At the age of ten, he and another boy started a four-page weekly newspaper devoted to social news, the Pleasantville Bladder, which had a circulation of approximately one hundred.

[2] Edge also attended Pleasantville Republican party rallies and later recounted that he came away from these events feeling great excitement and a growing determination to someday participate in politics himself.

[3] At the age of sixteen, Edge took a part-time job with John M. Dorland, who operated an Atlantic City advertising business.

[2] From 1897 until 1899 he served as journal clerk of the New Jersey Senate, a position that enabled him to meet state political figures and learn parliamentary procedures.

In the 1890s Edge was a sergeant with the Morris Guards, a private military organization based in Atlantic City, and when the Spanish–American War began in 1898, he volunteered the company for service in the United States Army.

[5] In 1904, Edge ran as a reformer in the Republican primary for the Atlantic County state senate seat occupied by incumbent Edward S. Lee.

Edge used his Atlantic City Daily Press to promote his candidacy against Lee, who was supported by the established local Republican machine.

[2] After his defeat, Edge's Daily Press became a faithful supporter of the local Republican organization,[6] and in 1909 he was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly.

Although Edge served in the state legislature during the height of the Progressive Era, he tended to take moderate positions and was not considered a reformer.

It has been contended that the decision to place the terminus of the tunnel in Jersey City was the result of Frank Hague's support of Edge in the 1916 gubernatorial election.

[14] The most important and controversial vote held by the Senate during Edge's term involved the Treaty of Versailles, the ratification of which would have allowed the United States to join the League of Nations.

[2] Edge was reelected to the Senate in 1924, defeating prohibition advocate Hamilton Fish Kean in the Republican primary and Democratic candidate Frederick W. Donnelly in the general election.

After his ambassadorship ended in 1933, Edge spent most of the next decade living a life of retirement, traveling, and serving as an elder statesman for the New Jersey Republican party.

Following his nomination, Edge faced Democratic candidate Vincent J. Murphy, mayor of Newark and state leader of the American Federation of Labor, in the general election.

In early 1944, Republican legislators drafted a new proposed constitution that would have, among other things, deprived Hague of a major source of patronage by restructuring the judiciary.

Hague strongly opposed the revised constitution, and several weeks prior to the November 1944 election he launched a multi-pronged attack on it, charging that it would restrict the activities of labor unions, inhibit advancement opportunities for returning veterans, and subject all church owned property to taxation.

Walter D. Van Riper, whom Edge had appointed state attorney general, took over the Hudson County prosecutor's office and brought in outside investigators.

[25] In early 1945 Hague retaliated by having his hand-picked United States Attorney bring two federal indictments against Van Riper, one charging check kiting and the other related to the alleged sale of gasoline in the black market.

A number of state boards and commissions were consolidated, and a Taxation and Finance Department was established to handle all fiscal matters.

[1][28] Much of Edge's last year in office was spent dealing with problems associated with the conversion to a peacetime economy and a wave of strikes.

In the Atlantic City Commission election that year, Johnson's organization backed a slate of candidates led by incumbent mayor Edward L.

[29] Thereafter, the Atlantic County Republican organization led by Johnson refused to support Edge in his 1924 primary election contest against Hamilton Fish Kean.

The initial indication of a break was Johnson's support of Hamilton Fish Kean for the Republican nomination for United States senator, while Edge was backing Edward C.

[35] The split noticeably widened after Edge abandoned his policy of non-interference in purely local politics and backed Robert M. Johnston for Atlantic County state senator in the Republican primary.

[35] This prompted Johnson to openly back incumbent senator Emerson L. Richards, who was Edge's political and personal foe.

[37] Edge, who faced a reelection campaign in 1930, resigned from the United States Senate in 1929 to accept appointment as Ambassador to France.

In his 1948 memoirs, A Jerseyman's Journal, Edge makes no mention of either Kuehnle or Johnson, who was imprisoned in 1941 for income tax evasion.

[2] Edge transferred possession of Morven to the state in 1954, and he spent the last few years of his life living in a small house in Princeton.

After World War I, Edge purchased land in northern Leon County, Florida with his longtime friend, Walter C. Teagle, chairman of the Board of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

In 1937 Edge sold his interests in Norias to Teagle and purchased the adjacent Sunny Hill Plantation, located in northern Florida near Thomasville, Georgia.