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Jack Blocker
History, Huron College, University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6G 1H3 Canada
(519) 438-7224, ext. 249 /Fax (519) 438-3938
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 09:24:04 +1000
From: H-Urban <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: H-NET Urban History Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
To: Multiple recipients of list H-URBAN <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: REVIEW: Schwartz on Paulsson _The Social Anxieties of Progressive
Reform: Atlantic City, 1854-1920_
Atlantic City Under Siege
Reviewed for H-Urban by Joel Schwartz, Montclair State
University, <[log in to unmask] >
Martin Paulsson. _The Social Anxieties of Progressive
Reform: Atlantic City, 1854-1920_. New York: New York
University Press, 1994. xvi + 245 pp. Illustrations, notes,
bibliography, and index. (paper)
Paulsson, professor of history at the College of New Jersey
(formerly Trenton State College) wrote _The Social Anxieties
of Progressive Reform_, in the attempt to get behind what he
calls "the myth of Kuehnleism," the political regime of
Republican Louis Kuehnle, Jr., in Atlantic City after the
turn of the century. According to Atlantic City lore,
Kuehnle bossed the resort with the support of saloon keepers,
gamblers, and compliant African-American voters, until New
Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson broke his power in 1911.
Paulsson undertakes a sophisticated revisionism, concluding
that Kuehnle, for a brief moment, was an influential
political coordinator, hardly a boss, much less a
corruptionist. Kuehnle presided over an understanding, the
so-called "liberal policy," elaborated by Atlantic City's
major hotel owners, civic leaders, and prominent black
residents which allowed pervasive but discrete violations of
the Sunday closing laws.
The book describes how the delicate arrangement became
unglued, and analyzes the interests, who banded together to
prompt Governor Wilson's intervention. Paulsson explains
that Kuehnle's 1911 fall from grace was accelerated by the
entrenchment of commercialized amusements at the resort,
which stretched the boundary between diversions and
licentiousness and finally breached organized Protestantism's
acceptance of what Atlantic City residents euphemistically
called "resort Sundays." The issue was brought to a head by
the mobilized Sabbatarian movement, which gained strength in
the 1890s, and "crested," says Paulsson, in New Jersey in
1909.
The rise of the one-day excursion in the 1870s and 1880s, and
"moonlight" sojourns by black people (after the August 31
Labor Day Weekend) made Atlantic City a resort for the
working class. Completion of the permanent Boardwalk in
1879, which made the beach accessible, coincided with the new
vogue in ocean bathing. By the 1880s, mass excursions, cheap
Pennsylvania Railroad fares, and the first recreation piers,
all made Atlantic City the mecca for thousands of
"shoobies"--daytime visitors who packed lunches in shoe
boxes. By 1910, Atlantic City, with about 52,000 year-round
residents, counted a weekend population of 250,000 and
seasonal visitations by 3 million. The city's attractions
included 587 hotels, which ranged from modest cottages in the
excursion district to Boardwalk castles, like the
Marlboro-Blenheim, built in 1906, soon followed by the
Chalfonte-Haddon Hall and the Traymore.
Paulsson also emphasizes that Atlantic City could not have
existed without a large work force of African Americans and
institutionalized Jim Crow. Blacks made up 21 percent of
Atlantic City's population in 1910, and they constituted 95
percent of the hotel work force. They dominated the resort's
service trades--at least until a strike at the
Marlboro-Blenheim in 1906, replaced many black menials with
white workers, including increasing numbers of women. While
central to the city's economy, blacks remained on the
margins, dependent on seasonal work and floating to and from
Philadelphia and other regional cities. By the turn of the
century, the color line also sharpened. Blacks were
increasingly turned away from Boardwalk attractions, limited
to the "designated" beach on Missouri Avenue. Hoteliers
justified Jim Crow as the obeisance that the resort had to
give its growing Southern trade. While official segregation
was forbidden by New Jersey's northern laws, "discrimination
on the Boardwalk," writes Paulsson, was carried out by
"innumerable private acts" (p. 38). African Americans
concentrated in a small enclave called the Northside, where a
Bronzville developed of black enterprises, including saloons,
brothels, and other illicit joints which authorities refused
to license elsewhere.
