HAGUE, FRANK

Of all the bosses who ruled their machines during the 1930s, none exerted greater power or held it longer than Mayor Frank Hague (January 17, 1876–January 1, 1956) of Jersey City, New Jersey. Hague's influence not only made him the most powerful Democrat in his state, it helped nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt and delivered New Jersey's electoral vote to Roosevelt in all four presidential elections in which Roosevelt ran. Critics condemned Hague as the "Hitler of Hudson County," where he was also accurately called "the law."

Hague's career began in a Jersey City slum known as the Horseshoe, where he was born to Catholic parents. Juvenile delinquency, tempered by an occasional appearance at Sunday Mass, characterized his childhood. A sixth-grade dropout, Hague learned the political game from local Democratic bosses and became mayor in 1917. Thirty years would pass before he relinquished power.

During the Depression, Hague's machine cared for the poor, built social clubs for the middle class, and gave tax breaks to the rich and money to all religions, especially the Catholic Church. People loved and feared the dapper mayor. In 1932 he dropped his support for Al Smith and delivered New Jersey to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the first of four consecutive presidential elections.

In turn, the New Deal funneled massive amounts of patronage and money, as well as numerous projects, through Hague's organization. Choosing to ignore the machine's scandals, Roosevelt allowed the Jersey boss to add hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions of dollars to the power that the machine already wielded throughout the state. The Public Works Administration (PWA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) enabled the mayor to exert national influence and near total control over New Jersey. The machine coerced 115,000 CWA and WPA employees to support its candidates. As a result, Hague manipulated governors, senators, and congressmen because he could (sometimes illegally) produce huge election-day majorities.

Roosevelt wanted to prosecute the machine's criminals, but he also wanted to provide Depression relief and New Jersey's electoral vote, both of which the mayor controlled. This reality proved crucial to Roosevelt's election to an unprecedented third term in 1940. Thanks to 173,000 ballots produced by the mayor in Hudson County, Roosevelt overcame Wendell Willkie's lead of 101,500 and won the state's electoral vote by a plurality of 71,500. Although most of the ballots were legal, critics complained of extensive fraud.

The New Deal's Department of Justice did not investigate Republican complaints because Roosevelt appreciated the electoral and legislative support rendered by the machine and its senators and representatives. For these and other reasons, Roosevelt never got around to ousting the totalitarian mayor who outlasted him by two years before voluntarily retiring in 1947. When Frank Hague died on New Year's Day, 1956, obituary writers noted that his rule constituted perhaps the most exceptional exhibition of power wielded by any city leader in American history.

HAGUE, FRANK

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