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

by Caro, Robert A

  Your rage toward Judge Clearwater and me, Wilcox wrote Moses, is a "poisonous thing." And what, Wilcox asked, is the reason for it? Nothing but the fact that, while supporting in general your park policies, we have "ventured on occasion to speak out in meetings views opposing your policies, and [have] beaten them more than once. This could not be forgotten."

  Wilcox denied that his letter to Lutz had been abusive.

  "Neither you nor anyone can point out anything offensive in my letter

  to Mr. Lutz, except to one conscious of trying to play tricks, who finds himself caught and exposed ... I was feeling indignant, but I had a right to be indignant," Wilcox wrote. You accused us of dishonesty—yes, it was you; you were responsible for the vicious rumors that came up in Parks Council meetings when neither Clearwater nor I were present to repudiate them; you wrote the letter signed by Smith; "the letter does not sound at all like Governor Smith, and it does sound like you"—and then when Downer's report showed us to be innocent, you did not let us or anyone else see the report. Probably the Governor has not seen it either, Wilcox wrote. "You say . . . that 'The action taken by the Council has been outlined to the Governor.' " I am sure it has—"by you, I suppose, and in your own way."

  Wilcox's letter, which detailed his "transactions and relations" with the power company, covered ten single-spaced typewritten pages. "That it is too long, I know well," he concluded. "Few will read it and probably none will appreciate it."

  The old man was right. His letter lay unread in an unopened folder in a dusty Albany warehouse for forty-two years. And although, in the forty-third year, the folder was opened (by the author) and the letter was read, and although it provided the first detailed account of the changes wrought in Robert Moses by his hunger for power, it could not right the worst of all the injustices Moses perpetrated on Ansley Wilcox. During Moses' long reign as State Parks Council chairman, the plaques previously placed in Niagara State Park by Wilcox's friends to commemorate the contributions to the park made by him and the other old Niagara commissioners were systematically removed—to be replaced with plaques bearing Moses' name. When the parkway along the Niagara gorge was built, it was named after Moses and so was the power dam that became the centerpiece of the park. By the time Moses' reign was over, it would be impossible to find anywhere in Niagara State Park even a single hint that anyone except Moses had been responsible for its creation.

  Wilcox's letter had no appreciable effect on Moses. With it, Wilcox sent a request for the names and addresses of the seventy-two other regional commissioners, "to whom you sent your abusive and misleading and unfair and domineering letter," so that he could send copies—along with copies of his letter to Lutz—to them so that they could judge for themselves. Moses never replied. Instead, he continued his assault on the old men, if by more roundabout means. If he could not oust them quickly, his actions seemed to indicate, he would wear them down.

  First, a series of charges were filed against the commission's superintendent and chief executive officer, Emil R. Waldenberger. The commissioners investigated and cleared him. Then Moses told Smith that because of the illnesses of Judge Clearwater, Wilcox and De Forest, the commission was "not functioning," and in March 1927 Smith asked De Forest, in the most delicate of terms because of De Forest's great prestige, if he might not prefer a post on the State Housing Board instead. De Forest had, in fact,

  long wanted to resign. But the old men were loyal to their compatriots. "I would rather not put myself in the position of a deserter," he replied.

  In reality, Clearwater had confounded his doctors and recovered— months before. De Forest sent a copy of Smith's letter to the judge, and the judge wrote a letter of his own. He still had the gift of words.

  "The Governor's letter . . . seems like a wound in the house of a friend," he wrote. "I have for him a great admiration. He has all the elements of greatness and none of its limitations.

  "Unfortunately, some men greatly his inferior have secured access to him and to a considerable extent have his confidence, which unhesitatingly they abuse to gratify their ambitions, their interests and their animosities. By them he at times has been misinformed."

  The commission has been functioning, the judge wrote. Would the Governor like to know how? And he proceeded to list page after page of extensive land-acquisition negotiations that had been carried out in recent months.

  He knew why Moses was lying, the judge wrote. "The situation at Niagara affords opportunities for spectacular publicity not offered by any other of the State Parks, and . . . there are members of the Council of Parks who desire to dominate it in order to capitalize those opportunities for their own glorification." Furthermore, he was not afraid to speak out against those of Moses' policies with which he did not agree. "Now there seems to be a somewhat widespread feeling that because of the Governor's friendship for him, Mr. Moses expects an attitude of abject acquiescence from the members of Council. . . and that unless he receives it, reprisals may be expected."

  Moses let the "not functioning" issue drop.

  But time is not on the side of old men. The progress of Wilcox's disease was slow but steady. In July 1927, he was forced to resign from the commission, and Smith accepted Moses' recommendation on his replacement. Then Moses convinced the Governor that the activities of the Niagara Commission could not be adequately carried out unless the commission made the new member its executive officer with full powers to act for it. He convinced the Governor not to sign any appropriations for the Niagara Park unless the old commissioners gave the new one this power. In order to realize their dream, in order even to keep functioning the park they loved, the old men were forced to turn it over to someone else. At the end of the fight for control of Niagara State Park, Robert Moses had won.

