Change on the Horizon

William Howard Taft, Secretary of War under Teddy Roosevelt was inaugurated after beating orator William Jennings Bryan. Congress passed the 16th Amendment and sent it to the States for ratification. It would create a federal income tax. Most voters assumed the tax would only impact millionaires, and it was a fix for an unpopular reversal of a federal tax by the Supreme Court in 1895. For its first 100 years, the Federal Government used consumption taxes which disproportionally affected the poor. The income tax would become the largest tax of the Federal Government, and fuel its growth. The Lincoln Penny replaced the Indian Head. The economy was humming.

Taft wanted to serve on the Supreme Court, but he served as President first.

The influx of Immigrants from Europe in the second half of the 1800s created a wave of progressive support. New Americans gaining citizenship were overwhelmingly low-income, and they often voted with the party bosses in their city who provided services for immigrants. Punishing the millionaires who summered at the Shore was politically popular.

William R. Matthews, a young builder who built more than half of the buildings at Princeton University during his lifetime stayed at the Beach House. He threw a bash at the new Grill at the hotel. His neighbor from Princeton was at the party and Richard Stockton drew the most attention.

Richard was the grandson of Commodore Robert Field Stockton. He was also a former Envoy to Havre France. He was the prominent guest at the Beach House for the entire summer of 1909. Beach House guests felt the nostalgia for the 1850s when The Commodore stood on the piazza and looked out at his yacht moored in the ocean.

Richard had visited to race horses in 1908. He was the first Stockton to race horses at Sea Girt since the 1860s races around the Crescent. This time he lent his pedigree to the Spring Lake & Sea Girt Country Club on the Manasquan Road, just west of the tracks.

Stockton had a first and a third at the races on opening day and the family enjoyed a polo match between the Deal and Spring Lake/Sea Girt squad. The members of the Sea Girt Company encouraged Stockton to join the club as a director. Former Mayor of Trenton Wallace Sickel, a Globe Rubber executive was tapped as the President of the Club. Globe would become a leader in tire manufacture and wiper blades for new automobiles.

The Postal service was reviewing closing offices. Sea Girt’s was on the list for closure in 1909.

The undertone was that the Governor’s office was wasteful in its summer spending. With the luxury of a mansion at the beach and weeks away from the office, moving the entire state government to Sea Girt for his benefit was an easy attack from political rivals. To ward off criticism, the Governor invited the clerical staff in Trenton for a vacation at the Little White House in August at his expense.

Another reason the Post office may have been on the chopping block is because it was such an easy target when no one was at the Camp. A 1909 news clipping noted:

“On Sunday night for the fourth time within two years, the Sea Girt Post Office was entered by thieves. The contents of a contribution box were taken and the telephone booth was robbed. An attempt was made to break open the safe, but the robbers were frightened off before they could open the door.”

The Nobel Prizes were funded by Alfred Nobel for the greatest benefit to mankind. It was a counter to his destructive invention.

In addition, the Railroad Station was robbed of $80 in July ’09 while the agent was at lunch.

In June 1907 both the station and post office were broken into, robbers used gelgenite to blow open the post office. $500 and the summer's supply of stamps was stolen. They hit them both again in November 1907. There is no record of a local investigation. Sea Girt has just one Marshal and he had other jobs in the resort.

The lots were selling and for the first time, there was a buzz of building. Superintendent Charles Roberts hired Jacob Van Cullen to collect garbage and ashes from the residents. The building on so many small lots made burial impractical. Sea Girt did not allow personal pigs, and the Sea Girt farm had sold their animals in the 1890s.

The service consisted of a horse and wagon and wooden barrels to transfer the trash. Until the 1920s, most garbage was carried to the farm of the collector, or a community pit. Pigs ate the food, glass, metal, and wood were recycled, and they burned or buried anything else. There was no plastic.

Larger communities hired big companies. In 1908 Asbury Park entered into a 10-year agreement to cart all of their ashes, trash, and garbage for $99,000. The Herr Company who won the bid introduced a novel arrangement. They would pick up trash at the back of people’s property. It proved popular at the Shore where the wind could topple ash cans.

The Sea Girt Post office was ultimately saved by the popularity of Mrs. Blakey, the postmistress, and the complaints of those connected to the Guard Camp.