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

by Caro, Robert A

  On December 31, 1924, Pauchogue's lawyers began the fight by asking Suffolk County Court to enjoin the Long Island State Park Commission from altering the property until a trial could be held to determine if the appropriation was legal. Judge George H. Furman issued the temporary injunction on the same day it was applied for, allowing the state troopers to remain on the property to insure that its condition was not changed before the trial but prohibiting them from interfering with its use by Pauchogue for whatever purpose the corporation wished—including hunting. And Fur-man added to his decision a line that seemed to confirm Macy's contentions. The appropriation, the judge said, was clearly illegal.

  Hastily striking an alliance with the North Shore robber barons, Macy agreed that the best strategy was to cut off all Park Commission funds until new laws were passed taking from it the right of condemnation by appropriation. Because of the barons' control of the Legislature, there seemed little doubt that the strategy would succeed.

  But Macy was handicapped by principles. When a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune asked him to show him around the Taylor Estate so that he could see if it was really inaccessible and unsuitable for a park, Macy disdained to seize this opportunity to sway the press. No, he told the reporter, he did not want to influence his thinking. He was sure the truth would be obvious. He would not accompany him. "Macy," Moses

  was to say, "was the amateur in politics." Once, Moses had been the amateur. But he wasn't any longer. And he knew how to take advantage of someone who was—as became apparent on-January 8, 1925, on the front page of The New York Times.

  A FEW RICH GOLFERS ACCUSED OF BLOCKING PLANS FOR STATE PARK,

  the headline said. r. b. moses of long island commission tells of fight for site on south shore — influence used, he says. The story began: "Robert B. [sic] Moses, President of the Long Island State Park Commission, charged yesterday that a little group of wealthy men was obstructing the commission's plan to create a state park on the South Shore, five miles east of Islip, and that legal action had been taken by them only when every avenue of social and political influence had failed." The next two paragraphs were a restatement of that theme. The "wealthy men" were allowed one paragraph—the fourth—for rebuttal; they were not heard from again until paragraph twenty-six, by which point the Times's readers had had spread before them, almost verbatim, Moses' press release, a press release written by a man who had once been the master of "scrupulous, reliable" research but who had become a master propagandist—one who did not let facts stand in the way of his aims.

  Moses' release harped on the fact that his opponents were "wealthy residents," "rich residents," "rich people," "possessed of every sort of political and social influence." Nowhere did his release mention the fact that a judge had found his action illegal. And nowhere in the story, which ran for thirty-four paragraphs, did the Times see fit to mention that piece of information. Unable to avoid mentioning the injunction, Moses said it had been granted by a "local judge," a phrase with implications. "We will fight it," he said. "Upon its outcome depends whether the public or a small group of rich people can have a playground there."

  Any reader who arrived at paragraph twenty-six would begin to notice that there were some other sides to the story. Contrary to Moses' statement, Macy said at that well-buried point, it was not just "a few rich golfers" who objected to the park but a large majority of the residents of Islip Town and Suffolk County. And the point of the injunction, he said, was that Moses had violated the law and seized property without due process. "If the commission can do this," he said, "it can, by passing a resolution and getting the mere formality of the Governor's signature, seize any man's home, dispossess him and put state troopers there to prevent his re-entering. It is for that reason that we have taken the issue to court." But when the Times finally gave him a chance to talk, Macy talked too much. Not trying to dodge the "influence" issue, he sought to defend it. "We did use influence," he said. "But we could not go around and see every citizen in the state about the matter. We saw various representative men, and we did go to the Governor. Mr. Moses went to the Governor, too. Well, I am a citizen of the state of New York and I have as much right to see the Governor as Mr. Moses."

  Such public relations naivete, combined with the Times's slanting, made Moses' debut in a headline on the front page of the nation's most respected

  newspaper a triumph. While Macy had won the first round in a court of law, Moses had won the first round in the court of public opinion.

  In the former court, Moses could not evade the facts that the Times had relegated to paragraph twenty-six. When, as he had promised the Times's readers, he did "fight" the injunction issued by the "local judge," asking the State Supreme Court to invalidate it, Supreme Court Justice James C. Van Siclen refused. "The defendants have proceeded and are proceeding and threatening to proceed in a manner which tends irregularly, illegally and beyond their powers, under and in violation of the laws and Constitution of the State of New York and of the United States, to invade and seize the property of the plaintiff," Van Siclen said. The injunction would remain in force until a full trial was held. Such a trial, the judge made clear, could result not only in the return of the Taylor Estate to Pauchogue, but also in the assessing of substantial damages against the Long Island State Park Commission, against the individual commissioners, including Robert Moses, against New York State and even, conceivably, against Governor Smith. To indicate his own feelings in the matter, Van Siclen ordered the commission to pay Pauchogue a symbolic ten dollars in court costs.

  Now Moses' only hope was the Legislature. If it appropriated—"segregated" was the legal term—$250,000 of the bond-sale revenues for purchase of the Taylor Estate, he could argue that the commission had seized the estate in anticipation of the segregation. This was a weak defense—but at least it was a defense. If the Legislature did not segregate the $250,000, the commission—Moses—would have no legal defense at all. He would have no money to pay for the land he had taken.