  He won every fight in the State Parks Council. By the end of 1928, most recalcitrant regional commissioners had been replaced, as their terms expired, by men amenable to administration of their parks by the council's central staff, which, through Lutz, took orders from Moses. To further insure that votes within the council would no longer hinge on the changeable margin of a single vote, two new members were named, the State Historian, directly appointed by Smith, and the president of a new regional commission, all of whose members were appointed by Smith.

  Parks had never been a source of power before. Since the traditional function of park commissions had been to preserve the land in its natural

  state, the later developments—construction contracts, jobs—that made parks a source of power had never been a significant consideration. Parks were a source of power now, but the old park men didn't want power. They just wanted to be left alone to preserve and pass on beauty to other generations, and when, as in the case of the Erie County Parkway, the chance for power came their way, they backed away from it.

  Politicians failed to grasp the new reality until too late. By the time they finally realized—one can see the realization growing in their correspondence of 1927 and 1928—that a new organ of state government was being created that would dispense yearly millions of dollars in construction contracts and thousands of jobs, Moses had the state park system too firmly in his control for it to be pried loose. He would remain president of the Long Island State Park Commission and chairman of the State Parks Council until 1962, and during the thirty-eight years of his reign over state parks these parks would, even as his activities expanded into other fields, be a constant source of power that he could use to expand his influence in those fields.

  In politics, power vacuums are always filled. And the power vacuum in parks was filled by Robert Moses. The old park men saw beauty in their parks. Moses saw beauty there, too, but he also saw power, saw it lying there in those parks unwanted. And he picked it up—and turned it as a weapon on those who had not thought it important and destroyed them with it. Whether or not he so intended, he turned parks, the symbol of man's quest for serenity and peace, into a source of power.

  Moses could have done nothing, of
course, without Al Smith's constant support.

  The old park men pleaded with the Governor for justice. "I am very sure that on the same knowledge of facts there would be no difference at all as to any park matters between you and me," De Forest wrote, and others, too, told him he was being misled. They asked the Governor for appointments so that they could tell him their side of the disputes.

  But the appointments they were given were few and far between. And although they didn't know it, most—perhaps all—of the letters they wrote Smith complaining about Moses were sent by Smith's office to Moses for "suggested" replies—and the replies Moses suggested were generally sent out over Smith's signature without a word being changed.

  The pattern was the same in Moses' relations with the Legislature. He might have told Jerry Twomey to stick a bill up his ass, but, Twomey told Len Hall, "within two days, Al Smith had me on the phone and I had to put the bill through." The Legislature might rage at Robert Moses— Twomey wasn't the only legislator insulted to his face, Hall not the only one on whom he slammed down the telephone—but no legislator dared to stand up to a Governor who was a master of every method of bending men to his will. As long as Al Smith stuck by Moses, the Legislature could do nothing about him.

  And Al Smith stuck. In the midst of the Thayer bill fight, with Smith threatened by political embarrassment because of Moses' actions, a wealthy New Yorker who had been a victim of Moses' insults stormed into Smith's office. According to one Smith biographer, he asked angrily, " 'Do you want to settle this park fight?'

  " 'Yes,' the Governor said.

  " 'Then I'll tell you how to do it.'

  " 'How?'

  "The visitor banged his fist on the Governor's desk.

  " 'Get rid of Moses!' he shouted.

  "The Governor leaped to his feet, his face suddenly purple with rage.

  " 'Get out of my office, you idiot!' he roared."

  Why Smith stuck was a question that had many answers.

  One was that he was a politician. In capitol corridors, Moses may have been a handicap to the Governor, but in voting booths the parks that he built were a priceless asset to Smith. About Colonel Frederick Stuart Greene, the short-story-writing engineer who refused to consider politicians' wishes in awarding contracts but who got roads built that won voters' appreciation, Smith once said, "He may be a devil in May, but he's an angel in November," and the Governor might have said the same thing about Moses. In 1926, desperate to derail the Governor before the 1928 presidential campaign, the state GOP ran against him its strongest candidate, Congressman Ogden Livingston Mills. Campaigning vigorously, Mills tried to focus voters' attention on the unprecedented expenditures of Smith's administration, but the Governor easily diverted them by reminding them, over and over, that Mills was one of the North Shore barons, "that small handful of wealthy millionaires on Long Island [who] said: 'We do not want the rabble from New York coming down into our beautiful country.' " Smith won a fourth term—the first Governor to do so since De Witt Clinton a century before— and he credited a large part of his 257,000-vote plurality to the parks issue.

  Smith was not only a politician; he was a Tammany politician. In the simple Tammany code, the first commandment was Loyalty. Smith's loyalty to his appointees was legendary. Once he gave a man a job, he was fond of saying, he never interfered with him unless he proved himself incapable of handling it.

  And Smith knew that none of his appointees worked harder for him than Moses. When his daughter Emily, her father's confidante and perhaps the person who best understood him, was asked why her father stuck by Moses, she would begin her analysis by saying simply, "Bob worked so hard for Father, you know."

