The Forerunners of Woodrow Wilson

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. NEW JERSEY'S PRELIMINARY STRUGGLE FOR SELF GOVERNMENT. Probably the most interesting fight for reform in New Jersey before the present era, began about twenty years ago when George L. Record, a tall New England Yankee, who had migrated from Maine to Jersey City, proposed to reach the cancerous...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. NEW JERSEY'S PRELIMINARY STRUGGLE FOR SELF GOVERNMENT. Probably the most interesting fight for reform in New Jersey before the present era, began about twenty years ago when George L. Record, a tall New England Yankee, who had migrated from Maine to Jersey City, proposed to reach the cancerous growth of boss rule and machine domination by aiming at these para- siles of the republic the artillery of a direct primary measure. This was the first state-wide primary bill drafted in the United States, and in every essential point was identical with the Geran Act of 1911. While Mr. Record was unable on account of machine opposition to push this measure through the legislative mill, he induced Governor George T. Werts to recommend it in his first annual message to the legislature, January 1, 1893. The press reports of his inaugural created notice throughout the country of this novel scheme, and many inquiries came from the West for copies of the bill. It bore fruit in several states where it furnished a model for primary statutes, notably in Oregon, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was ten years after Mr. Record's direct primary bill was introduced in New Jersey before he was able to secure its passage. In 1903 Governor Franklin Murphy, a notorious stand-patter, signed it. This was not the efficient legislation which its originator desired, but it was the best which could be procured at that time, and it was the first step leading up to our present state-wide primary law. Its enactment made it possible to fight machines, and to meet their heretofore undaunted experts on thsir own ground. It denied them the privileges which they had so long exercised of declaring who might vote, and later on of counting the ballots. This last provision was aimed at communities where...