspapers. Dorland was in poor health when Edge joined him and within a few months, Edge was running the business. When Dorland died less than one year later, his widow sold the business to Edge, who was then seventeen years old, for $500. Edge financed the purchase with a note that a hotel owner agreed to co-sign for him. Under Edge's management, the Dorland Agency grew into multimillion-dollar advertising agency, with offices in numerous cities in the United States and Europe.
Political career
Early political career
Edge's successful advertising and publishing businesses made him very wealthy. From the beginning, his ultimate goal was to use his success in business to build a political career and to devote his primary attention to politics after he had attained financial security.
In 1904, Edge ran as a reformer in the Republican primary for the Atlantic County state senate seat occupied by incumbent Edward S. Lee. Edge used his Atlantic City Daily Press to promote his candidacy against Lee, who was supported by the established local Republican machine. Edge lost to Lee. and in 1909 he was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly. In 1910, Edge was elected to the New Jersey Senate where he served for two terms, becoming the senate president in 1915.
Although Edge served in the state legislature during the height of the Progressive Era, he tended to take moderate positions and was not considered a reformer. He supported the Republican leadership, although he did cooperate with reformers when their efforts appeared sure of success. Early in his legislative career, Edge worked extensively in developing a workers' compensation law for New Jersey, even traveling to Europe to study compensation systems there. The workers' compensation bill that he sponsored was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Woodrow Wilson. He also promoted legislation calling for a ten-hour day for women workers and safety laws protecting factory workers. He gained a reputation for concern with economic matters and the efficiency of state government. It is unclear whether Edge and Hague reached some agreement in exchange for Hague's assistance, with one authority concluding there was "[p]robably no outright deal", In any event, Hague instructed those in his Democratic organization to crossover and vote for Edge in the Republican primary, thereby securing Edge a narrow victory. In 1917 the legislature also agreed to Edge's proposal to reorganize the state road department, and Edge won approval for legislation authorizing the construction of a bridge between southern New Jersey and Philadelphia and a tunnel between northern New Jersey and New York City.
A considerable part of Edge's efforts as governor involved the mobilization for World War I and postwar planning. Although the term to which he had been elected began on March 4, 1919, the Senate was in recess at that time. In order to attend to remaining gubernatorial business, Edge did not resign as governor until May 16, 1919, and was sworn in as senator three days later.
The most important and controversial vote held by the Senate during Edge's term involved the Treaty of Versailles, the ratification of which would have allowed the United States to join the League of Nations. As a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, Edge was a "mild reservationist" on the question. Although he appears to have genuinely wanted the United States to enter the League of Nations, he believed that reservations to the treaty were needed both to protect national sovereignty and to secure the votes needed for ratification by the Senate. In November 1919 and again in March 1920, he voted to ratify the treaty with the Lodge Reservations.
Continuing his efforts to apply business management principles to government, in 1919 Edge introduced a joint resolution that led to the passage of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which established the Bureau of the Budget (now called the Office of Management and Budget) and the General Accounting Office.
Edge opposed prohibition and voted against the Volstead Act. In 1924, he ran for reelection advocating the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, and another bill to legalize the sale of beer with alcohol content of 2.75%. At some point he supported practically every anti-prohibition movement in the Senate. He did not resign from the Senate and take office as Ambassador, however, until November 21, 1929, a delay attributable to political issues involving the appointment of a Republican successor to fill his Senate seat and the desire to have his expertise in the Senate while tariff legislation was considered. During the course of the tariff debates, Edge proved a protectionist who voted in favor of higher tariffs on imported goods. The resulting tariff law, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, was not enacted until the spring of 1930, several months after Edge left the Senate.
thumb|[[Autochrome Lumière|Autochrome portrait taken in Boulogne by Georges Chevalier, 1930]]
United States Ambassador to France, 1929–1933
During his tenure as ambassador, Edge spent considerable time dealing with Franco-American trade issues, which were strained by tariff policies and the contentious post-World War I questions of war debts, reparations and disarmament.
