The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York

by Caro, Robert A

  The association's members approved of that tone. To them, the failure of the association to win even a single major fight was secondary. In the world

  of these idealists, there were other factors to be considered. "Moses was a very scrupulous researcher," Childs recalls. "He was very reliable. You could always be certain of the facts you read in the Bulletin." In 1921, when more than three hundred of New York City's most influential reformers formed a fusion "Coalition Committee" in an abortive effort to prevent Red Mike Hylan's re-election as mayor, they selected Moses as its secretary. He seemed, to most of them, the very model of the reformer, even down to the shabbiness of his tiny office and the fact that, to supplement his salary and Bella's subsidy, he lectured on political science at New York University.

  Some of Moses' closest personal friends and at least one member of his family, however, were becoming puzzled.

  "When Robert would come over to the house for dinner now," recalled his brother Paul, "it was 'Al Smith this' and 'Al Smith that.' All he could talk about was Smith—what Smith had said that day when Robert walked him home or about some idea Smith had had." The man who had always talked— and who still talked—of most politicians with such scorn talked of Smith with respect and admiration and something that was close to reverence. Moses' brother and friends saw nothing wrong with such a feeling. But they couldn't help noticing that, in discussing Smith, Moses was talking less and less about the great issues of the time with which Smith had been involved and more and more about political maneuvers which the former Governor had described to him. "Why, when he got enthusiastic about something now, and started to really go on about it in that way he had, it was more than likely something that, when you thought about it later, was really nothing more or less than some cheap political trick," one friend said.

  And when Smith decided in 1922 to run against Miller for Governor, the puzzlement spread to a broader circle of reformers. They began to feel that the model reformer, presented in the secretaryship of the New York State Association with a great chance for increasing the effectiveness of the reform movement, was instead systematically trying to pervert the association into a tool to further Smith's political career.

  In 1922, every issue of the Bulletin contained an attack on Miller. Because it was an election year, Moses wrote in one issue, "The Governor's organ is keyed for harmony. The soft pedal will be on, and . . . someone will pull out the Republican vox humana stop if it is not jammed from disuse." When Miller claimed that his economy measures had reduced the number of state employees by 2,500, Moses made his own analysis of civil service figures and wrote that the number had actually been increased by 983. A furious Miller called a press conference and declared that "like most all of the statements made by that association, it is untrue, and is a piece of the propaganda that this association is scattering all over the state." He knew where the blame lay, he said. It lay with Robert Moses. Moses' work, Miller charged, was of a "partisan character."

  In at least one instance, moreover, Moses' eagerness to attack Miller led him into a mistake inconsistent with the scrupulous, reliable research of the days when his only interest had been in reform. He charged that the Governor had overspent the executive-department budget and then, to conceal the fact,

  had paid the difference out of his own pocket and had had the state repay him out of "sums set aside for other purposes." Miller replied—and proved —that he had indeed paid the difference, which had totaled over $8,000, but had refused to allow the state to repay him because he felt himself responsible. The discussion, Miller said, was valuable for only one purpose: "It discloses the animus of Mr. Moses and shows how hard put to it he is to find something to criticize." The New York Herald editorialized: "Mr. Moses is now engaged, not for the first time, in manifesting his superiority to the facts. . . . Mr. Moses has got a number of things all wrong. Why shouldn't he? He assumes to be a complete censor and impeccable Cato of what is done or undone at Albany. ... he excites pity and sorrow among all the friends of noble civic objects, the fruitful pursuit of which requires exact knowledge, free from megalomania." The Herald was a Republican newspaper. Democratic newspapers, embarrassedly attempting to ignore the dispute, kept silent. So, because there was really no reply he could make, did Moses.

  The effect on the association was predictable. "The whole aim was that it would be nonpartisan," Childs lamented. Although many of the younger New York City reformers, both Republican and Democratic, were still sympathetic to Moses, believing that he simply had made a mistake, the older city reformers and the upstaters, Republican almost to a man, were outraged that they were linked with a man who had slandered without cause a Governor of their party. Colonel Stimson, encountering Childs on the street one day, said that he had decided to resign from the association. "You're all right, Childs," the Colonel said, "but that Moses is a rough character."

  Other members of the association also resigned. Its growth had been hampered by the differences in viewpoint between liberal New Yorkers and rural conservatives and by the physical difficulties involved in bringing both groups together in a state as large as New York and as short on good roads. But there had been signs of progress. The membership had been increasing, and city and upstate members were beginning to be more understanding of the other's viewpoints. Several of the more wealthy upstaters had even indicated to Childs their intention to become major contributors.

  Now, of course, such hopes were dead. The chance to unify reform sentiment in the state and make it a force capable of influencing state decisions was gone. In fact, it was to be gone indefinitely. A half century later, with the sole exception of the single-sex League of Women Voters, New York would still have no statewide Good Government organization. In later years, it was impossible for Childs, who deeply admired Moses, to escape the feeling that Moses' actions had killed the best chance for a Good Government movement that New York State ever had.