During the mid-1880s, the constant irritation of police raids
and saloon keepers' defiance shaped the outlines of the
liberal policy. Raucous Boardwalk amusements remained closed
on Sundays, while most saloons, particularly in the large
hotels and restaurants, remained open. By the late 1890s,
"low," sideshow amusements were largely uprooted from the
Boardwalk and confined to the Inlet, where gathered more and
more of the attractions for the shoobies. In July, 1900,
limited raids were staged on North Carolina Avenue gambling
dens and brothels, where the liberal policy got out of hand.
Slot machines were shut down, prostitutes arrested, and
gambling joints suppressed, but local opinion would not
sanction anything further. Yet another crisis occurred in
1902 after a spasm of law enforcement against Sunday saloons.
Liquor interests and hotelmen, hurting for business, hammered
out a compromise response. Hotels would stay closed on
Sunday, but conduct business as usual through side doors,
while concert saloons would shut down their orchestras,
particularly those that persisted in the most vulgar popular
tunes. In 1907, came "Regulations" of the Royal Arch,
Atlantic City's lodge hall of licensed saloon keepers, which
maintained the side-door system, but suppressed Sunday
gambling. Atlantic City skirted the edge of Victorian
morality. Civic leaders, working closely with politicians,
made certain that the system never ran over it.
Atlantic City's politics was not equipped to recognize these
wider cultural issues. Kuehnle, an erstwhile Democrat,
started his political career as a populist, who attacked the
resort's dependence on the Pennsylvania Railroad. A
coordinator and a broker, he came to power because, says
Paulsson, Democratic ineptitude gave the GOP dominance "by
default." Kuehnle struck the right balance as the "people's"
utilities operator, the easy saloon keeper, and avuncular
presence on the black Northside. While Paulsson does not
explicitly state it, the city's center of political gravity
lay in the class of year-round homeowners and cottage
operators at the Inlet, who looked upon Boardwalk hotel
operators with suspicion and expected Kuehnle to limit costly
local improvements. On Kuehnle's left, his chief GOP rival,
William Riddle, an ex-Henry George Democrat, championed
business efficiency and a square deal for labor. Riddle made
a political reputation fighting franchise "grabs" and
upholding the rights of small property owners.
By 1908, Atlantic City had become a "national symbol" of the
Sabbatarian crisis. Paulsson documents the growing strength,
cohesion, and determination of the Sunday-closing militants
and their notable achievements in New Jersey. The Vorhees
Act, an enforcement law, was passed by the state legislature
in 1901; and the Bishops' Law of 1906, called for license
revocation for Sunday liquor sales. New Jersey Governor J.
Franklin Fort, a Republican, was under increasing pressure to
carry out the Bishops' Law, or at least to jawbone its local
enforcement. He replied in 1908 by appointing investigation
bodies, the Crimes Commission and Excise Commission. The
latter visited Atlantic City and was astounded by flagrant
violations of the Sunday closing laws and the thumbing of the
Bishops' Law by a sheriff who refused to arrest and grand
juries that would not indict. The Excise Commission was
particularly scandalized by the Royal Arch's 1907
"Regulations," which called for locked front doors, no music,
no gambling, but which countenanced side-door liquor sales.
In August, 1908, proclaiming Atlantic City gripped in a
"saturnalia of vice," Governor Fort threatened to call out
the national guard. Mayor Franklin P. Stoy backed down, and
the Royal Arch whipped liquor dealers into line, but within
months saloons returned to Sunday business.
