Scannell's New Jersey first citizens : biographies and portraits of the notable living men and women of New Jersey with informing glimpses into the state's history and affairs, 1917-1918, Vol I, Part 59

Author: Sackett, William Edgar, 1848- ed; Scannell, John James, 1884- ed
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Patterson, N.J. : J.J. Scannell
Number of Pages: 592


USA > New Jersey > Scannell's New Jersey first citizens : biographies and portraits of the notable living men and women of New Jersey with informing glimpses into the state's history and affairs, 1917-1918, Vol I > Part 59


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When he was ready for business, he opened an office in Atlanta, Ga .. but gave up the practice in 1883 to answer a call to the educational field. From '83 to '85 he did post graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore, Md .; he was Professor of History and Political Economy at Bryn Mawr College, Pa. from 1885-1888, and from 1888 to 1890, Professor in the same branches at Wesleyan University. In June, 1890. he was elected Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Princeton University : in 1895 he was assigned to the chair of Jurisprudence; in 1897 promoted to


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be McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Politics ; and, made President of Princeton University in 1902, served until 1910.


He was elected Governor of New Jersey, November, 1910, over Vivian M. Lewis, republican, with 49,056 plurality, inaugurated on January 17, 1911 and took part, immediately after the organization of the legislature, in the election of a United States Senator to succeed John Kean. The pre- vailing idea was that the democratic Legislature would select ex-United States Senator James Smith. But, in a referendum, held in the Fall of 1910 under the Senatorial Preferential Act, and in which Mr. Smith had not participated, James E. Martine had been indicated as the preference of the party voters; and Gov. Wilson insisted that the Legislature was bound to make the popular choice effective by selecting Martine. That was done after weeks of excitement, and enormous impetus was given to the movement that materialized, after Gov. Wilson became President of the United States, in the Federal constitutional amendment for the election of United States Senators in all the states by popular vote instead of by the legislatures. Other products of his administration, as Governor. were the "Seven Sisters" act to en- force personal responsibility for un- lawful acts of corporations, forbid- ding interlocking directorates, etc .; laws to punish for corrupt practises at elections, to provide for govern- ment of cities by three to five elec- tive rulers on the "Short Ballot" System ; providing for the nomina- tion of all elective officials, from Governor to constable, in popular primaries and making nominations by convention unlawful; providing for choice of election booth officers by civil service test and otherwise reforming the election machinery of the state; and providing for the es- tablishment of Jury Commissions in the counties as a means of ending the control of political and public affairs by the sheriff's through grand juries of their own drawing.


In June, 1912, Governor Wilson was nominated by the Democratic Na- tional Convention at Baltimore, for President of the United States; and in November he polled 6,286,214 votes against 3,488,922 cast for W. H. Taft, Regular Republican and 4,126,020 cast for Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive Republican. In the Electoral College 41 states cast 435 votes for Gov. Wilson. On March 1, 1913, he resigned his office as Governor of New Jersey and on March 4, 1913, was inaugurated President of the United States.


Features of President Wilson's administration in the international field, during his first term were his refusal of recognition to General Huerta as President of Mexico followed by Huerta's deposition and flight ; and a complicated diplomatie policy that for a time-and when the situation was


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often tense-kept the United States out of the War of the Nations that. starting between Austria and Servia in the summer of 1914, eventually plunged a dozen European powers-and finally even involved the United States-into the most bloody and destructive conflict in all the history of Time.


The domestic poliey of President Wilson's administration has been particularly featured by President Wilson's appearing before the two Houses of Congress in person to read his messages and other communica- tions-the innovation being in pursuance of his policy of "talking direct to the people." In legislation during his first term, President Wilson promoted and secured the passage by Congress of the Underwood tariff law, designed to reduce by one-half the duty on foodstuffs, on woolen clothing by nearly two-thirds, on cotton clothing by one-third and the average rate on all goods to about 26% ; the passage of the Glass-Owen Banking Reserve law which plans to fore-stall panics by concentrating the reserves of 25.000 banks into a single banking association and to mobolize the reserves of all member- banks so as to make them liquid and quickly available ; a law creating the Federal Farm Loan Board and system of Rural Credits to facilitate loans to farmers ; the passage of laws imposing an income tax and taxes on in- heritances, for the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, of the Feder- al Employment Bureau, of the Board of Mediation and Conciliation charged with the settlement of labor controversies and one of arbitration, to in- quire into the reasons for pending strikes ; laws for a commission to devise a system of Vocational Education, for Government aid in laying out and maintaining good roads, for the construction of 1,000 miles of railroad in Alaska to develop resources there, for the admission of foreign ships to American Registry, for Army re-organization and enlarging and federal- izing the militia of the several states, for a naval bill calling for 16 battle- ships and cruisers and adequate auxiliary fleet and appropriating $20,000.000 for a Government plant to produce nitrate for the manufacture of muni- tions, and $11,000,000 for a Government armor plant.


