Background
Walter Evans Edge was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 20, 1873. He was the son of William Edge, an employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Mary Evans. He grew up in Pleasantville, New Jersey, near Atlantic City.
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Walter Evans Edge
Edit ProfileEducation
He left school at fourteen.
Career
Walter started in the newspaper business as a printer's devil, and later published his own newspapers, the Atlantic City Daily Press and the Atlantic City Evening Union. Early in his life, Edge determined to make his fortune, then enter public service.
Both ambitions were fulfilled. He was a self-made man, and his career was distinguished by dedication to efficiency and economy in government and to the development of New Jersey and national commercial and business interests. At the age of sixteen he was employed by the Dorland Advertising Agency in Atlantic City; he took over the firm before he was twenty and quickly built it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Under Edge's management, Dorland moved beyond the promotion of the New Jersey resort to resort and travel advertising and promotion in the United States and Europe.
Edge entered politics as journal clerk of the New Jersey State Senate (1897 - 1899), and then served as senate secretary from 1901 to 1904. Elected to the state assembly in 1909, he was chosen its Republican leader in 1910. He served in the state senate for two terms (1911 - 1916), and as senate majority leader (1912) collaborated with Governor Woodrow Wilson in the passage of a workmen's compensation law. He was senate president in 1915 and the next year chaired an economy and efficiency commission that consolidated state boards and departments, and sponsored a state budget bill designed to centralize purchasing and place fiscal responsibility in the governor's office.
In 1916 Edge campaigned successfully for the governorship as "A Businessman With a Business Plan, " winning a three-year term (1917 - 1920). In his inaugural address he promised to convert the state government into a modern business corporation. The governor was to be a kind of business manager, the state legislators corporate directors, and the citizenry stockholders. Scandals in the state prison system allowed Edge to institute major reforms in the administration of penal and charitable institutions. A prison inquiry commission, headed by Dwight Morrow, and a parallel commission to investigate state charitable institutions, led by Ellis B. Earle, were created to promote more efficient operation and more professional and humane treatment.
In 1918 the New Jersey Plan centralized the state penal and welfare services under the supervision of volunteer citizen boards that hired expert directors. According to James Leiby, however, the widely hailed Edge reforms were ineffective.
Edge, Morrow, and Earle, progressive-minded businessmen-financiers, focused almost exclusively on administrative improvements as opposed to an inquiry into "what was actually happening to the people in the institutions. " Other undertakings of the Edge administration, concluded by his successors, embraced plans for a vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River to New York City (Holland Tunnel), a bridge linking Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, and interstate development of the facilities of New York port (The Port of New York Authority, 1921).
Edge's administration was a paradigm of the businessman in government, dedicated and assured in his pursuit of New Jersey's commercial potential. Edge was elected to the United States Senate in 1919 and again in 1924.
In the 1920's he was associated with the promotion of a Nicaraguan canal, the development of the Virgin Islands, improved salaries for postal employees, and the repeal of prohibition. On November 21, 1929, President Herbert Hoover appointed Edge ambassador to France. As was characteristic of the State Department under Hoover, Edge was kept tightly reined; diplomatic decisions were made in Washington by the president, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, and Treasury Under Secretary Ogden L. Mills. The Hoover Moratorium, a unilateral declaration that provided for postponement of reparations owed France by Germany as well as the wartime debts owed to the United States by its former allies, caught Edge as well as the French government by surprise.
He sympathized with France's insistence on a quid pro quo for concessions to Germany on reparations and arms parity to consist of Anglo-American guarantees of her security. The onset of the Great Depression and the intensification of French nationalism, inspired by fear of a renascent Germany, further marked his tour in France.
The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and the Democratic landslides of the 1930's, seemed to have ended Edge's political career.
As a result of a Republican split in New Jersey in 1943, Edge was nominated for governor as a means of healing party differences. He was elected for the 1944-1947 term. Wartime and postwar problems, including major strikes, pressure for civil rights legislation, and the strains of demobilization, were complicated by a bitter struggle between Edge and Democratic mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City. At issue was Edge's quest for passage of a modernized state constitution to replace that of 1844. Hague probably feared the strengthening of the governor's fiscal and investigatory functions, and the proposal was defeated at the polls in 1944. A new constitution was secured by Edge's successor in office, Alfred E. Driscoll, in 1947. Edge's final legacy to his state was the deeding of the historic Princeton estate, Morven, as the governor's mansion following his death.
He died in New York City.
Achievements
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Walter was a prominent diplomat and politician who was twice the Governor of New Jersey, from 1917 to 1919 and again from 1944 to 1947, serving as governor during both World War I and World War II. Edge also served as United States Senator representing New Jersey from 1919 to 1929 and as United States Ambassador to France from 1929 to 1933.
Works
Religion
Edge was a Presbyterian while young, becoming a member of the Pleasantville Presbyterian Church in 1889, but later was an Episcopalian.
Politics
Eager to expand the nation's export trade, in 1919 he sponsored legislation to amend the Federal Reserve Act by liberalization of credits on the export of American goods. He also proposed a joint resolution that led to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. A bureau of the budget, he explained, would introduce "real business control and management of our national responsibilities. " The plan also reflected the business and financial community's concern with swollen federal expenditures and an expansion of federal functions in wartime and the postwar period. An internationalist, Edge joined with the "mild reservationists" who favored United States adherence to the League of Nations subject to protection of national sovereignty.
While he conceded the necessity of many of the New Deal's reforms, he deplored its fiscal policies and Roosevelt's alliance "with groups strange to American democracy. "
Membership
Edge was a member of numerous Atlantic City and Atlantic County civic, fraternal, social and business organizations, including the Atlantic City Hospital Association, the Atlantic City Country Club, the Atlantic City Elks Lodge, Trinity Lodge No. 79 and Masonic Belcher Lodge No. 180 of the Free and Accepted Masons, and the Atlantic County Historical Society.
Interests
Connections
Edge married Lady Lee Phillips on June 10, 1907. She died in 1915; they had one son. His second marriage was to Camilla Loyall Ashe Sewall on December 9, 1922; they had three children.
References
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Born
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Died
January 29, 1956 (aged 83) -
Nationality
American -
Religion
Episcopalian -
Political Party
Republican