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

by Caro, Robert A

  organization "released the executive's energy to provide the leadership required in the twentieth century," one said. Al Smith said so in the patois of Al Smith. "When the Governor wants to talk about the state hospitals he will have one man to talk to," he exulted. "When he wants to talk about public parks, he will have one man to talk to, and the same way when he wants to talk about agriculture, charities, education." For the first time, he knew, when he wanted to move the state down a particular path, he could make it move.

  Before his fourth term was over, "against the tide of the Twenties" that blinded most of a prosperous nation to the needs of its urban masses, Al Smith had not only forced through a recalcitrant Legislature measures that improved working conditions and reduced working hours for men, women and children, but had also lashed state departments into enforcing the measures. He had not only forced through the first large-scale, low-cost housing program in the United States, increased teachers' salaries tenfold and obtained equal pay for women teachers, but had also moved a dozen state departments into less dramatic but equally vital efforts to meet needs in areas of their jurisdictions. He had not only persuaded voters to approve bond issues of unprecedented size for state hospitals, mental hospitals and prisons but had also geared up the departments responsible for building these institutions to do so with unprecedented speed. He had written on the statute books of New York such a sweep of social welfare statutes that Oscar Handlin could say that they "made the most difficult state the best-governed one in the Union . . . [and] awakened the conscience of the nation to the needs of the urban working people." Franklin D. Roosevelt, as President, was to say that "practically all the things we've done in the federal government are like things Al Smith did as Governor of New York."

  Robert Moses himself was conspicuously uninterested in social welfare reforms. But these reforms would have been impossible of attainment without the executive budget and departmental consolidation and reorganization. Even more impossible of attainment would have been another Smith achievement: while expanding manyfold the state's role in helping its people meet their needs, he succeeded, over the course of his four terms, in substantially cutting state taxes. Walter Lippmann called the reorganization of New York's administrative machinery "one of the greatest achievements in modern American politics." Robert F. Wagner, Sr., asked to name Smith's most important achievement, said flatly: "The reorganization." And many other states modeled their reorganizations directly on New York's. Says Leslie Lipson, author of The American Governor from Figurehead to Leader, the definitive study of the development of state government in America, "New York is the great classic of the reorganization movement." In that classic, Robert Moses played the leading role. Most of Moses' achievements were highly visible achievements—monuments of concrete and steel—which may be expected to endure in the public consciousness for as long as they stand. But his achievement in reshaping the machinery by which New York State's millions of inhabitants are governed to make it substantially more

  responsive to the changing and growing needs of those millions is an episode all but lost to history. And it may be that this achievement is at least the equal of any of the others.

  Reorganization made the Department of State the "catch-all" repository for scores of minor functions that did not fit logically into any other department. The Secretary of State was made responsible for accepting and filing incorporation papers, compiling election results and county-by-county enrollment figures, supervising the Hell Gate Pilots and the Wardens of the Port of New York and licensing auctioneers, private detectives, real estate salesmen, theater-ticket agencies and poolrooms.

  Unexciting as these functions were, they all required manpower—and manpower was jobs and jobs were patronage. The Secretary of State would control a sizable harvest of the carrots that kept political workers straining at the ropes that pulled political machines.

  The Secretary of State would, moreover, possess several functions that were not at all minor, including jurisdiction over the state's Athletic, Racing and Land Office commissions. And Smith had announced that he intended to use the Secretary as a coordinator of all state construction work and as coordinator of the Cabinet, that body of department heads which, for the first time, was going to be meeting as a group to advise the Governor—as, in fact, a sort of "Deputy Governor" with power second only to himself.

  So politicians of both parties raged when, in January 1927, Smith nominated Robert Moses as New York's first appointed Secretary of State. Democrats raged because Moses was a Republican (an "Independent Republican" according to the press), and Republicans indignantly denied the charge, former GOP State Treasurer—and Nassau County estate owner— Lewis H. Pounds calling him a "political orphan."