The liberal policy equilibrium broke with Kuenhnle's
ambitions for a minor-league baseball franchise in Atlantic
City and his misguided attempt to mount Sunday baseball in
1908. The Lord's Day Alliance was up in arms, determined to
go after Sunday movies as well as the den of iniquity at the
Inlet. They pursuaded Governor Fort to invoke the Vorhees
Act, which led to the arrest of Mayor Stoy. While business
leaders closed ranks around Kuehnle and the embattled mayor,
a People's Republican Organization emerged, representing
Boardwalk hotel interests and their friends in the black
Northside, who attacked Kuehnle's recklessness on Sunday
baseball.
A more decisive threat to Atlantic City's autonomy was the
ambition of the Princeton professor, Woodrow Wilson, for the
governor's mansion. In 1910, efforts by the Boardwalk
interests to wrest control of the GOP from Kuehnle coincided
with Wilson's 1910 gubernatorial campaign and the electoral
landslide, giving Democrats control of the state legislature.
Mobilized by Hudson County boss James Nugent, Democrats
proceeded in 1911 to convene the Macksey Commission to
investigate vote fraud in Atlantic City. The comission had
little trouble dredging up damaging evidence, which sent
Kuehnle reeling. But when an Atlantic County grand jury
failed to act against the main culprits, Governor Wilson
convened a special panel, which brought quick indictments of
Kuehnle and 61 others as well as Sunday liquor sellers.
Local editors finished the process by depicting Kuehnle as a
rapacious villain, a portrait that was picked up by the
muckraking press across the country, which helped propel
Wilson's presidential candidacy in 1912.
The liberal policy--or what was left of it--still had a
remarkable vitality. While Kuehnle was indicted on
corruption charges and later sent to prison, Atlantic City
opinion regarded him as a local boy, who stood for the
people's interests, however perverse. In 1912, Atlantic City
adopted the commission form of government under New Jersey's
Walsh Act, and William Riddle was chosen by the commission as
the new mayor. That year, after yet another spectacular
investigation--this time by detective William J. Burns's
agency in cahoots with Atlantic County Sabbatarians--the
reform sweep of Atlantic City was nearly complete. For the
next three years, the city's lid was down. Bars closed on
Sunday, censorship suppressed risque amusements on the
Boardwalk, and gambling greatly diminished. As the Great War
drew near, a consensus gathered around reform, led by
Boardwalk hotelmen, who learned that wholesomeness might have
put a dent into the excursion business, but big hotels could
prosper.
Paulsson never really pins downs what overturned the equipoise that
was the liberal policy. He presents so many seasons of
outrage and reform that we begin to wonder what made the
difference in 1911, as opposed to (say) the mid-1890s, 1900,
1902, and 1907. We can take him at his word that
Sabbatarianism crested in 1909, but that merely begs the
question, Why then? The question is probably unfair, given
Paulsson's general argument that militant Protestantisism was
on the rise during the late nineteenth century, provoked in
good measure by the industrialization of pleasures and vice
at seaside resorts like Atlantic City. We are left to
conclude that ethnocultural forces provided the structural
background for the 1911 confrontation, which Governor
Wilson's electoral triumph brought into decisive focus.
Ironically, the Sabbatarian cause would be consummated by
Democrats under James Nugent, the Hudson County Democratic
boss, no mean protector of saloon keepers on his own home
grounds.
Paulsson's presentation is further marred by a rather
elliptical chapter organization that brings the reader back
three times to the 1911 confrontation, and a narrative style
that leaves crucial evidence out of chronological order. The
book is a frustration to historians who want to know what
decision makers knew and when they knew it. He also throws
in too many details about Atlantic City's illicit affairs.
The stuff is absolutely fascinating, and is enough to
convince any remaining skeptics about the ethnocultural
interpretation of Progressive reform. But readers will drown
in the details. The book is an engaging and readable account
of a middle-size city in the throws of Progressive reform.
Paulsson documents the impact of the Sabbatarian in enormous
and overwhelming detail. But I wish for more clarity and
more control over the narrative.
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