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

by Caro, Robert A

  But in these battles with the Governor, Moses played the popularity that was his trump card for all it was worth. In fact, so sure was he—and he was right—that Roosevelt was afraid he would resign that he began using the technique, when Roosevelt crossed him on major issues, of threatening to do so. Resignation threats begin appearing in Moses' letters to Roosevelt in the middle of 1930; by the end of that year, he had refined the wording. In November 1930, for example, Roosevelt slashed his budget requests for appropriations in the 1931 budget and Moses wrote him: "If proposed cuts . . . stand, I do not want any responsibility for the program."

  A similar threat had been strikingly ineffective when made to Ed Richards beside the swimming pool at Yale. But given the fact of his tremendous popularity, it was very effective now. Over the four years of Roosevelt's Governorship a pattern emerged. Moses would submit a budget request far higher than the previous year's; Roosevelt would cut it back almost to the level of the previous request. Moses would tell Roosevelt he would have to resign if he didn't get the funds he wanted. Roosevelt, usually through an intermediary, would back away from the fight, restoring a substantial portion of the cut.

  The Legislature was frantic. In 1928, Moses had assured them that the cost of the Ocean Parkway's initial two-mile stretch would be $3,150,000. They had allocated the money, and in 1929 he showed up before them again. The $3,150,000 had been spent, he said, but he had neglected to tell them that the cost of paving the parkway would be extra—$850,000 extra. But they had been trapped. The hydraulic fill for the road had been dredged, the right-of-way graded, the surveying completed, the plans drawn. The $3,150,000 had been spent. Were they now to waste this money by refusing funds to complete the job? Cut as the legislators would, and they always cut, the amount of the annual allocation to the Long Island Park Commission rose steadily, from $3,150,000 in the last year of Smith's regime to $4,000,000 in 1929, $4,700,000 in 1930 and $5,700,000 in 1931. By stake driving and whipsawing, Robert Moses was getting what he wanted from them.

  And the projects moved forward. In 1931, the Southern State Parkway was extended from Wantagh to Massapequa, in 1932, from Massapequa to Amityville—the public marveled at the fact that there was a route clear across Nassau County without a single traffic light or intersection. Park facilities were constantly being expanded. A new bathhouse, chlorination plant and playground were built at Valley Stream State Park; ten tennis courts, a miniature golf links and a bridle path at Hempstead Lake; a whole

  new bathing beach and a spacious stone bathhouse at Heckscher; a causeway to open up new portions of the beach at Sunken Meadow; a loop drive at Montauk Point. And the picnic tables, campfire sites and acres of new parking fields mounted by the hundreds. Some measure of the scope of Moses' achievement is afforded by attendance figures. The number of visits to the Long Island state parks approximated 3,000,000 in 1930; the total number of visits to all national parks in the United States in that year was 3,400,000.

  More than not opposing such a program, a Governor would want to be identified with it.

  Roosevelt was not present at the first two opening ceremonies Moses staged during his administration, the plaque unveiling at Heckscher State Park and a ribbon cutting on Southern State Parkway. The state representative was Lieutenant Governor Lehman, and at least one source says that the reason was that Moses, to teach Roosevelt a lesson, invited Lehman instead of him. But after a working relationship was evolved between Moses and Roosevelt, all that changed.

  When the Jones Beach opening ceremonies were held, Roosevelt was there, having been wheeled up on the boardwalk on a ramp Moses had thought to have constructed. When it came time, during the gubernatorial-election-year summer of 1930, to mortar into place the cornerstone for the West Bathhouse, it was Roosevelt who was invited to wield the trowel— and to tell 75,000 cheering onlookers that the building, which he said would cost $600,000, "would help insure health and happiness" for generations of New Yorkers. Moses also invited the Governor to tour all the Long Island parks. The tour was staged on a Sunday, and the Monday papers were full of pictures of the Governor smiling out over the picnickers at Valley Stream and Hempstead Lake. When he arrived at Heckscher State Park, where bathers had been complaining about overcrowding in the bathhouse, Moses even let him be the one to announce (to cheers and applause) that ground would be broken for a new one by the end of the summer. It was the kind of publicity that money can't buy. Roosevelt was so pleased that, in his speeches, he called Moses "Bob."

  In 1931, Moses invited Roosevelt to lay the cornerstone for the monument marking the start of the Northern State Parkway and afterward Moses' limousine led the Governor's to Jones Beach, for lunch in the balcony restaurant in the new bathhouse the construction of which had officially begun the year before. The attendance at Jones Beach that day was 100,000, and as word spread that Roosevelt was present, a great sea of faces pressed close to the restaurant. When the Governor, moved, made his way to a balcony over the bathhouse swimming pool for an impromptu talk, the bathers in the pool shouted happily up at him and cheered. Jones Beach had been an expensive development, the Governor shouted back to them, but "it was the best money the state ever spent." If he recalled in that moment of euphoria that the bathhouse on whose balcony he was standing had cost $1,000,000 instead of the $600,000 he had been told it would a year earlier, he did not mention the discrepancy.

