Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-09-29
GERAN LAW OPENS
WAY To FLAGRANT
ABUSES, IS CLAIM
Makeup of Conventions Gives
Power to Few, Shuts Out
Thousands.
ESSEX DEMOCRATS WILL
FIGHT POLITICAL FADS
Republican Delegation Has Out
lined Platform to Support
at Trenton Tuesday.

Esse county delegates to the Re
publican State convention will &c to
Trenton next Tuesday with a platform
which they hope the State convention
of their party will see fit to adopt.
The regulars will be in control of the
convention, but there will be come
Progressive delegates from Hudson
county. George L.. Record will likely
be present at the convention by proxy,
and he is expected to have some
trouble-making resolutions to offer.
Essex county Democrats will attend
their convention, to be held in Trenton
on the same day, but they will not go
down to the State capital with any
c~ut-and-dried platform. They VIII be
prepared, however, to fight the adoption
of fads like the initiative n recall,
for which Governor Wilson has become
a special pleader since listening to the
talk of Western radicals, notwithstand-
ing that for years at Princeton he
taught that these things We're all
bosh."
The ex-professor of "bosh" may not
insist on the adoption of these things
next Tuesday in the convention. If he
does they may go through, as the dele
gates are the candidates for legislative
offices and the hold-over senators of
the party, who. with the expectation
of being in the Legislature next winter,
will be anxious to bask In the guberna-
toriar sunshine. A governor does
not have to hold up his han and say
that he has patronage to distribute in
order to make legislators understand.
The Governor is a member of the Dem
ocratic convention.
The makeup of the convention is
causing dissatisfaction among the pro-
gressive element, who were worsted in
the primaries Tuesday. The Progress
sive Republicans of Essex county have
awakened to the fact that although
they polled nearly 10000 votes in the
primaries they will have no represent
tation in the convention. The Wilson
L.eaguers in this county are in the same
boat. The situation reveals another
serious defect of the Geran election
law.
Under the Geran law not even a
powerful minority will have any voice
in the selection of a platform. Politi-
clans see In this condition a most I'M
wise state of affairs, and one that
needs amendment along with other fea-
lures of the Geran law.
The platform that the Essex Repub-
licans will spring may or may not be
adopted at the State convention. One
of the influential Republicans of Essex
county said today that he was opposed
to having the Essex delegates bound
by any platform that represented the
ideas of South Jersey. He suggested
that 1t might be a good plan for the
convention to ignore the framing of
a State platform altogether and let
each county declare, through its can
didates, its own principles. A State
platform, put through by one section,
he pointed out, will not be binding on
the other section, anyway. There is a
strong feeling that something should
be done to restore the convention to
more representative lines.
The Republican convention will meet
in the Republican Club in Trenton. In
other years the largest theatre in Tren-
ton had to be used for this purpose.
The Democratic convention will assem-
BILE in the Masonic Temple.
With the candidates for the Legisla-
tire as the delegates, and the Cow
ernor the chief delegate, it is pointed
out hat the Geran law opens the way
to a more fragrant system of bossism
than the State ever knew. Whatever
a governor says is apt to go, as legis-
lators are noted for their subserviency
to the gu~bernatorial whip. In the
years when the governor leaves office
he is not a member of the convention,
but the candidate to succeed him is,
Which is regarded as another bad con-
dition Of affairs.