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

by Caro, Robert A

  Apparently confident that he could break La Guardia down and force him to agree not to reappoint Moses in June, FDR told Ickes pontifically

  that "the thing to do was just to go along, say as little as possible, and let it work out." For a while it seemed that the President was correct. On January 16, he summoned La Guardia to Washington for a private conversation. Returning to New York, the Mayor told reporters, "Nothing is going to happen that will disturb the pleasant relations between the city and Washington. We simply cannot afford to let a break happen. We have too many public projects being financed by federal funds to let such a thing happen." A Herald Tribune Washington staffer reported that "at PWA headquarters, Mr. Moses' resignation was confidently expected as a result of Mayor La Guardia's public remark."

  But if the President felt he was holding all the cards, he was overlooking the trump: public opinion. And Moses' trump suit was even longer than had previously been apparent.

  Roosevelt was forced to admit at a press conference that he had been kept informed of the controversy by Ickes. The President declined to discuss the matter further but even the limited admission made news— president aware of order on moses, the Times headlined—and with this opening, newspapers finally told their readers that FDR was not only aware of the order but had directed Ickes to issue it. The public protest rose to hurricane levels, as delegations from 147 civic, business and social organizations met in the auditorium of the State Chamber of Commerce Building at 65 Liberty Street.

  The diversity of those delegations—there was one from the Fortnightly Library Club of Brooklyn as well as one from the Manufacturers Association of Bush Terminal—indicated the extent to which the support for Moses extended through every segment of the city. There were delegations from the city's most prestigious civic organizations: the Citizens Union, the City Club, the Women's City Club, the Civic Council of Brooklyn, the Alliance of Women's Clubs, the Civitas Club of Brooklyn and the United Neighborhood Houses—a central body which itself represented forty-nine separate settlement houses and other social work organizations such as the New York Urban League and the Educational Alliance. Sitting on the stage or in the audience at the State Chamber of Commerce auditorium were many of the most respected and influential individuals in the New York City reform movement: Burlingham, Price, McAneny, Schieffelin and other old giants of reform who had been idols at the Bureau of Municipal Research when Bob Moses had been a young staffer there; leaders of the "middle generation" of the movement, contemporaries of Moses like Childs, Stanley Isaacs and Morris Ernst; and leaders of reform's younger generation such as Newbold Morris. Once these men had all been friends and admirers of Moses. Many of them had been alienated from him by his display of vindictiveness and disregard for the truth during the gubernatorial campaign. But now there was a principle at stake and these were men to whom principle was more important than personality; forgetting past differences, they took him again into the shelter of their names and reputations and lent to his fight with the President the ringing phrases of reform. The Triborough Bridge, they said in a

  letter sent to Ickes on behalf of all 147 organizations, is "an urgently necessary public facility" but "if the price to be paid for the loan of Federal funds is the surrender of control over local government, then we, being unwilling to sacrifice this great principle, would rather wait until such time as some other method of financing will permit its completion."

  And just as important in determining La Guardia's attitude as the public expressions of protest were the private expressions. For the men making them possessed not only personal entree to La Guardia but his respect. As always, the definitive word was Burlingham's:

  Dear F.H.

  You know my views on the subject; but I think I will put them in writing as my considered opinion, for my own clarification, if not for yours.

  You have told me that you do not think one man should be permitted to obstruct or imperil the relief of hundreds of thousands.

  That one man, however, has become a symbol. Washington has taken the position the English Kings took toward the American Colonies. The question, therefore, is whether you, as representative not of New York City alone but of every municipality and every state in the Union, will submit to an unreasonable and tyrannical order from Washington.

  If you have already committed yourself expressly or by implication, I think you should make it plain to the Secretary and the President that the sentiment of New York is so strong that as its representative you must respect it, and that unless good reason is shown to the contrary you intend to reappoint Moses as Triborough Bridge Commissioner on the expiration of his term.

  I have tested public sentiment at all points possible for me, and it is unanimous. Even those who dislike Moses for his bad manners and rough stuff agree that it would be far better to let work on the Triborough cease than to yield to Order Number 129.

  Yours, Burlingham

  The flood waters of protest were beginning to creep higher in Washington, too. "Morris L. Ernst, a fine young liberal lawyer from New York, came in to see me today very much worried over the situation and its effect on my reputation," Ickes had told his diary on January 9. "He justly pointed out the fact that my action in the Moses case is at utter variance with any other act of mine. He says I am being criticized by all the liberals of New York. He told me frankly that everybody realized that I was acting for the President but apparently that isn't saving my face or helping my reputation." And Ernst was not the only influential liberal to sit under the stuffed buffalo heads at one end of Ickes' vast walnut-paneled office at Interior, waiting for an audience with the Secretary. Already uneasy in his conscience over what he was doing, Ickes became uneasier still.