  Al Smith was present at every dedication, too—as long as Smith lived,

  Moses would never hold a cornerstone laying, a ribbon cutting, or any public ceremony of any type anywhere in the state without inviting the "Governor" and offering him a prominent spot on the program—but Roosevelt couldn't even bridle at this. There was, in regard to the Long Island park system, more than enough credit to go around.

  Moses was fond of repeating at this time a quote often used in Albany. "You can get an awful lot of good done in the world if you're willing to let someone else take the credit for it." Certainly Moses was willing at least to share the credit for the work he had done with the man he needed if he was to get more done.

  And if accomplishment, and willingness to share the credit for that accomplishment, was part of the explanation for the increase in Moses' power under a Governor who had no inclination to increase it, the accomplishment helped explain this contradiction in other ways, too.

  One way is that no Governor could sit in the Executive Chamber long without discovering just how hard—how incredibly hard—it was, even for a Governor, to get things, big things, done. No Governor, having made this discovery, could look at what Robert Moses had gotten done without being impressed, without feeling admiration for his ability, without a recognition of his extraordinary capacity as a public servant. And the proof of this is that through some of the letters and memos written to Moses by Roosevelt during the last two years of his four-year gubernatorial regime, through letters and memos interspersed with others in which irritation and even rage are only thinly glossed over—for Roosevelt's personal animosity toward Moses never lessened—there runs a tone that is unmistakably respect.

  Another way is that accomplishment proves the potential for more accomplishment. The man who gets things done once can get things done again. And the potential for accomplishment has very strong political connotations indeed. For political, if not personal, reasons, Roosevelt wanted— needed —to get things done. Furthermore, he was trapped, as all politicians in elected executive offices are trapped, by the inexorable equation of democracy and public works. Elections come every two years, or four, and the official who wants re-election needs a record of accomplishment on which to run. Such a record, in the America of the first half of the twentieth century (and perhaps in the America of the second half of the twentieth century, too), from a political standpoint should be most ideally a record of public works and it has to be a record of public works completed—roads opened, bridges built, housing-project apartments occupied, bathhouses crowded with bathers, parks in which the happy shouts of chil
dren fill the ear and not just the imagination. It is no good still to be laying cornerstones on Election Day. By then, a public official in executive office must have ribbons he can cut, monuments to which he can point with pride. This is a requirement established by democracy as it has evolved in America, yet the realities of the democratic process in America make it almost impossible to get a road, a bridge, a housing project, a bathhouse or a park approved and built in two years—or four. The Governor who finds a man who can inject into the democracy-public works equation a factor of personality so heavy

  as to unbalance it and get public works built during the span of a single term of office has little choice, if he is ambitious for political success, but to heap on that man more and more responsibilities, even though the giving of responsibilities carries with it the grant of more power.

  In this context, moreover, Moses' arrogance toward opposition was an asset rather than a liability to an elected official. Almost all public works arouse some opposition—roads require land, and some of the citizens from whom the land must be taken do not want it taken—and if the opposition is directed at an elected official, it can be translated into votes against him the next time his name appears on a ballot. But by leaping to deal with opposition himself, and by dealing with it in a way that antagonized the opposition, Moses made himself a lightning rod, drawing the anger at the project onto himself and leaving the elected official unscathed. The official therefore could bask in the credit—at least some of the credit—from the majority of voters, who until the 1960's worshipped public works projects in and for themselves, while escaping the wrath of the minority who opposed it.

  In 1930, the president of the Valley Stream Chamber of Commerce asked Roosevelt to inspect the worst grade-crossing problem on Long Island, a spot in the center of the village. Roosevelt agreed, and when his limousine was surrounded by a large crowd of local businessmen and one handed him a petition to Public Service Commission Chairman Milo Maltbie demanding immediate action, Roosevelt, in a grandstand gesture, signed the petition himself.

  The gesture showed Roosevelt's gift for public relations, but, having made it, the Governor now had to provide some action—difficult to do because the engineering problems involved were incredibly complex and the railroad had threatened to tie the whole matter up in court for years if the state attempted to force a solution on it.

  Having played the ham, Roosevelt needed someone to pull his eggs out of the fire. He selected Moses, who made it very clear that he was doing the job only as a favor. Nonetheless, his first glance at the problem produced a solution. Maltbie turned it down. But when Moses wrote Roosevelt, "Under the circumstances, I must ask to be relieved of any further responsibility," the Governor hastily interceded with Maltbie—and Moses' solution was adopted, immediately eased the traffic situation and brought praise to Roosevelt for "solving" the problem.

  No Governor would interfere with an official who could thus spectacularly achieve on his behalf. He wouldn't interfere even when the official actually tried to strangle a colleague.

  The incident occurred in Moses' office in the State Parks Council suite. Moses was presiding over a meeting of the council's finance committee when Raymond H. Torrey walked into the room.