  Almost as disconcerting to Childs as Moses' sudden partisanship was Moses' attitude. When Childs taxed him about the partisanship, Moses took his protests lightly and seemed amused and not trying especially hard to conceal the amusement. Childs, he said, just didn't understand how politics worked.

  Childs received further proof of how much Moses had changed during the latter stages of the 1922 campaign. He and several other reformers familiar

  with a particular aspect of state government noticed that whenever Smith discussed it, he was making misstatements. The misstatements weren't very important ones; they didn't affect the main thrust of Smith's stand on the issue, with which the reformers thoroughly agreed, but they felt Smith would like to have the facts straight. Knowing that Moses was working on Smith's campaign staff, they pointed them out to him. "We were," recalls one, "absolutely shocked at Bob's reaction. He threw back his head and laughed at us and said, 'Why, we know that. But it sounds a hell of a lot better this way, doesn't it?' Bob had always been so truthful. Now Bob was telling us that Smith was telling a deliberate lie—and Bob was condoning it."

  Under Belle Moskowitz's tutelage, Bob Moses had changed from an uncompromising idealist to a man willing to deal with practical considerations; now the alteration had become more drastic. Under her tutelage, he had been learning the politicians' way; now he almost seemed to have joined their ranks.

  More, he was openly scornful of men who hadn't, of men who still worried about the Truth when what counted was votes. He was openly scornful of reformers whose first concern was accuracy, who were willing to devote their lives to fighting for principle and who wanted to make that fight without compromise or surrender of any part of the ideals with which they had started it.

  Bob Moses was scornful, in short, of what he had been.

  Moses had transferred his allegiance, and the transfer was appreciated by the man to whom he was now giving it. Al Smith won back the Governorship— by 387,000 votes, the largest plurality any gubernatorial candidate had ever been given in the state, a plurality large enough to pull in beh
ind him every other Democratic nominee for statewide office.

  And when, on January 2, 1923, Al Smith went back to Albany, he took Bob Moses with him—and he took him back big.

  in any branch of the state government. His only title—his only salary—was still that of secretary of the New York State Association.

  But the fact that he was kneeling next to the floor leader's desk, at the very center of the Senate action, was also symbolic. For in Albany in 1923, Moses was a key figure in capitol maneuvering. Republican senators, cut to pieces day after day by Jimmy Walker's sallies on reorganization or the executive budget but knowing that Walker had no patience to master such subjects himself, knew that it was Moses who was coaching him step by step. And when—during debates in which his continual presence was not required—they saw Moses hurrying at intervals into the Chamber and over to desk eighteen, bending down over Walker, whispering briefly and then hurrying out again, they knew that the messages he bore came directly from Al Smith. The big hand that had pulled Moses out of his chair in Fourth Ward saloons to sing close harmony had now reached out and pulled him into the innermost circle of the Governor's advisers.

  Moses was one of the little group which, in the late afternoon, would be swept by Smith out of the Executive Chamber and over to the home of his daughter Emily and her husband, John A. Warner, to chat with him as he bounced the Warners' baby daughter on his knee for an hour. He was one of the group who then followed the Governor over to the "menagerie" he had set up in the rear yard of the Executive Mansion. (The Governor loved animals—he had decided to keep, instead of giving to zoos, the animals bestowed by admirers as gifts. As a result, the menagerie contained tiger and bear cubs, goats, a fox and an elk, and, as permanent residents, six dogs, a mother raccoon with three baby raccoons, and three monkeys.) Moses would be one of the group that several times a week dined with Smith, at a table filled with his children's friends and made merry by the jokes he kept cracking with the servants, and after dinner returned to the Executive Chamber to participate in the legendary bill-vetoing and -signing sessions conducted over bottles of Scotch and Irish whiskey, which featured impromptu skits, songs and soft-shoe routines by the Governor—and his almost uncanny ability to recall details of other bills he had read over the years. "Look at this one," he would growl. "I fought against it six years ago and here it is again, just tricked up a little."

  It was a mixed circle: Tammany men like George B. Graves, in his thirty-second year of service to Democrats in Albany, John F. Gilchrist, one of Smith's boyhood friends, and George V. (the Fifth) McLaughlin, a bluff, red-faced banker; and three tall, slim reformers—Moses, Proskauer and the stentorian, Roman-nosed journalistic genius with a thatch of bright red hair and a big, swinging stride, Herbert Bayard Swope. All three were master talkers. Pacing around the room, circling, interrupting, outshouting one another, they made proposals, discussed them, refined them. And interrupting and outshouting them, the Governor, the voice of experience in the quartet of reform, refusing to let anyone agree or curry favor with him, hashing out ideas as an equal. And, always, sitting apart, knitting, saying nothing until the Governor turned to her and asked, "What do you think, Mrs. M?" the plump,

  matronly little woman—a woman whose qualities astonished the capital more each day. She could mother reporters and bring them chicken soup when they were sick and call them at midnight with the inside tips that they treasured, but when one wrote something about Smith that she didn't like, she knew how to persuade his editor to transfer him from the Albany beat. (When, years later, he again wrote something she didn't like, she could tell the reporter's friends, smiling sweetly, "Well, he had better remember that I got him before.") Her loyalty to Smith was so complete that when, knowing she needed money to raise her children, Tammany leaders offered her a choice of lucrative city posts in an attempt to woo her from the Governor's side, she refused so that she could continue as his unpaid adviser.

