By David Dayton McKean
Huey Long once said that if the United States ever became fascist it would do so under democratic, anti-fascist slogans. The cult of nationalism, with its Americanization Day parades, its rallies, flags, and speeches, may all be observed in Jersey City. The Hague organization, like Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler (in his earlier career), has adopted communism for its enemy – a happily remote but convenient enemy.
Many political machines flourish – and have flourished –
in America, but none has approached the perfection of the
Hague organization in the completeness of its control over
the society in which it exists. Even Tammany Hall, the
prototype of all machine politics, never dominated New
York as Hague and his political associates have dominated
Jersey City and Hudson County. While no political institution can be entirely complete and successful, the one under
examination here so nearly approaches the most finished machine that can be expected that any others may be measured against it.
Mussolini once said that Italy was too poor a country to
afford a democratic government, implying that an authoritarian is less expensive. Similar assumptions are
often made in the United States; but the citizen who thinks
his democracy expensive may well examine what has happened in Jersey City, where the payroll has had to be sufficiently elastic to take in vast numbers of loyal party members. The costs of supporting a machine such as that Mayor
Hague has built up are a sample of what a totalitarian regime
would cost the whole country; paradoxically, a one-party
government is more expensive than a two-party system.
This Web version, edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
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