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By David Dayton McKean
When Mayor Hague was testifying at the C.I.O. trial in
Newark he was asked, `But you don't believe much in these
civil rights, do you?
He replied, `Whenever I hear a discussion of civil rights
and the rights of free speech and the rights of the Constitution,
always remember you will find him [the advocate of
these rights?] with a Russian flag under his coat; you never
miss.' (Transcript, p. 1146.)
This sentence of the Mayor's, while typically confused,
nonetheless represents the general attitude of his organization
toward civil liberties: there must be no nonsense in
Jersey City about constitutional rights. The very logic of the
political processes he has set in motion, more than any innate
intolerance on his part, compels him to take this position; an
organization such as his cannot permit unlimited discussion
and criticism and still survive. A revolt could be produced
by speakers or newspaper editors who were allowed to call
too frequent attention to the tax rate, to the overcrowded
schools, to the labor conditions in the Jersey City sweatshops,
to the Mayor's unexplained wealth, or to any of the
thousand-and-one abuses that have made Jersey City famous.
His recognition of the necessity for the suppression of
criticism and his outstanding success in controlling – notwithstanding
a Supreme Court decision – the avenues of
communication make him in still one more respect unique
among American bosses. It is perhaps because he has been
able to control the means for forming opinion in his city and
county that he has been able to remain in power since 1917
while all of his contemporaries have been deposed.
No visitor stays long in Jersey City without feeling the
atmosphere of suspicion and tension that exists there. People
are reluctant to talk about the Mayor or the organization.
`He has almost as many spies working for him,' wrote John
McCarten in The New Yorker, `as the ruler of a Balkan
kingdom.' David Wittels in one of his articles in the New
York Post collected a series of instances of opponents who
had failed to receive their mail or who found that their mail
had been opened. One newspaper reporter proved that his
telephone wires were tapped by the simple device of having a
friend telephone him from New York City that John Brophy
of the C.I.O. was going to pay him a secret visit and wanted
to be met at the ferry at a designated hour. It was amusing
to the reporter to stand in the balcony of the ferry waiting-room and watch the Jersey City police and detectives assemble to meet the boat. Foster Haley, writing in the New
York Times, said:
This Web version, edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
It is difficult in Jersey City, except in the privacy of home or
office, to get an expression of opposition to Mayor Hague.
Many have learned from experience not to become publicly
vocal. One resident, belonging to one of the oldest families in
the city, who recently has been outspoken against the Mayor
was sued on a nine-year-old note he had forgotten about. The
assessment on his brother's property was raised from $2500 to
$25,000.
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