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

The Philadelphia establishment grudgingly accepted the Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants who manned their factories, but it refused to compromise the rules on social behavior. A phenomenon that developed in response to the city’s growing blue-collar population was the “corner saloon,” which were little more than shacks placed outside the factories. There were thousands of them, and they provided beer and liquor to workers for a penny a glass. A strong temperance movement, fostered by the local establishment, rose up to stamp out the corner saloon. In 1887 the Pennsylvania Legislature was pressured into adopting the Brooks Law, which severely restricted who could hold a liquor license. In a single year, the number of liquor licenses in Philadelphia was reduced from 5,773 to 1,343. Statutes regulating hours and Sunday Blue Laws further limited the flow of booze to the working class. The patricians who ran Philadelphia were determined to keep their town God-fearing and sober.

Philadelphia’s blue-collar workers soon found out there was a place they could go for a hell-raising good time. Quaker morality had no place in Atlantic City. Prudish standards preaching abstinence from the vices of alcohol, gambling, and casual sex might be observed at home, but while vacationing at the shore, pleasure was the standard and virtue was put in the closet. As Atlantic City entered the 20th century, it acquired a reputation that made it popular with Philadelphia’s factory workers. Sharing the commitment of Boardwalk merchants like John Young were saloonkeepers, madams, and gambling room operators, all determined to give visitors whatever it took to make them happy. The resort existed to make its guests happy. As one long-time resident who understood what Atlantic City was all about has said, “If the people who came to town had wanted Bible readings, we’d have given ’em that. But nobody ever asked for Bible readings. They wanted booze, broads, and gambling, so that’s what we gave ’em.”

Philadelphia’s factories were infernos during the summer. After six days of sucking textile dust or dodging burning cinders, most workers were ready to bust out. Hot summer Sundays weren’t spent in church; it was onto the train and down to the seashore. When they arrived, tourists found a city bent on providing pleasures to satisfy every taste, whether lawful or not. For many of Philadelphia’s workers, the Sunday excursion was their only chance to get away and the last thing they wanted to hear was Atlantic City’s bars were closed on Sunday. Like Pennsylvania, New Jersey’s laws prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages on the Sabbath. In Atlantic City, Sunday wasn’t a day of worship but rather the biggest day of the week, and when it came to making a buck, state law was irrelevant. The booze flowed seven days a week with bartenders willing to serve anyone except children.

For the visitor who relished the excitement of gambling, there were plenty of opportunities. Gambling had been popular with tourists and a moneymaker for the resort since the 1860s. Roulette, faro, and poker were popular games found in most of the taverns, as well as in hotels and clubs. There was no problem for a gambler to find a game, regardless of the size of his pocketbook. In one of its annual series of exposés a writer for the Bulletin reported,As to gambling houses, I can only say this, they are run from away down below Mississippi Avenue where they place a $.05 limit, up to Dutchy’s on Delaware Avenue where some of the best known politicians and down-grade businessmen of Philadelphia stake their $5 to $10 on the deal of the little cards. The Lochiel (a gambling casino) is the center of the gambling in the resort … Dutchy (a gambler who had been driven from Philadelphia) rules the Roost.

The prevalence of gambling, prostitution, and unlawful sales of liquor were admitted to openly by local officials. Hundreds of local families relied on illegal sources of income and as long as the visitors were happy, no one interfered. This brazen violation of the law created a furor in the Philadelphia newspapers nearly every summer. In time, resort businessmen and politicians built up immunity to the newspapers’ criticisms. They learned that being so remote geographically had its advantages. In the years prior to the automobile, other than direct rail service from Philadelphia or New York, Atlantic City was a difficult place to get to. A judge or legal officer sent to enforce the Sunday Blue Laws would have to be dispatched from Trenton. Whether by horseback or stagecoach, such a trip would take an entire day. The powers that be in Trenton were aware of the goings on in the resort, but no one went to the trouble to do anything about it. Thus, the Philadelphia newspapers banged out their editorials condemning the resort, but they never heard from Atlantic City’s officials. Resort politicians knew best how to deal with such complaints—ignore them. When it came to negative news articles about their town, the prevailing attitude among Atlantic City’s politicians was always, “Newspaper is what you wrap fish in.”

Nothing prevented the resort from providing illicit thrills to its patrons, not even a crusading governor in the New Jersey Statehouse. John Fort was elected in the fall of 1907 campaigning on a promise to enforce the Bishops’ Law, which prohibited sale of alcoholic beverages on Sunday. In response to the annual summertime exposés of the Bulletin , Governor Fort declared war on Atlantic City. In July of 1908 he vowed to clean up the town. He appointed a special commission to investigate the resort’s illegal activities and demanded to know why the county prosecutor refused to file complaints against the saloon keepers, gambling room operators, and madams cited by Philadelphia’s newspapers.

In August 1908, Atlantic County Prosecutor Clarence Goldenberg appeared before the governor’s commission. Goldenberg testified that personally he saw nothing wrong with the way the resort was run, but that if someone had evidence of wrongdoing, he would prosecute the cases. The prosecutor admitted that witnesses had brought complaints to him, but that on each occasion after a “courteous hearing,” the grand jury refused to return an indictment. “It has been impossible to get indictments … the grand juries are representative of the business interests of the city and the county. The people of the city are getting the government they want.”

The grand juries were handpicked by the county sheriff, Smith Johnson. Sheriff Johnson understood the legal system and knew how to protect Atlantic City’s businessmen. He controlled the selection of the grand jury and saw to it that everyone chosen to serve was “safe.” He even chose jurors who were tavern owners themselves or local businessmen who benefited from vice. When asked why he made no arrests, Johnson told Governor Fort’s commission that he had enough to do already and saw no need to “go looking for trouble.”

The preliminary reports from his commission enraged Governor Fort. On August 27, 1908, Fort issued a Proclamation branding Atlantic City a “Saturnalia of Vice,” demanding the city close the saloons on Sunday and threatening to exercise Martial Law by sending in the state militia. The Governor’s Proclamation read in part:No one in office or before the Commission questioned the fact that street walking, gambling, houses of ill-fame, people of ill-repute, and obscene pictures and open violations of the Excise laws exist in Atlantic City … never have the notorious street walkers been worse than they have been recently. Never has gambling been more open and more of it in the city than it is right now and the police department and officials of the city all know it.

The resort’s political leaders countered the governor with their tried and true defense—they ignored him. But the business community was incensed and launched a counterattack. On September 8, 1908, a joint letter from the Atlantic City Board of Trade, the Hotel Men’s Association, and the Businessmen’s League was sent to Governor Fort. It amounted to an “Atlantic City Manifesto,” arguing that the governor was being heavy-handed and had treated the resort unfairly. As for the gambling, prostitution, and illegal sale of liquor, the businessmen asserted the “peculiar needs” of a vacation town. It was simply the local custom of entertaining guests and the traditional way of doing business in Atlantic City. This broadside at the governor appeared in the Bulletin and stated in part:The Excise Commission came down and substantially demanded that the sale of liquor on Sunday should immediately cease. This demand, coming as it did in the midst of the summer season, after 50 years disregard, was not complied with … She (the resort) hopes that the State Legislature will not permit to remain longer upon the statute books, in their present shape, laws so crudely drawn that, in their endeavor to prevent a wrong, they, without necessity, have prohibited a right which all consider it without harm to anyone, and which is necessary to the welfare of one of the State’s principal industries, namely, its seashore business.