  The depth and unanimity of the feeling transcended party affiliation. Moses had for years been either insulting or ignoring legislators of both parties. And now the Legislature was being asked—for under reorganization the Senate had to approve key gubernatorial nominations—to approve his elevation to the second most important post in the state. One observer says: "When he walked down a corridor in the capitol and passed a group of legislators, you could see their eyes follow him as he passed, and you could see how many enemies—bitter, personal enemies—he had. I really believe that Robert Moses was the most hated man in Albany."

  But Robert Moses didn't have to worry about enemies as long as his friend stuck by him. And his friend stuck. Smith's unprecedented popularity —proven by the ease with which he defeated Mills, a popular Republican running in a heavily Republican state—had given him unprecedented power in the state. And he let the Senate know that he would, if necessary, use every bit of that power on behalf of Robert Moses. He had, the Governor said, been accepting help from Moses for years. Now he wanted to formalize the arrangement.

  GOP senators tried to find an issue by saying that no man should hold

  more than one high-ranking state job at a time. If Moses wanted confirmation, they said, he would have to give up his park posts. But, as a Brooklyn Eagle reporter put it:

  . . . None of the objectors forgot for an instant that Alfred E. Smith is still the king, mikado or just plain "boss" of the state.

  The Democrats cannot openly object to his course and get away with it. The Republicans know that Smith will politically outjockey them if they don't watch every step taken in opposition to him. The result is that Robert Moses, despite all opposition, in all probability will be confirmed.

  The Eagle —and other newspapers throughout the state with the notable exceptions of the New York Herald Tribune and Hearst's tabloids—helped strengthen the probability with a paean of praise. Said a January 22 front-page Eagle headline: patronage crowd sore — knowledge that moses will buck them, chief basis for fighting him. Three days later, it made another point: ATTACK ON MOSES BY G.O.P. LAID TO HIS L.I. PARK FIGHT PLAN

  SEEN TO SHELVE HIM TO AID RICH LANDOWNERS.

  GOP senators were inundated with pro-Moses missives. In a sprawling hand on the back of a postcard, Howard D. Brown of East Islip wrote Senator George Thompson of Suffolk County: "Mr. Moses did sidetrack the millionaire, so the man on the street could get Parks on Long Island. Your vote for him would be appreciated by all common people." Thompson hastily assured his constituents that his vote would, indeed, be for Moses. When, on January 31, 1927, the Senate clerk called a general voice vote on the nomination there was a loud chorus of "Nays." But when the clerk called the role name by name, only two senators were willing to go on record against it.

  The appointment marked a first for Moses as well as for the state. Although he had been working on and off for various governmental bodies for fourteen years, the Secretary's $12,000 per year salary was the first he had received on a regular basis from government. It was, in fact, the first substantial salary he had received from anyone. Although some of his mother's relatives had been commenting pointedly for years that married men ought to at least try to support their own families, Bella Moses had always
maintained that she was proud of Bob and completely happy in his choice of jobs. Despite her protestations, however, Bella Moses may have been just a little relieved that her favorite child was, at the age of thirty-eight, finally off her dole. When a friend told her, while she was attending a Madison House board meeting, that her son's appointment had just been confirmed, she breathed a sigh of relief and murmured: "At last, at last, he's going to start earning a living."

  As Secretary of State, Robert Moses was a reporter's dream. If the press thrives on conflict, he provided it with ample nourishment, sallying forth almost daily to "strip the license from" unscrupulous ticket brokers, un-

  scrupulous private detectives, unscrupulous real estate salesmen and inefficient Hell Gate Pilots and Port Wardens. His image, already shiny as a result of newspaper accounts of his park activities, was brought to an even higher gloss.

  When Moses announced that he was fighting not only crooks but something that to the American mind loomed as a menace of approximately equal proportions— politicians —new highlights were added to his sheen. They didn't fade even when the ringing announcement was followed by a very dull thud—as it was in his attempt to make himself the state's boxing czar.

