More evidence of Roosevelt’s campaign cited
Edison: Administration keeps Hague alive with patronage
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington – (Jan. 8)
Charges that the Roosevelt administration was keeping the Hague machine alive in New Jersey with feedings of federal patronage were being assayed here today in terms of presidential year politics.
Governor Charles Edison, retiring Democrat, who was formerly a member of President Roosevelt’s Cabinet, made the charges yesterday in citing the appointment of Dr. Edward J. Jennings, a Hague man, to be postmaster at Trenton despite opposition by the non-Hague element of the state Democratic organization.
At a Trenton press conference, Mr. Edison said that without such federal patronage, Mayor Hague “would have been a dead duck long ago – in fact that is all he is living on now.”
The policy of appeasing Mayor Hague has been cited by anti-Roosevelt Democrats and Republicans as an indication that the President intended to seek a fourth term since it is to be expected that the Mayor will control the New Jersey delegation to the Democratic National Convention this year.
Mr. Edison’s pointed complaint gives Republicans some useful presidential year arguments in support of their frequent charge that the Roosevelt administration is or has been aligned with questionable political machines in several large cities including New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Memphis and Jersey City.