NEW JERSEY: Happy Dad

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Not a bright boy at Princeton, the University of Virginia Law School or Washington & Lee was lanky Frank Joseph Hague Jr. After eight years of dawdling, he never did get a degree. In 1936 he managed to get admitted to the New Jersey bar. Last fortnight, events in the politically throttled State of New Jersey conspired to place Frank Hague Jr., 34, on that state's highest bench (Errors & Appeals) as a lay member at $9,000 a year. The events: 1) loaded with mortgages on properties from which high local taxes had driven business, a big Jersey City bank failed (TIME, Feb. 27); 2) a county judge resigned his $15,000-a-year job to become counsel in the bank's liquidation; 3) to qualify for the county judge's $15,000 job, an Errors & Appeals lay judge resigned; 4) Governor Arthur Harry Moore of New Jersey, political debtor and friend of Democratic Boss Frank Hague Sr. of Jersey City, appointed Frank Hague Jr. to the Errors & Appeals vacancy. Said Governor Moore: "I know this appointment will make his dad happy."