  The Legislature, however, was controlled by the state's Republican Party, and that party was dominated financially by the barons, philosophically by a concern for the rights of private property, precisely the rights endangered by unstatutory appropriation, and politically by its desire to embarrass Alfred E. Smith, the man who had shattered its control of New York State. Because, in its view, one of Smith's appointees had broken the law, and Smith had, by signing the appropriation form, helped him do it, they saw an ideal chance for such embarrassment if the facts of the case were brought out. On February 11 and 26, 1925, the Senate Finance Committee held hearings in Albany.

  Throughout the hearings, despite the efforts of Finance Committee Chairman Charles J. Hewitt to gavel him into silence, Moses was on his feet, berating witnesses. "I never knew of persons to come before a legislative hearing with dirtier hands than the people of East Islip," he shouted at one.

  But shouting could not drown out the facts. To refute Moses' contention that only a "few rich golfers" opposed the park, more than a dozen elected officials testified that the majority of Suffolk's 150,000 and Islip Township's 21,000 residents opposed it. The chairman of Suffolk's Board of Supervisors, the county's governing body, testified: "We are opposed to the methods of the Long Island Commission. . . . We are afraid of persons who act as they have." And when Moses himself was summoned to the stand,

  the questioner was F. Trubee Davison, and Davison had learned a great deal about asking questions since the day, a year before, on which he had agreed to introduce Moses' park bills.

  "Did you have the money available at the time [the appropriation was made]?" Davison demanded.

  "That is a question for the courts to decide," Moses replied.

  "Well, did the commission believe it had the money available to pay a reasonable value on this property?" Davison demanded.

  "Yes, we did," Moses said. The money appropriated to the Long Island State Park Commission by the 1924 Legislature.

  "Wel
l, let us see about it," Davison said. "The Legislature appropriated $225,000. Did you spend any of that money before the Taylor Estate case came up?"

  "Yes, some of it," Moses admitted.

  "Well," Davison said, "how did you arrive at your arithmetic? You had only $225,000 to start with and you admit you spent some of it. How could you have enough to cover the Taylor case?"

  "We think we had it," Moses said. But Davison had made his point. After the hearing, Moses printed up "transcripts" of the hearing—with his own damaging admissions carefully omitted—and mailed them to state officials and legislators. But the officials and legislators had followed the hearings themselves. The state has "an obligation" to have money available to pay people before taking their property, said Attorney General Albert Ottinger, a Republican. Moses' actions, said the state's chief legal officer, were clearly "illegal." The day following the hearing, Assembly Speaker Joseph A. McGinnies said that the Legislature would strip the power of appropriation from the commission. And he said that the Legislature would certainly not segregate any money at all—ever—for the purchase of the Taylor Estate.

  In the Legislature and the courts, then, the issue appeared in February 1925 all but settled: To realize a dream of unprecedented scope, Robert Moses, by use of the law, had armed himself with unprecedented powers— and then, finding that these powers were still inadequate, he had deliberately gone beyond them, beyond the law. "Entry and appropriation" was, even as defined in law, of questionable constitutionality in its negation of the individual's rights when his property was coveted by the state. And Moses had gone beyond the definition to use the power of the state with even less restraint than the law allowed. But both courts and Legislature understood the situation; before both courts and Legislature, Moses stood stripped of all defenses and, it seemed in February 1925, both courts and Legislature would now step in and rectify the situation, the courts by affording redress to the individuals injured by his actions, the Legislature by insuring that he never again had the opportunity similarly to injure any other individual. But the ultimate court in which the fate of Moses and his dream was

  to be resolved would be the court of public opinion. And in this court, Robert Moses had close to hand three formidable weapons.

  One was the fact that, like motherhood, parks symbolized something good, and therefore anyone who fought for parks fought under the shield of the presumption that he was fighting for the right—and anyone who opposed him, for the wrong.

  The second was the fact that it was possible to paint the issue, as Moses had already done, not only as park supporters vs. park deniers, but also as wealth vs. lack of wealth, privilege vs. impotence, influence vs. helplessness, "rich golfers" vs. the sweating masses of the cities.

  The third was the ultimate political weapon: Alfred Emanuel Smith.

  The Republican majority in the Legislature drafted a bill, introduced by upstate Senator Warren T. Thayer, segregating $6,000,000 of the bond issue for acquisition of various parks but not appropriating any funds for acquisition of the Taylor Estate. The bill also amended the laws Davison had introduced on Moses' behalf the year before. It eliminated appropriation as a method of obtaining park land in developed areas and also provided that all land acquisition for parks or parkways, including acquisition by condemnation, must be approved by the Republican-controlled State Land Board, that all park or parkway construction must be approved by the Republican-controlled State Board of Estimate and Control, that all engineering work on parks and parkways must be carried out by the State Engineer, an elected official who was then a Republican, and that all legal work connected with parks and parkways must be carried out by the office of the Republican State Attorney General, Albert Ottinger. During the last week in March, shortly before adjournment, the Legislature passed the bill. Smith vetoed it. (His veto, said Eberly Hutchinson, chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, was clearly the work of "that expert and abusive propagandist, practiced in exciting the prejudices of the uninformed and a habitual defamer of the Legislature, Robert Moses," who had boasted to him that if the Legislature did not pass a bill he liked, the Governor would veto it.) But the veto did not help Moses or Smith. They needed $250,000. If it wasn't segregated, Moses' acts would be declared flatly illegal in court, and no Governor would be able to put a good face on such a development, especially a Governor who was, even peripherally and only because he had been misled by an appointee, involved. Early in April, Smith told his advisers that he would summon the Legislature back into special session to try to force it into the segregation.