  Before reorganization, the State Athletic Commission had run boxing, and commissionerships had been coveted by Tammany boyos since boxing promoters had learned the wisdom of crossing the commissioners' palms with free tickets, called "Annie Oakleys" because ticket takers punched holes in them similar to Little Sure Shot's bullet holes, to distinguish them in the count from paid-for ducats. By 1927, in fact, sports writer W. O. McGeehan was noting that Annie Oakleys had become "so common that customers of prize fights who wanted to be exclusive insisted upon paying for their tickets and getting them unperforated." In 1927, moreover, the chairman of the commission was James Aloysius Farley and Farley was carrying things to an extreme in cultivating friends, particularly among the contractors and politicians who might have occasion to use the services, or to have the city use the services, of his burgeoning building-materials company; since it cost him nothing to entertain these friends with fight tickets, he cultivated many of them. When Jim Maloney, the Boston Bull, outpointed Bridgeport Jack Delaney in Madison Square Garden on February 18, 1927, more than $30,000 worth of Annie Oakleys were distributed.

  Farley, a fast-rising political heavyweight who had never been accused of cramping his style with undue loyalty to the Marquis of Queensbury, was a feared opponent. But less than three weeks after Moses assumed jurisdiction over the Athletic Commission, the new Secretary of State declared that he wanted "to protect the fellow with the thin pocketbook, who is just as much interested in boxing as the millionaire fight fan," and announced that henceforward no commissioner could accept free tickets. Half of all tickets, moreover, would be placed on sale on the evening of the fight, to insure that there would be plenty for the general public.

  In vain, promoter Tex Rickard told Moses the plan was unworkable. When the desperate Farley and his fellow commissioners, anxious not to disappoint their friends, bought hundreds of tickets for the Dempsey-Sharkey fight and gave them away, Moses ruled that henceforth commissioners could not buy tickets, either. They could not properly regulate a sport "if they are recipients of favors from the people they are supposed to regulate," he said.

  But Moses' lack of ring savvy began to show. His swings grew wilder. On one occasion, when there was a row over a decision in a prize fight, he declared: "Any decision should be unanimous. If not, then I will make the decision."

  Selling half of Madison Square Garden's 18,000 seats the evening of the fight led only to monumental tie-ups at the ticket windows. Within a year, Moses gave up. "Frankly admitting," as one reporter put it, that he "knows little about the fight game," he announced that the Athletic Commission would be put back in full control of the sport. He was really more interested in parks anyway, he said. No more was heard about unanimous decisions.

  In the eyes of the crowd, however, he had chalked up another win. He had, after all, been once again publicly identified as an ally of the "fellow with the thin pocketbook" and as a foe of the millionaire as well as the politician. He even got a title. During his brief but eventful ring career, sports writers, intrigued with his academic background, dubbed Robert Moses "Curator of Cauliflowers."

  Though Moses' battles with private detectives and boxing promoters earned him reams of newsprint in 1927 and 1928, the significant accomplishments of his tenure as Secretary of State were accomplishments for which he never received any public notice. And they came in fields in which the Secretary of State supposedly had no power.

  Al Smith put him into those fields. When the Governor had said he would put Moses in charge of the Cabinet, he meant really in charge. At his direction, Moses assumed responsibility for spurring the heads of other departments into the gallop at which Smith wanted them to move.

  The Governor was particularly anxious about public works. Until he came to office, state institutions for men and women convicted of crimes and men and women whose only crimes were mental or physical illness were ancient, crowded and filthy. During his Governorship, against the unwavering opposition of a Republican Party that continually screamed that his financial policies would wreck the state, he persuaded the state's voters to pass referenda allocating not only $15,000,000 for parks and $50,000,000 for hospitals but also $300,000,000 for grade-crossing elimination and $100,-000,000 for prisons, mental institutions and other public works. The buildings those bond revenues would buy would symbolize something to him. They would be something he could look at, as he could look at parks, and know that he had really done something for the people he had wanted to do something for. Further—and this was no small consideration since he was as much a politician as a reformer and now he had his eye on bigger prizes than a Governorship—they would symbolize something to the voters of other states. He wanted those buildings finished, and when progress on them was too slow, his solution was to make Moses personally responsible for speeding it up.