  Roosevelt tried to ignore the flood—when Joseph Price, an old friend, wrote on January 30 for an interview, the President refused to see him— but by mid-February the waters were beginning to lick at the steps of the

  White House. The mail tally that was sent daily to FDR's desk included, day after day, scores of protests from individuals and organizations. On most of them, a presidential aide, probably Colonel Marvin H. Mclntyre, scribbled 'The usual" and out went a letter, signed by Louis Howe, saying only: "Your letter has been received and will be brought to the President's attention. I want to thank you on his behalf for your interest in sending your views regarding the matter referred to." But some of the mail required more than form replies. For Ernst, Price and Burlingham—and a score of other reform leaders from New York—were personal friends of the President and his wife from Roosevelt's days in New York, and these men were among the writers, Burlingham wiring the President on February 22, a year to the day since FDR had begun the ouster move: "Never have seen such unanimity of feeling. Issue far transcends Moses or New York. . . . Way out can and must be found." And while the protest had at first been confined to New York, with the revelation of the President's direct involvement, it spread. Soon newspapers all over the country, many of which had been looking for proof that federal relief money was being used for political purposes, were finding that proof in Order Number 129 and were treating it accordingly. "I would not have supposed that the country outside of New York would be very interested in this matter," Ickes wrote, "but the newspapers have made it almost a national issue." Arthur Krock, syndicated national political columnist of the Times, analyzed the controversy from a political standpoint. Walter Lippmann analyzed it from a philosophical standpoint, concluding that surrender by La Guardia would mean that he has "bartered away not only his independence but the independence of all other local officials" to a centralized bureaucracy in Washington.

  There were other developments that Roosevelt could only have viewed as ominous. Conservative elements in the House, led by upstate reactionary Bertrand Snell, began to move for a congressional investigation of Order Number 129. Such an investigation was not likely to redound to Roosevelt's credit—as became evident in a speech by Huey Long. The Louisiana rabble-rouser, already a national figure in e
arly 1935 and intent on becoming more of one, had been bitterly attacking Postmaster General Farley and demanding a Senate investigation of his activities. On March 6, before packed galleries in the Senate Chamber, the Kingfish charged that the "Big Bag Man's" New York-based General Builders Supply Corporation was transacting "matters with which the United States government is identified for the purpose of making private profit." And the Kingfish said that, to prove his charge, "the testimony of Commissioner Robert Moses of New York, and the data which he has assembled will be called. . . ." Whether or not, as was later to be reported, Moses was leaking Long his "data" on Farley as a hint to Roosevelt of the revelations he might make during a congressional investigation, the threat of such revelations was another reason for the President to dread the possibility that another branch of the federal government might intrude into his personal vendetta.

  It was not only the legislative branch that might intrude, moreover.

  Emphasizing as always their belief that democracy must be a government of laws and not of men, the New York reformers commissioned a legal analysis of Order Number 129. Their attorney concluded in a sixteen-page brief that the order was clearly illegal, "an arbitrary and capricious fiat without any authority in law," that it was a breach not only of express contractual obligations of the government but of "governmental morality," that the records in the case clearly proved that Ickes had issued the order to force from office a single municipal official for no other reason than that that official was not "deemed friendly to the Federal Administration," that Ickes had abused the power given him by Congress and the President and that he had therefore committed an impeachable offense. The attorney said he was prepared to undertake, as a public service for which no fee would be required, an attempt to obtain from the courts a writ of mandamus requiring Ickes to honor his contract with Triborough. And the identity of the attorney made the threat one that could not be laughed off; he was the noted constitutional lawyer William D. Guthrie, senior partner of the celebrated law firm of Cravath, Swaine and Moore, who forty years before had carried a fight against the imposition of a federal income tax all the way to the United States Supreme Court—and had won. (The tax was not reinstituted until 1913, when it was legalized by the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment.*) Roosevelt decided to grant Joseph Price the interview Price had requested, and the reformer returned to New York to report to intimates that he had found the President conciliatory. He told them that Roosevelt had asked him plaintively, "Isn't the President of the United States entitled to one personal grudge?" ("No," Price said he had replied.) Ickes wrote in his diary: "The President, I know, would welcome a way out of this cul-de-sac." But, the Secretary added, "no way offers itself."