  Moses' only hope of not having to appear in court without money or promise of money for the appropriation was to stall court proceedings until after the special session. Frantically, the commission's attorneys employed every legal stratagem available. They moved to strike certain clauses out of Pauchogue's complaint. Van Siclen denied the motion. They appealed his decision to the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court. The Appellate Division denied the appeal. They appealed the denial to the Court of Appeals. Then they went back to Van Siclen's court and moved to strike other

  clauses. Van Siclen denied the motion. They appealed the decision. April dragged into May. The case, the judge commented, should have been tried long ago. But the commission attorneys filed new motions. Then they sought "judgment on pleadings," a device which required the filing of a long series of successive briefs by both sides. Their briefs ran longer and longer. One was 275 pages. Then they appealed the decisions to the Appellate Division. Every appeal was denied—but every one used up time.

  Macy raged at the delays. "A speedy determination of the issue is what the public, the county and the state are entitled to," he said. Although his rage did not require new fuel, Moses provided some anyway. Macy, the lover of antiquity, had determined to reserve one of the thirty homesites for himself and to restore the old Taylor mansion, a fantastic mass of pillars, turrets and cupolas, and its outbuildings, to their original condition. But one Sunday in May, strolling around the property, he found the walls of the boathouse riddled with bullet holes. Targets tacked to the walls explained them. The state troopers had been using the building for pistol practice. As he stared aghast at the damage, he heard someone coming through the woods, and turning, saw another Sunday stroller: Robert Moses. Macy protested to Moses, pointing out that the courts had specifically forbade the commission to injure the property in any way. Moses replied with a grin: It's lucky it was this building. We're going to tear it down anyway.

  Once let him get Moses on the stand, Macy was sure, and the boasting would stop. He hungered for the court decision which he was certain would vindicate him. But Moses kept stalling.

  So did Smith. All through April and May, Moses, anxious, was nudging the Governor to call the special session. So, for less personal reasons, were Smith's other advisers. Since he had a great issue, they said, wouldn't it be best to press it while it was still fresh in the public's mind?

  Wait, Smith said. He had thought of something his advisers hadn't. New York City wasn't hot in April. It wasn't hot in May. New Yorkers weren't desperate to get out of the city in April and May, desperate for a bathing beach such as the one the Taylor Estate would provide. In April and May, they hadn't yet reached the point at which they didn't care at all about the legal technicalities of park acquisition; they hadn't yet reached the point at which all that mattered was that someone was trying to provide them with a place to swim—and someone else was standing in his way.

  On June 1, a Monday, the first of the inevitable summer heat waves settled over the city like a hot, soggy blanket. By the weekend, the temperature was in the nineties. The city's people fled it. Traffic jams on Long Island were worse than ever. So great was the frustration that when motorists reached a town park in Huntington and found police barring the gates, they assaulted the police in such force that more than forty were arrested. On June 10, Smith announced the special summer session—in a speech that was the first ever carried on
a statewide radio hookup.

  "There are people in this state who are opposed to parks," Al Smith said. His rasping, friendly, compelling voice sliced through the static of the crystal sets in tens of thousands of steaming living rooms in which sat

  families who had spent that last weekend in a desperate search for parks. "There are people in this state who are opposed to parks, to the park program, because they do not desire public parks or parkways too close to their private estates, golf clubs and fox-hunting and polo fields."

  Smith spoke for two and a half hours. Slowly, painstakingly, he detailed the whole background of his side of the fight, the attempts to remove parks from politics, the Republicans' insistence on injecting into park administration other, politically dominated state agencies, on making the final decision on proposed land acquisition rest not with the State Council of Parks but with the State Land Board.

  "Let us compare both bodies," he said. "Let us see who are the members of the Park Council." He listed their names, lingering over several. "Everybody knows Judge Clearwater," he said. "He is one of the leading lawyers of the country. ... He has been connected with the Niagara State Reservation since its establishment many years ago and has repeatedly been reappointed by Governors of all shades of political opinion. . . . Everyone knows Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . one of the heads of the Boy Scout movement in the country. ..." Many of these men, he pointed out, were Republicans. All were "serving the state without pay. Many have contributed large sums of money from their personal fortunes for the purchase of lands which they have presented to the state as a gift."

  What is the Land Board? he asked rhetorically: "A purely political body." Its entire staff consists of one clerk and two land appraisers, all political appointees in office only since last January. "They don't visit the lands," he said. "They don't know where they are."