On the eve of the President's re-election in 1916 the Railroad Brother- hoods threatened a general strike on all the railways in the country for an eight hour day and for overtime compensation. The strike order was to have gone into effect on August 1, but the President's intervention induced the Brotherhood Chiefs to postpone the "call out" until September 4th. The sit- uation remaining meanwhile acute, because of the deadlock between the railroad managers and the employees that threatened to paralyze the com- merce of the nation, President Wilson (August 29th) laid the situation be- fore the two Houses of Congress. "The four hundred thousand men from whom the demands proceeded had voted to strike if their demands were re- fused," he said in Ins personal address; "the strike was imminent : it has since been set for the fourth of September next. It affects the men who man the freight trains on practically every railway in the country. The freight service throughout the United States must stand still until their places are filled, if, indeed, it should prove possible to fill them at all. Cities will be cut off from their food supplies, men of every sort and occupation will be thrown out of employment, countless thousands will in all likelihood be brought. it may be. to the very point of starvation, and a tragical national calamity brought on." unless an adjustment were made.


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He urged the establishment of an eight hour day as the legal basis of work and wages for all railway employees actually engaged in interstate transportation, and the appointment by the President of a small commission to observe the actual results in experience of the adoption of the eight hour day in all of its practical aspects-such commission to report to Congress "in order that the public may learn from an unprejudiced source just what actual developments have ensued." A law (Public-No. 252-64th Congress) covering these two suggestions was passed, but action was postponed upon cognate suggestions. At the re-opening of Congress in December the Pres- ident again went before the Houses to urge enactment of the further laws-one, for the enlargement and administrative reorganization of the Interstate Commerce Commission and a second lodging in the hands of The Executive "the power," as he phrased it, "in case of military necessity, to take control of such portions and such rolling stock of the railways of the country as may be required for military use and to operate them for mili- tary purposes, with authority to draft into the military service of the United States such train crews and administrative officials as the circum- stances require for their safe and efficient use." These acts of Executive mediation warded off the most disastrous strike that has ever threatened the peace and safety of the nation.


Meanwhile in June of 1916 President Wilson was renominated, by ac- clamation, by the Democratic National Convention at Chicago. The contest between himself and ex-Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Hughes, whom the republicans had nominated, was a close one that the vote of California, after days of doubt, decided in President Wilson's favor ; and in the Elec- toral College of 1917 he was declared to have been re-elected for the term 1917-1921. The official declaration of the count, made by the two Houses of Congress, gave President Wilson 277 electoral votes to 254 cast for ex- Justice Hughes.


Soon after President Wilson's second inauguration on March 4th, 1917, the relations between the United States and Germany had become so acute that the President felt called upon to present the situation to Congress, which he did in a personal address before the two Houses jointly assembled ; and that body adopted a resolution declaring a State of War to exist be- tween the two countries. The declaration was followed by loans of bil- lions of money to the Entente Allies, by the passage of an act for the com- pulsory service of all males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one and by the appropriation of sums unprecedented for magnitude in all the history of the nation for the support of an army and for enlarged naval facilities.


President Wilson is the author of the following works: "Congressional Government" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston) ; "The State" (D. C. Heath & Co., Boston) ; "State and Federal Governments of the United States" (D. C. Heath & Co., Boston) ; "Division and Reunion" (Longmans, Green & Co., London & New York) ; "An Old Master" (Scribner's, New York) ; "Mere Literature" (Houghton. Mifflin & Co.) ; "George Washington" (Har- per & Brothers, New York) ; "A Short History of the American People" (Harper & Brothers, New York) : "Constitutional Government in the United States" (Columbia University Press, New York) ; "New Freedom" (Double-


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day Page & Co., Garden City, L. I.) : "When a Man Comes to Himself" (Harper & Son).


V


FREDERICK C. J. WISS-Newark, (33 Littleton Avenue.)- Manufacturer. Born in Newark, 1858; son of Jacob and Mary (Kaiser) Wiss; married at Newark, 1SS6, to Charlotte S. Lange, daughter of John W. and Catherine ( Bierwirth) Lange.