  Torrey, a pudgy little man, a bird watcher, hiker and lover of the deep woods who spent weekends building lean-tos on Adirondack trails so that other hikers would have shelter, had long been a symbol of frustration to Moses. His very presence in the Parks Council offices was a reminder to Moses that his control of that body, while substantial, was not total. Torrey

  had long been secretary of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, whose trustees had long been ashamed that they could not afford to pay him an adequate salary, and in the days of the Taylor Estate fight, when Moses had so desperately needed the help of the society's park patriots, he had sought to cultivate them by naming Torrey secretary of the Parks Council at a salary of $6,000 per year. After the fight, when Moses, not needing them any more, was scourging the patriots out of their parks and trying to wrest Letchworth Park from the society's control, he had reduced Torrey's salary as much as civil service laws allowed and made his title a meaningless one by giving his responsibilities to his "assistant," Henry Lutz. But civil service laws prevented Moses from firing Torrey and he was a constant reminder that the society still had some say in Letchworth's administration.

  Torrey had proven a thorn in Moses' side in other ways, too. He saw the fight over the Northern State Parkway route through the eyes of the dedicated conservationist; familiar—more familiar perhaps than any other man—with the beauties of the North Shore's glacial moraine, he didn't want a highway, no matter how beautifully landscaped, to run along it. When a newspaper article appeared supporting this view, Torrey reprinted it in the society's monthly newsletter.

  On September 12, 1929, Moses learned that Torrey had provided information about Parks Council proceedings on the parkway route to Grenville Clark, the attorney for the North Shore barons, from whom Moses had been attempting to hide his maneuvering. He left word that Torrey should report to his office as soon as he came in. Torrey did so, walking in on the finance committee meeting.

  Cursing, his face alternately paling and purpling with rage, Moses began to heap abuse on Torrey. Torrey said that the information he had given Clark was information to which any member of the public was entitled. Moses then launched into a tirade about the reprinting of the newspaper article in the society newsletter. Torrey said that Moses had no right to tell him what he could print.

  "God damn you!" Moses shouted. "What do you mean by doing something like that?"

  Torrey was mild-mannered, almost invariably soft-spoken. And among his closest friends were Jewish social workers from the Lower East Side settlement houses. "I have endured many verbal assaults from Mr. Moses, and said little, because he is bigger than I am, and because we [the society] have been almost alone in the council in our defense against his aggressions," Torrey was to write. But "his manner and curses irritated me on this occasion beyond further restraint, and I retorted: 'You big noisy kike, you can't talk to me like that.' "

  Lunging from his chair, Moses seized Torrey's throat and began choking him. So violent was his rage that when finance committee member Jay Downer tried to pull Moses off, he was at first unable to do so and had to exert all his strength to pry loose first one of Moses' hands and then the other.

  As he freed Torrey, Downer grabbed Moses around the waist to hold him and told the smaller man to get away. But as Torrey headed for the door, Moses broke free, picked up a heavy smoking stand and match holder, three-foot steel base and all, and, shouting "You goddamned son of a bitch," hurled it at him. Only the fact that another committee member, DeHart Ames, grabbed Moses' arm as he was letting go the heavy missile made it fall short.

  Recounting the incident in a letter to Roosevelt, Torrey said, "I was, of course, at fault for using 'kike,' " but added that Moses' conduct was only one example of his "truculence and violence against anyone who opposes him." Under Moses' control, Torrey wrote, "the Council has lost its original character, as an advisory body of eminent citizens, working amicably together, and has become a vehicle for securing advantages for Moses, for granting favors for his supporters, and for supporting his hostility to any who oppose him." He asked Roosevelt to limit Moses' powers. When the Governor did not reply, Torrey gave his letter to the press. But Moses was not at all abashed. His only regret, he said, was that he had not been permitted to "finish that crackpot." And Roosevelt, pressed for comment by reporters, would say only, "It is a matter for the State Council of Parks and I do not figure in it." The only result of Moses' assault was that Torrey resigned, allowing Moses to appoint Henry Lutz to his place, and the trustees of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, realizing that their conflict with Moses had reached an intolerable pass and that they could not win, in 1930 gave up the society's control of Letch worth Park and its place on the Parks Counci
l, thereby making Moses' control of that body absolute.

  Roosevelt wouldn't interfere even when he found out that Moses was discouraging Negroes from using many of his state parks.

  Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people. . . . He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!'... He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just the public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons—just to make it a better public." Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason. Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low—too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous. For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult

  to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas. And Negroes were discouraged from using "white" beach areas—the best beaches—by a system Shapiro calls "flagging"; the handful of Negro lifeguards (there were only a handful of Negro employees among the thousands employed by the Long Island State Park Commission) were all stationed at distant, least developed beaches. Moses was convinced that Negroes did not like cold water; the temperature at the pool at Jones Beach was deliberately icy to keep Negroes out. When Negro civic groups from the hot New York City slums began to complain about this treatment, Roosevelt ordered an investigation and an aide confirmed that "Bob Moses is seeking to discourage large Negro parties from picnicking at Jones Beach, attempting to divert them to some other of the state parks." Roosevelt gingerly raised the matter with Moses, who denied the charge violently—and the Governor never raised the matter again.