Nelson Johnson - Boardwalk Empire - The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

Originally conceived as a beach village by a doctor hoping to develop a health resort for the wealthy, Atlantic City quickly became a glitzy, raucous vacation spot for the working class. It was a place where visitors came knowing the rules at home didn’t apply. Atlantic City flourished because it gave its guests what they wanted—a naughty good time at an affordable price.

Popular recollections of the old Atlantic City, believed by many, is that it was an elegant seaside resort of the wealthy, comparable to Newport. Such a notion is fantasy. In its prime, Atlantic City was a resort for the blue-collar workers of Philadelphia’s industrial economy. The resort was popular with people who could afford no more than a day or two stay. These working poor came to town each summer to escape the heat of the city and the boredom of their jobs. Atlantic City gave them a place to let loose.

There were four ingredients to the resort’s success. Each was critical. Remove any one of them and Atlantic City would have been a very different place. The first ingredient was rail transportation. But for the railroad, the development of Absecon Island would have waited at least 50 years. The second was Philadelphia and New York real estate investors. They brought the money and expertise needed to build and manage dozens of hotels and hundreds of boardinghouses on an island of sand. The third was a large volume of cheap labor to run things. There was only one labor source: freed slaves and their children. The final ingredient was a local population willing to ignore the law in order to please vacationers. From the turn of the 20th century and for the next 70 years, the resort was ruled by a partnership comprised of local politicians and racketeers. This alliance was a product of the relationship between the economy and politics of the city.

From its inception, Atlantic City has been a town dedicated to the fast buck. Its character as a city is uncommon because it never had any other role to perform than that of a resort. It has always had a singular purpose for its existence—to provide leisure time activities for tourists. Atlantic City’s economy was totally dependent on money spent by out-of-towners. Visitors had to leave happy. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t return.

The key was to cater to patrons’ tastes in pleasure, whether those desires were lawful or not. Resort merchants pandered to the visitor’s desire to do the forbidden, and business owners cultivated the institution of the spree. Within a short time after its founding, Atlantic City was renowned as the place to go for a freewheeling good time. It grew into a national resort by promoting vice as a major part of the local tourist trade. However, maintenance of the vice industry required Atlantic City’s government to make special accommodations. It was inevitable that the principals of the vice industry would make an alliance with the local political leaders. Without some type of understanding between these two spheres of power, Atlantic City’s major tourist attraction would have had a tenuous existence.

The resort’s guests couldn’t be harassed while enjoying themselves. It would be bad for business. That gambling, prostitution, and Sunday sales of liquor violated state law and conventional morality didn’t matter. Nothing could interfere with the visitors’ fun or they might stop coming. Atlantic City’s leaders ignored the law and permitted the local vice trade to operate in a wide-open fashion as if it were legitimate.

The resort’s singular purpose demanded a single mentality to manage its affairs. This need, combined with the dominance of the Republican Party in southern New Jersey for several generations after the Civil War, produced a mind-set that didn’t permit traditional politics. Reformers and critics were a luxury that couldn’t be tolerated. Success of the local economy was the only political ideology. There was not to be a “loyal opposition” nor a bona fide Democratic Party. You went along with the system or you were crushed. By the beginning of the 20th century a political juggernaut bearing a Republican label, and funded with money from the rackets, was firmly entrenched.

The first “boss” of Atlantic City politics was Louis “The Commodore” Kuehnle, who ruled from approximately 1890 to 1910. The Commodore recognized the potential of the local vice industry as a reliable source of income for his political organization. It was Kuehnle who established the procedure for assessing and collecting extortion payments from the racketeers who provided unlawful entertainment. Under the Commodore, gambling parlors, speak-easies, and brothels operated as if they were legal. The only time the local police clamped down on anyone was if they were late with their payment. Money from extortion, together with bribes and kickbacks paid by government contractors and vendors, formed the financial basis of Kuehnle’s machine. After banging heads with Woodrow Wilson in the gubernatorial election of 1910, Kuehnle went to jail for election fraud.

Kuehnle’s successor, Nucky Johnson, was the absolute master of Atlantic City politics for the next 30 years. Johnson understood people and power and knew how to handle both. There was not an elected official or city or county employee who did not owe his job to Nucky. He shared in the profits of every municipal contract and gambling operation in town. Prior to going to jail, Kuehnle tapped Johnson as his successor because he had the support of both the politicians and racketeers. By this time, the people of Atlantic City were conditioned to political bossism, and they accepted Nucky as the resort’s new boss. Atlantic City’s residents expected, and wanted, the type of government from Johnson they had known under the Commodore. They weren’t disappointed.

By means of guile, finesse, and the shrewd use of money obtained through various types of extortion, Nucky Johnson established himself as a force in two different worlds. He was both the most powerful Republican in New Jersey, who could influence the destinies of governors and senators, and a racketeer, respected and trusted by organized crime.

Nucky Johnson gave Atlantic City the brand of leadership it needed. The political and economic power structure that had evolved was thoroughly corrupt. If Johnson had refused to work with the racketeers he would have been replaced. However, Nucky took one giant step beyond what the Commodore had achieved in terms of his alliance with the vice industry. Johnson included the key racketeers as members of the Republican organization, making him head of both the political machine and the rackets. Under Nucky, the two rings of power became one.

The repeal of Prohibition in 1934 marked the beginning of the end for Atlantic City’s days of glory. Two years later, at the prompting of William Randolph Hearst, President Franklin Roosevelt sent the FBI to town and it didn’t leave until it had a conviction against Johnson for income tax evasion. It took five years, thousands of investigative man-hours, dozens of indictments of Johnson’s associates, scores of witnesses who perjured themselves, and several incidents of jury tampering, but Nucky was finally dethroned. In 1941 Johnson went to jail and served four years.

The power structure Nucky left behind was far more complex than the one he inherited from the Commodore. Atlantic City’s next boss had to be someone who could command the respect of the local politicians and racketeers alike. Johnson’s successor, Frank “Hap” Farley, was the Irish American lawyer/politician par excellence. His career and method of operation have striking similarities with the fictional character Frank Skeffington, created by Edwin O’Connor in The Last Hurrah . Prior to Johnson’s troubles with the FBI he hand-picked Farley to run for the state assembly in 1937. During the next several years Hap Farley ingratiated himself with two of Johnson’s most influential lieutenants—Jimmy Boyd, clerk of the board of freeholders and Johnson’s political right hand, and Herman “Stumpy” Orman, a streetwise real estate salesman who had done well for himself during Prohibition and was well-connected with the national crime syndicates.