Frederick C. J. Wiss is President and Treasurer of J. Wiss & Sons Co., widely known for its work in the manufacture of cutlery. The business was established by his father. Jacob Wiss, in 1848. Its first location was in Bank Street near Broad, and its business expanded until it now occupies about 25 city lots. Its manufacturing is done in a series of one, two, three and four story buildings in which about 500 hands are employed.


Mr. Wiss was educated in the public schools of the city and at the age of 17 took charge of his father's establishment. He is also President and Treasurer of the Wiss Realty Corporation, a director of the New Jersey Manufacturers Association and the New Jersey Manufacturers Casualty In- surance Co., and a member of the Board of Trade and other associations.


CAROLINE B. WITTPENN (Mrs. Henry O.)-JJersey City, (125 Kensington Avenue.)-Civic Worker. Born in Hoboken, daughter of Edwin A. and Martha Bayard (Dod) Stevens ; married to Archi- bald Alexander; 2nd, in 1915 to Henry Otto Wittpenn, of Jersey City.


Mrs. Caroline Wittpenn's activities have been a large part of the state's civic history for many years. She has been particularly interested in the saving of the youth of the state for the honorable and self supporting activ- ities of life. She regards it as one of the highest economic functions of the community that it make the life of every man, woman and child in it of as much value as possible in the work that counts for community betterment. It was largely through her agitation of the conditions which she found to exist in the almshouse at Snake Hill, where a large colony of little children numbering several hundred were being degraded and unfitted for decent endeavor by herding in the same building with an army of adult vagrants, that the State Board of Children's Guardians came into existence. Before the Childrens' Guardians Board could be established however, the almshouse had been emptied of its little dependents and homes of proper atmosphere provided for them. The reform has since been accomplished at the Almis- houses in all the other counties.


With the same purpose-of saving lives that might, by proper grooming, be made useful to the community-Mrs. Wittpenn was also deeply interested in the movement for the establishment at Rahway of the State Reforma- tory for the confinement and up-lift treatment of "first offenders." With her brother, Richard Stevens, of Hoboken, who is also unselfishly active in


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philanthropic community work, she was largely instrumental in securing the legislation that brought about the Probation Officer, and that led later to the establishment of the Courts for the Trial of Juvenile Delinquents. In all of these movements Mrs. Wittpenn was nobly aided by the late Mrs. Emily Williamson, daughter-in-law of the late Chancellor Benjamin Wil- liamson, of Elizabeth.


Mrs. Wittpenn is a member of the noted Castle Point (Hoboken) fam- ily and a sister of Col. Edwin A. Stevens (q. v.).


Her husband, Henry Otto Wittpenn (q. v.), was Mayor of Jersey City for some years and at the time of this writing is Naval Officer of the Port of New York.


Mrs. Wittpenn is at present President of the N. J. State Board of Children's Guardians, President. Board of Managers of the Woman's Re- formatory and Probation Officer of Hudson county.


HENRY OTTO WITTPENN-Jersey City, (125 Kensington Ave.) Manufacturer. Born in Jersey City, October 21, 1872; son of John J. Wittpenn ; married at Hoboken, to Mrs. Caroline B. Alexander, daughter of Edwin Augustus and Martha Bayard (Dod) Stevens.


Henry Otto Wittpenn is Naval Officer of the Port of New York and has for some years been regarded as a gubernatorial possibility in New Jersey. Mrs. Alexander, his wife, is of the famous Stevens family of Castle Point, Hoboken, and is herself a well known worker for civic and charity and penal reforms.


Mr. Wittpenn is of German extraction. His father, when he came to these shores, went into the grocery business on Communipaw Avenue, Jer- sey City. The son assisted in the store while attending the public schools and after his graduation took a course of special study across the seas. Returning to America he entered his father's employ and upon his father's death succeeded to his business. He added to the retail trade a wholesale feed establishment located on Black Tom Island. Later he entered on the manufacture and sale of bricks as a member of the firm of Houghtaling & Wittpenn.


Mr. Wittpenn has a natural bent for politics and soon was active in the local swim. His first official position was as County Supervisor of Hudson County, the duties of which he discharged with a satisfaction that led to his re-election in 1906 by a plurality exceeding 20,000. That triumph pointed him out to the democratic managers in Jersey City as fit to measure swords as a candidate for Mayor, with Mark M. Fagan. Mr. Fagan had captured the Mayoralty in previous years without the aid of the local repub- lican chiefs, and his election, term after term, had bred the idea that he was invincible. Supervisor Wittpenn accepted the nomination against him and surprised the state by achieving an election with a plurality that exceeded 9,000. He was elected for succeeding terms and finally came to be regarded as a local chief of equal power with the politically famous Robert Davis.


