champsmith

Other Bain/LOC photos of the Democratic U. S. Congressmen visiting New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, at the New Jersey resort town of Sea Girt, at the time of Wilson's nomination as the Democratic candidate for President in the election of 1912:

Would this be the notification committee we've seen in other pics?

They certainly look happy. Was this in 1912? With the GOP in disarray that year, I'd guess they smell blood in the water, after 44 of the last 52 years having a Republican President.

Many of them seem to have the same hat. Are those Panama hats? I wonder if this meeting had something to do with the Panama canal.

They look like "boater" hats, popularly worn in the summers of that era: www.gentlemansemporium.com/store/hats.php?from=leftnav Top hats were out, and fedora's would not come in for another 15 years or so. The Panama Canal had already been built and fully operational this point, during the Roosevelt administration.

I'm surprised that they're sitting on the grass-- you'd never see that kind of thing these days.