Governor of New Jersey, 1944–1947
After his ambassadorship ended in 1933, Edge spent most of the next decade living a life of retirement, traveling, and serving as an elder statesman for the New Jersey Republican party. With the outbreak of World War II, Edge was eager to return to public service. In 1943 he agreed to run for governor provided no one opposed him in the Republican primary and the party maintained strong discipline, and party leaders accepted those conditions. Following his nomination, Edge faced Democratic candidate Vincent J. Murphy, mayor of Newark and state leader of the American Federation of Labor, in the general election. By now, any assistance provided to him by Hudson County Democratic boss Frank Hague in the 1916 election was long forgotten, and Edge hammered on the theme of Hague's power, campaigning that a vote for Murphy was a vote for the domination of "labor leaders, communists and Hagueism". Edge also advocated streamlining state government, early postwar planning and the adoption of a new state constitution, which he considered essential to modernizing state government and which had been actively supported by the incumbent Democratic governor, Charles Edison. In the November 1943 election, Edge defeated Murphy by a comfortable margin. who had previously hand-picked grand jurors who they knew would refuse to indict those engaged in illegal activities protected by political bosses like Hague. The most important battle between Edge and Hague involved constitutional revision. In early 1944, Republican legislators drafted a new proposed constitution that would have, among other things, deprived Hague of a major source of patronage by restructuring the judiciary. Hague strongly opposed the revised constitution, and several weeks prior to the November 1944 election he launched a multi-pronged attack on it, charging that it would restrict the activities of labor unions, inhibit advancement opportunities for returning veterans, and subject all church owned property to taxation. Voters rejected the proposed constitution. In early 1945 Hague retaliated by having his hand-picked United States Attorney bring two federal indictments against Van Riper, one charging check kiting and the other related to the alleged sale of gasoline in the black market. Edge and Van Riper were undeterred and continued to apply pressure on Hague. Major state jobs, which Hague once had controlled, now went to Republicans. The state civil service system was reformed and freed from Hague's domination.
Much of Edge's last year in office was spent dealing with problems associated with the conversion to a peacetime economy and a wave of strikes.
In 1924, however, the relationship between Edge and Johnson openly soured. In the Atlantic City Commission election that year, Johnson's organization backed a slate of candidates led by incumbent mayor Edward L. Bader. Bader's slate won the bitter election, which was marked by allegations of widespread organization-backed voter fraud. A month after the election, Edge replaced Johnson as the manager of his senate reelection campaign amid rumors that Johnson was unhappy about the "hands off" policy that Edge had taken during the recent election in which Johnson's leadership had been threatened.
Although in 1927 Johnson touted Edge as a potential presidential candidate, in 1928 the two men openly broke. The initial indication of a break was Johnson's support of Hamilton Fish Kean for the Republican nomination for United States senator, while Edge was backing Edward C. Stokes. The split noticeably widened after Edge abandoned his policy of non-interference in purely local politics and backed Robert M. Johnston for Atlantic County state senator in the Republican primary. In the wake of the election, Edge called for party unity,
Edge, who faced a reelection campaign in 1930, resigned from the United States Senate in 1929 to accept appointment as Ambassador to France.
In his 1948 memoirs, A Jerseyman's Journal, Edge makes no mention of either Kuehnle or Johnson, who was imprisoned in 1941 for income tax evasion. Johnson's successor as leader of the Atlantic County Republican organization, Frank S. Farley, is mentioned once, in connection with events that transpired while Edge was out-of-state during his second term as governor, and Farley, as state senate president, was acting governor. Edge's memoirs have been criticized for failing to discuss how he rose in politics and in skipping over the skullduggery involved in interesting political situations, and his failure to discuss his relationship and disagreements with the Atlantic County machine provide examples of those omissions.
Later years and death
After Edge left office on January 21, 1947, he continued to promote constitutional reform, which was achieved later the same year with the adoption of the Constitution of 1947. In 1953, he attended the coronation of King Faisal II of Iraq as President Eisenhower's representative.
Edge died on October 29, 1956, in New York City. He was buried at the Northwood Cemetery in Downingtown, Pennsylvania.
Personal life
thumb|Edge's son Walter Jr. in 1922.