In the Democratic State Convention of 1907 Mayor Wittpenn received


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Wood


some votes as a candidate for Governor and he went again before that of 1910 with apparently an assurance of the nomination till ex-Senator Smith suggested the name of Woodrow Wilson, President of Princeton University. Even in the presence of that over-shadowing name Mayor Wittpenn made a good showing in the balloting. It was assumed that the nomination in 1913 would go to him as a matter of course; but Gov. Wilson had mean- while with-drawn to assume the Presidency of the United States, and the opportunities opened to him by his succession, as Acting Governor, to Dr. Wilson enabled Senator Fielder to make a successful campaign against him. The State Convention system had meanwhile been abolished for the nominating primary, and Mayor Wittpenn was persuaded to with-draw from the rivalry in the interest of party harmony. Senator Fielder was nominat- ed and elected. President Wilson in 1914 appointed ex-Mayor Wittpenn to the office of Naval Officer of the Port of New York-the second most im- portant port office in the United States with a salary of $8.000 a year at- tached to it. Mayor Wittpenn was still in that position when the campaign of 1916 was in its formative state and he went into the state primary as a candidate again for the nomination for Governor. The democratic voters accepted him as their candidate, but a new republican wave had begun to sweep over the state and he was defeated by Senator Edge of Atlantic county whom the republicans put up against him.


ALEXANDER C. WOOD-Riverton .- Manufacturer, Banker. Born at Haddonfield, November 20, 1841; son of Isaac H. and Elizabeth H. (Cooper) Wood ; married on June 7, 1866, to Mary Emma Stokes, daughter of Nathaniel N. and Nancy E. Stokes, of Cinnaminson.


Alexander C. Wood is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Esta- brook Steel Pen Manufacturing Company and is besides deeply interested in the business and political life of the southern section of New Jersey. His family is of Quaker origin. He is himself a member of the Society of Friends and President of the Board of Managers of the Friends' Asylum at Frankford, Pa. His education, begun at the Friends School in Haddon- field, was finished at the Union Academy in Philadelphia. Soon after leav- ing the Academy, Mr. Wood engaged in mercantile pursuits and has since been a forceful factor in financial and commercial circles. His election as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Estabrook Steel Pen Manufac- turing Co. came in 1911. Since 1902 he has also been President of the Cam- den Safe Deposit & Trust Company, and he is also President of the C'amden. Atlantic and Ventnor Land Co.


Besides his activity in these directions, he is identified with the polities and philanthropies of Camden county. In the national election of 1904, the republicans of the First Congressional District named him as one of the Presidential Electors and he was of those who cast the vote of the state for Theodore Roosevelt for President of the United States.


Mr. Wood is a Trustee of the Cooper Hospital at Camden and of Bryn


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Mawr College at Bryn Mawr, Pa., and a member of the Historical Society of Philadelphia.


EDWARD MOTT WOOLLEY-Passaic, (71 Park Avenue.)- Author. Born in Milwaukee, Wis., on February 25th, 1867; son of James T. and Mary A. Woolley ; married in 1898, to Anna Lazelle Thayer.


Children : Catherine, born 1904; Marion, born 1912.


Edward Mott Woolley is the author of many books and several hundred magazine articles. He was engaged in newspaper work on the Pacific coast and in Chicago for many years, and as a special writer for New York newspapers. As a newspaper reporter he laid the foundation for his maga- zine work, and since 1910 has been a special writer for the "Saturday Evening Post," "Mc Clure's," "Collier's," "Every- body's," "American Magazine," "Scribner's" and other leading periodicals. In this work he has traveled widely, covering every state in the Union and European countries.


Since 1910 his home has been at Passaic. Mrs. Woolley is herself an author, having written half a dozen books for girls. She writes under the name of Lazelle Thayer Wool- ley.


Some of Mr. Woolley's books are "Roland of Altenburg," "The Junior Partner," "Addi- son Broadhurst," "The Win- ning Ten," the "Donald Kirk Series," "The Cub Reporter," and several historical romances. His work has ranged from romantic novels to detective stories, and from school stories for children to business stories. More than fifty of his business stories have been published in the "Saturday Evening Post."


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GEORGE WURTS-Paterson, (149 Hamilton Ave.)-Editor. Born at Easton, Pen., on September 13th, 1829; son of John Jacob and Ann Barbara (Norris) Wurts; married at Newark, on June 15th, 1854, to Elizabeth Camp Ross, daughter of Edwin and Sarah Johnson (Moore) Ross.