  Running the Department of State, playing a key role in reorganizing the state government and creating, in a space of time unprecedentedly small, a state park and parkway system unprecedentedly large, might seem like a load large enough for one man to handle, but, as Moses drove around Long Island now, pushing his parks, he was haunted by other problems. His

  secretaries, driving out from New York or Belmont Lake, would be trying to find him to deliver messages from Graves, the Governor's secretary— "The Governor told me to drop you a note and say not to forget about the Long Island hospital situation," one said—and there might be a dozen such messages in a single mail. As Moses paced through a clearing at Sunken Meadow or Valley Stream, a band of aides behind him scribbling furiously while he fired instructions at them, across the clearing would come, trotting, the gray-uniformed, Sam Browne-belted, Stetsoned figure of a state trooper dispatched by the Governor to find him and bring him to a telephone for a message too urgent or too confidential to entrust to the mails. As he stood with his engineers and contractors on Jones Beach, discussing the progress of the causeway across the bay, across the bay would come a boat and in it, standing up as it neared shore so he could jump out and reach Moses the more quickly with the urgent message he bore, would be another Stetsoned figure.

  Moses had always possessed tremendous energy and the ability to discipline it. Now he disciplined it as never before, concentrated it, focused it on his work with a ferocious single-mindedness.

  Sloughing off distractions, he set his life into a hard mold. Shunning evening social life, especially the ceremonial dinners that eat up so much of a public official's time, he went to bed early (usually before eleven) and awoke early (he was always dressed, shaved and breakfasted when Arthur Howland arrived at 7:30 to pick up the manila envelope full of memos).

  The amenities of life dropped out of his. He and Mary had enjoyed playing bridge with friends; now they no longer played. Sundays with his family all but disap
peared. He did not golf; he did not attend sporting events; he was not interested in the diversions called "hobbies" that other executives considered important because they considered it important that they relax; he was not interested in relaxing. Since he left to Mary the paying of bills and the selection of his clothes, even the hiring of barbers to come to his office and cut his hair, his resources of energy were freed for the pursuit of his purposes. His life became an orgy of work.

  Even so, there was never enough time; minutes were precious to him. To make sure that he had as many of them as possible, he tried to make use of all those that most other men waste.

  He had always worked in his car while traveling; now he turned the big Packard limousine into an office. With Howland sitting beside him on the rear seat, three other engineers swiveled around on the jump seats and another two crammed in beside the chauffeur, he held staff meetings in the limousine—while another limousine trailed behind so that when Moses was finished with his men, he could drop them off and they could be driven back to Belmont Lake while he continued on to his destination. The door pockets in the Packard were crammed with yellow legal note pads and sharp-pointed pencils, and he spent his hours alone in the car writing letters and memos that his secretary could type up later.

  Often, a secretary was in the car to take his dictation. Usually, it was Hazel Tappan. Miss Tappan was a tall, broad-shouldered Juno whose

  elaborately marcelled hairdos did nothing to conceal the strength and harshness of her features. "There was," an acquaintance says, "no softness to her." A stenographer fast enough to keep up with the drumfire of Moses' dictation, she also displayed a talent for giving orders—and Moses gave her material on which to exercise her talents. Two secretaries worked full time for Moses at the State Parks Council offices, now occupying an entire floor at 302 Broadway, three more worked at the Long Island Park Commission offices at Belmont Lake. Moses made Miss Tappan his personal secretary and put her in charge of them, demoting Rose Pedrick, his former personal secretary, who was nonetheless to remain on his personal secretarial staff, hating Miss Tappan all the time, for more than a decade.