Edge married Estella Blanche Ailes of Lancaster, Pennsylvania on January 11, 1893. Apparently this marriage ended in divorce since Edge does not mention it in his memoirs. He married Lady Lee Phillips of Memphis, Tennessee on June 5, 1907. She died July 14, 1915, four days after the birth of their only child. Edge was forty-nine years old at the time, and his wife twenty-one. During Edge's term as Ambassador to France, his wife was known as "the youngest ambassadress". Walter and Camilla Edge had three children together. that was located between Oxford and Somerset Avenues.
In 1944, Edge purchased Morven, the historic Princeton, New Jersey home of Richard Stockton, from the Stockton family. The sale was subject to the condition that Morven would be given to the state of New Jersey within two years of Edge's death. Sunny Hill Plantation became Edge's winter home where he hunted and fished on the grounds. but later was an Episcopalian.
Edge was an active supporter of the Boy Scout movement in Atlantic County. He was a founder of the Atlantic City Boy Scout Council, and was its first president, a position that he held for four years. In 1929 he donated money that the Council used to purchase Camp Edge, located in Alloway, New Jersey. Edge was also a member of numerous Atlantic City and Atlantic County civic, fraternal, social and business organizations, including the Atlantic City Hospital Association, the Atlantic City Country Club, the Atlantic City Elks Lodge, Trinity Lodge No. 79 and Masonic Belcher Lodge No. 180 of the Free and Accepted Masons, and the Atlantic County Historical Society.
Electoral history
|+ Walter Edge electoral results, 19081943
! colspan="2" | Race
! Republican
! Votes
! %
!
! Democratic
! Votes
! %
!
! Third Party
! Party
! Votes
! %
!
! Third Party
! Party
! Votes
! %
|-
| colspan="2" | 1908 New Jersey Assembly
| |Walter Edge
| colspan="2" |
|
| colspan="17"|
|-
| colspan="2" | 1909 New Jersey Senate
| |Walter Edge
| colspan="2" |
|
| colspan="17"|
|-
| colspan="2" | 1912 New Jersey Senate
| |Walter Edge (inc.)
| colspan="2" |
|
| colspan="17"|
|-
| colspan="2" | 1916 gubernatorial
| |Walter Edge
| |247,343
| |55.4%
|
| |Otto Wittpenn
| |177,696
| |39.8%
|
| |Socialist
| |Frederick Krafft
| |12,900
| |2.9%
|
| |Prohibition
| |Harry Vaughan
| |12,900
| |2.9%
|-
| colspan="2" | 1918 U.S. Senate
| |Walter Edge
| |179,022
| |50.3%
|
| |George M. La Monte
| |153,743
| |43.2%
|
| |Socialist
| |James Reilly
| |14,723
| |4.1%
|
| |Prohibition
| |Grafton Day
| |5,768
| |1.6%
|-
| colspan="2" | 1924 U.S. Senate
| |Walter Edge (inc.)
| |608,020
| |61.8%
|
| |Frederick W. Donnelly
| |331,034
| |33.7%
|
|style="background:#5FD170";|Progressive
|style="background:#5FD170";|George L. Record
|style="background:#5FD170";|37,795
|style="background:#5FD170";|3.8%
|colspan="5"|
|-
| colspan="2" | 1943 gubernatorial
| |Walter Edge
| |634,364
| |55.2%
|
| |Vincent J. Murphy
| |506,604
| |44.1%
|colspan="10"|
|}
Miscellaneous
In the 2000s, Edge's name (as Wally Edge) and likeness had renewed currency as the pseudonym of a prominent anonymous New Jersey political columnist, who, in 2010, was identified as former Livingston Mayor David Wildstein, and who would later become involved in the Fort Lee lane closure scandal known as "Bridgegate."
Geoff Pierson portrayed him in HBO's Boardwalk Empire.
See also
- List of governors of New Jersey
- Edge Act
References
External links
Retrieved on 2008-02-11
- Walter E. Edge Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
- Biography of Walter E. Edge (PDF) , New Jersey State Library
- New Jersey Governor Walter Evans Edge, National Governors Association