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Children : William L. R., born May 5th, 1857; George H., born December 20th, 1868.


George Wurts, Dean of New Jersey Journalism by right of the longest continued service in editorial work, was Secretary of State of New Jersey from 1897 to 1902. His first newspaper employment was with the Newark "Daily Advertiser." While he was busy there as a reporter, John Y. Foster resigned his position as editor of the "Newark Mercury" to take up maga- zine work in New York City and Mr. Wurts succeeded to the editorship. Incidental to his editorial duties he was one of the New Jersey corres- pondents of the "New York Times" and the "New York Evening Post." When the Brooklyn "Daily Union" was started, in 1863, he was offered the associate editorship of that ppaer, and, accepting, he served there until February 1, 1865. His resignation from that position was handed in that he might become Editor of the Paterson "Daily Press" in which he had pur- chased an interest. He has since been actively engaged in the service of that newspaper and is now associate editor of its consolidated suc- cessor, the Paterson "Press-Guardian."


Mr. Wurts was President of the New Jersey State Editorial Association in 1876, and has done some writing in prose and verse for among others the old "Knickerbocker Magazine," the "Continental Monthly," "Harpers Maga- zine" and "Scribner's." His editorial activities opened great political oppor- tunities for him but though often solicited he declined all offers of nomi- nations for elective offices. He served however as Secretary of the New Jersey State Senate during the legislative sessions of 1SS0-1SS1-1SS2, and Gov. Griggs appointed him Commissioner of Banking and Insurance in 1896 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of George S. Duryee. He served in that office when the term of Henry C. Kelsey, who had been Secretary of State for twenty-seven years, expired in April, 1897. Gov. Griggs ap- pointed Mr. Wurts as Mr. Kelsey's successor. He served until 1902.


TOPICAL INDEX.


The purpose of this topical index is, primarily, of course, to facilitate reference. The grouping of the numbers of the pages containing references to given topics enables one to find readily all that is to be found here on the subject. It must be explained, however, that only the more important of the topics are treated. References to all the minor matters that con- tribute to the local interest of the sketches would make an index too bulky to be considered.


Business References-U. S. Steel Corp. (gen. counsel) 328; Mutual Benefit Life Ins. Co. (pres.) 195, (counsel) 499; Fidelity Trust Co. (pres.) 354, (gen. counsel) 266; Prudential Ins. Co. (pres.) 138, (mutualization) 281, 294, 319, (actuary) 211, (statistician) 262, (gen. counsel) 327; Public Service Corp'n., 140, (pres.) 352, (statistics) 353, 525; S. U. M. (pres.) 198; East Jersey Water Co., 198; H. L. & I. Co. (gen. mgr.) 77; N. Y. Telephone Co. (pres.) 45 ; Retail Jewelers Ass'n. N. J. (pres. ) 497 ; A. T. Stewart, 323 ; Jacob H. Schiff, 296; E. H. Harriman, 296; Credit Men's Assn., 5; Amer. Bankers' Assn., 270; Rockefeller (personal counsel) 372, (confidential ad- viser) 203; J. P. Morgan & Co., 318, 328, 369; Kuhn Loeb & Co., 296; Jos. Dixon Crucible Co. (pres.) 461; Winslow Lanier & Co., 3; Estabrook Pen Mfg. Co. (pres.) 551.


Educational-Princeton University (pres.) 253, (Theo. Sem. Trustees, pres.) 496 ; Rutgers State University (pres.) 126 ; Seton Hall College (pres.) 360, 366; Drew Theo. Seminary (pres. emer.) 75, (pres.) 501; Centenary Collegiate Inst. (pres.) 504; Stevens Institute (pres.) 274, 475; N. Y. Uni- versity (Dean) 470 ; State Comr. of Education, 307; State School Law Codi- fication, 485; State Teachers Assn., 407, 468; Teachers Salary Act. 478; Teachers' Retirement Fund, 468; Kahn Foundation Teachers Travel, 2; Negro Education, 389; First Kindergarten, 58; School Masters Club (N. Y.) 407; College Entrance Requirements, 166 ;- Public Libraries (Englewood) 335, (Hoboken) 265, (Bloomfield) 289, (Newark) 116, (Plainfield) 422, (First Free Circulating) 375, (First Traveling) 125-Schools (State Nor- mal) 80, 219, (Newark) 407, (Jersey City) 468, (Inquiry into Conditions in State) 196, (Trenton Art) 305, (St. Elizabeth's) 381; Parochial (supt.) 130, (statistics) 382, (Priscilla Braislin) 292-Amherst College (founder) 495.




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