  It was exciting being part of that circle. It was exciting working for Smith. His enormous plurality made him feel free at last of all constraints, at home in the Governorship. He ran an informal office—when the waiting room was filled with people, the door to the inner office would swing open and Al Smith, ruddy-faced and red-nosed, in shirt sleeves, suspenders and uptilted cigar, would come out and greet each in turn with a wonderful gold-filled smile and the question "What can I do for you?" He was never too busy to see reporters, putting his feet up on his desk as he talked to them, revolving in his swivel chair to spray first one and then the other of the two big brass cuspidors that had been placed at either side of his office. He obviously enjoyed every minute of his banter with them and, giving them his private number at the Mansion, told them to call him day or night.

  But underneath the joviality was a rock-hard toughness. The blue eyes could, in the words of one reporter, "turn to steel, absolute steel." Moses and the rest of Smith's inner circle might be free to argue with him but when, after consulting with Mrs. M, he had made his decision, the decision was final. None of them called him anything but "Governor." He could end a telephone call asking for a favor by rasping out the single word "No" and slamming down the receiver. Once he had made up his mind he was inflexible.

  It was exciting watching how he maneuvered. If one was close enough to Smith, there was little one couldn't learn about the game of politics— the game that wasn't a game at all—and Moses was close enough. He could watch the Governor twist arms, offer incentives and drop, one by one, with matchless guile, the veils from in front of threats. Watching Smith banter with reporters, seeing how much time he devoted to winning their friendship, Moses learned how important the press was in politics. Seeing that Smith used the banter to cover up the fact that he wasn't telling the reporters anything he didn't want them to know, Moses learned how the press could be used.

  He could learn to keep things simple. The Governor wanted no technicalities in his speeches: he himself, with the genius that made him the greatest campaigner of his time, reduced every argument to its most basic terms. During the 1922 campaign against Miller, for example, Smith was scheduled to speak at a county fair in Rochester. Moses had written a draft of a proposed speech that disproved—dollar by dollar, it seemed—Miller's claims that his economies had saved the state $14,000,000. When Smith

  arose, however, he looked out over the huge crowd of farmers and uttered just two sentences.

  "Governor Miller says he saved the state fourteen million dollars," Smith said. "All I want to know is—where is it, and who's got it?" Then he sat down. For a moment the farmers were silent, puzzled. Then Moses, seated by the speaker's platform, heard the crowd begin to murmur, then to laugh, and finally to break into applause and cheers.

  Moses was close enough to Jimmy Walker—physically if not spiritually —to learn from him, too, as he coached the mercurial Beau James on the technical aspects of the administration proposals that the floor leader had to steer through a Senate in which the Democrats had a bare one-vote majority. When Ellwood Rabenold, a reformer who had been elected to the Senate on the Democratic ticket and whose independence was continually imperiling the one-vote majority, not only refused Walker his vote on one crucial measure but rose on the Senate floor to chastise the floor leader for "undue pressure," Moses, kneeling beside Walker, heard the dapper little man snarl under his breath, "I'll ruin him, I'll ruin him"—and he watched as, in succeeding months, Walker remorselessly drove Rabenold out of politics. Kneeling there on the burgundy carpet, Moses heard the deals by which other Democrats—and Republicans, when needed—were kept or brought into line: the judgeship traded for a senator's vote on a crucial issue, the "campaign contribution" promised for an alteration in a legislator's stand.

  Being close to Smith was exciting to Moses for another reason. For a decade, ever since he had entered public service, his mind had been teeming with ideas. But not a single one had become reality.

  Now, for the first time, when Moses had an idea, he had a good chan
ce of seeing it implemented. If something was wrong and he knew—just knew— exactly how to make it right, there was a real chance that it would be made right. Ultimately, he had learned through his experience with John Purroy Mitchel, it all came down to a question of power. An idea was no good without power behind it, power to make people adopt it, power to reward them when they did, power to crush them when they didn't. If he still had no position and no power of his own, if his only power was the confidence of one man, still, in Al Smith's Albany, when that one man was Al Smith, that was a not inconsiderable amount of power. "Executive support," he had learned, was the essential that one could not do without if one did not have power of one's own. Now he had that support.

  And he got a lot done.

  Smith, long angered by the state prison system's complete lack of interest in rehabilitating prisoners for their return to society, asked Moses to study the state's penal machinery. Moses proposed getting youthful offenders into a nonprison atmosphere by turning poorly attended state agricultural schools into minimum-security reformatories. To aid rehabilitation of adult prisoners, he proposed starting small industries in prisons and paying the prisoners for

  their work. And he proposed abolishing the notoriously repressive State Correction Commission and creating a new, more liberal State Correction Department.