  Beyond politics was the fact that the boy from the Fulton Fish Market wanted so passionately to improve the lives of the people of the Fourth Ward—and of a hundred Fourth Wards throughout the state. And parks were, unlike improvements in teachers' salaries or other highly praised but unmeasurable accomplishments of his administration, an accomplishment that he could see, an accomplishment whose visible, concrete existence could

  prove to him that he had indeed done something for his people. When he saw families picnicking under the tall trees at Valley Stream or swimming at Sunken Meadow, he could feel that he had measurably improved their lives. So many of the things that made him most satisfied with his administration had been the result of Moses' work.

  As for his refusal to listen to Moses' opponents, Smith was well aware, as a politician, that every public improvement caused outcries. "You can't get a road built if you're going to listen to every farmer who doesn't want it to go across his land," he often said. Listening to protesters undermined his appointee, and got himself involved in enemy-making situations. Staying out of such situations—leaving responsibility with his appointee—enabled him to stay out of the fights which attended upon the building of public improvements while still allowing him to take full credit for their completion. Moreover, most of Moses' opponents, after all, were upstate legislators or politicians. Smith knew the depth of their reactionism, their narrow-mindedness, their utter inability to understand the needs of the city masses. As Emily put it, "Father wouldn't care what Bob did or said to the GOP legislators. After all, Father was fighting them himself. And Father thought the legislators really were terribly wrong. He felt the things Bob wanted to do were right."

  In the opinion of those close to the Governor, he didn't realize how drastic the methods were that Moses was using to accomplish his aims. He didn't understand that Moses was going beyond the actions of other appointees, handling protesters with needless harshness, stirring up protests by his arrogance, creating problems where there need not have been problems. "Particularly with little people." Emily says; "I didn't think that Father really knew how Moses was treating them." And there was, of course, no reason why the Governor would; they didn't have his ear or, since he seldom read even memos from appointees and almost never letters from the public, his eye. And the press, which might have publicized their complaints, was firmly in Moses' corner.

  And behind the political considerations there were the personal. Al Smith was a fighter, and he liked fighters. One night Smith heard Richard Childs, introducing Moses at a dinner, smilingly tell his audience: "You all know Bob, of course. He's so forthright and honest that if he saw a man across the street who he thought was a son of a bitch, he would cross the street and call him a son of a bitch, lest by passing him in silence, his silence be misconstrued." Smith roared at the description—and. thereafter, when someone would criticize Moses, the Governor would often give it himself, with evident delight.

  And Moses reciprocated. He knew how much he owed Smith for the realization of his dreams. "We could have done nothing without Wm," he would say. He knew how much he owed Smith for rescuing him from a life of obscurity and failure. "Most of what little I know of the practice of government I learned from this remarkable Gamaliel," Moses would write. "Without him I would have been just another academic researcher." After the Governor's death in 1944, Moses wrote, "The few remaining members of

  the Smith brigade think of him often and at the strangest times, see him in moments of action and relaxation, inspiration and ease. We hear his rough voice. . . ."

  Moses may have mocked to their faces men of wealth and influence and insulted the most powerful members of the State Legislature; he treated Al Smith with a respect that to those who saw the two men together was unforgettable. Said Belle Moskowitz's son, Carlos Israels: "When Moses was with Smith, he would always be spouting out ideas, pacing, gesticulating, talking. But it was the talking and gesticulating of an enthusiastic boy with his father, a father whom he admired and to whom he was very respectful." Joseph Proskauer said: "He acted to Smith as he acted to no one else, with deference and respect."

  Smith was always "Governor" to Moses. He never addressed him— either in letters or in speech—as anything but "Governor." And this was a fact more significant with Robert Moses than it would be with other men
. Moses would, during the forty years after Smith left Albany, serve under five other Governors. He never addressed them—in letters or in speech— except by their first names. He never called any one of them "Governor." For Robert Moses, there would always be only one Governor.

  During the final years of Smith's reign, he and Moses became closer and closer. Smith saw that Moses was invited to the most intimate of Tammany soirees, the notoriously boisterous get-togethers at William F. Kenny's Tiger Room. The Tammany bigwigs who had looked at him askance soon came to like him and. when they mentioned this to Smith, the Governor would beam happily. Often, after dinner in the Executive Mansion or, in New York, in the Biltmore suite or a friend's apartment, Smith would say, if Moses had not been present at the dinner, "I wonder what Bob's doing tonight—let's get him." Someone would call Moses. When he arrived, Smith would say, "Bob. let's go to Dinty Moore's," and the two men would sit for hours in a back room specially reserved for the Governor, drinking beer, cracking crabs and talking. "That talk was something," Howard Cullman would recall. "You could tell just listening to the two of them that there were two men with real brains."

  Not that the talk was all serious. Often, the Governor and Moses would, to the delight of listeners, go into a sort of rapid-paced comic dialogue on the Albany scene. Says Emily Smith: "It would be more fun to be there listening to Father and Bob than to be out at a theater or dancing somewhere." Or Smith would, if there was a piano handy, jump up, walk over to it and say to Moses, "Come on, Bob, let's show these people what we can do." One of the men who watched Smith and Moses harmonizing on such occasions says. "There was a tie there that was beyond business or politics." Says another: "You could tell just by looking at the two of them together that they liked each other a lot."