  Trying to find a way, the President summoned La Guardia to a secret meeting. It was held on February 24 aboard a Pennsylvania Railroad train carrying the President from Washington to a speech in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although the train stopped in New York, La Guardia drove to Philadelphia and boarded it there to lessen the possibility that he would be spotted by a reporter. When the train stopped in New York, the city's mayor stayed hidden in a compartment behind lowered window shades.

  President and Mayor were trying to find a way to retreat and still save face, and La Guardia had brought with him a draft of a letter he thought might do the job. In the letter, which was addressed to Ickes, La Guardia agreed that he would always obey Order Number 129 in the future and would never again appoint a city official to an authority receiving federal funds. But, he said, applying Order Number 129 retroactively to city officials already on authorities created a problem in the case of one particular individual—Housing Authority member Post.

  Langdon Post is familiar with the entire city housing program, La

  * The main reason for the verdict was the constitutional provision that direct taxes had to be apportioned among the states in proportion to population, a provision struck out by the amendment.

  Guardia wrote. "What is more, he is enthusiastic, zealous and energetic in his work. It would be a pity to displace him at this time." Therefore, the Mayor said, could I possibly ask for a "modification" of Order Number 129 that would permit "officials of existing commissions or authorities to continue their work until completion"?

  There was also a postscript to the letter. "P.S.," the Mayor wrote. There is one other official who would be affected by the modification. His name is Robert Moses. "I assume the ruling on one will be applicable to the other."

  The attempt to cover the retreat on Moses by pretending that the battle was really over Post was so transparent a smoke screen that Roosevelt may have been reluctant to employ it. He did nothing on February 25, 26 or 27. The requisition slips that Moses had sent to Washington on November 8, almost four months before, remained on Ickes' desk, unsigned. The contracts for the next stages of work on the Triborough Bridge remained unlet. Considerations of revenge and politics appear to have been balancing themselves almost evenly in the President's mind.

  But on February 27, something happened that tipped the balance.

  For weeks, Alfred E. Smith's friends had been urging him to issue a statement on Moses' behalf. Time and again they had told him that he must delay no longer, that Moses could not hold out without help. But while the old warrior was unhappy now and terribly bitter, he had lost none of his wiliness. Wait, he told his friends. The time wasn't right yet. Moses didn't need him to hold out. The newspaper editorials and civic association resolutions would enable him to do that. Moses needed him to win. The moment when he should step in was the moment at which the President and the Mayor had been driven to the edge of a decision to give in to Moses and a single push could plunge them over the edge into surrender—if the push was delivered by someone with more influence than a newspaper or a civic association, someone whose name was still a potent force throughout the United States and particularly potent as an influence with La Guardia, who knew that if Smith ever became angry enough to go after his job, he would probably be unable to keep it. Now, Smith judged, the moment had arrived. On February 26, he called reporters to his office on the thirty-second floor of the Empire State Building and said he wanted to make a statement. As usual, he went right to the heart. "Over ten years ago," he said, "Bob was talking to me about a single unified plan for park and parkway development for the state." He has been carrying out that plan ever since. "The Triborough Bridge is the key to the success of the whole system." It was "ridiculous" not to let him finish it. Ickes' order was "narrow, political and vindictive." He could not believe, he said, that President Roosevelt would be a party to it.

  As Smith had known it would, his statement made the front pages of newspapers across the country on February 27. The very next day, the President, in Ickes' words, "came to a conclusion that a retreat was in order."

  Summoning Ickes to the White House, he called in stenographer Grace Tully and dictated a draft of a reply to La Guardia's letter for Ickes to sign. "Ickes' " reply agreed to solve "the problem created as the result of the expiration of the term of Commissioner Langdon Post" by ruling that Order Number 129 should not apply retroactively and that therefore since Post had been appointed to both his city and authority posts before the order was issued, he could keep them. "Since a like situation exists with reference to Mr. Moses, of the Triborough Bridge Authority, this interpretation shall also apply to him," the letter added. Ickes predated the La Guardia letter to him February 23 and he predated "his" letter to La Guardia February 26—"so as to antedate by one day the blast let out . . . by Al Smith," he noted in his diary. Regardless of the date at its top, however, the letter was a document of unconditional surrender. Moses' great friend had rendered him one last great service.

  All but ignoring Langdon Post, the press correctly interpreted the Ickes letter as a personal triumph for the Triborough Commissioner, ickes backs down on moses was the Herald Tribune's three-column lead headline; its editorial noted that Ickes' letter left some questions about the controversy's origin unanswer
ed but said, "No one, we think, will wish to disturb the grandeur of that handsome, outsized white flag now floating above the offices of the PWA by hurling irrelevant questions at it." La Guardia's parting growl—"As I have insisted all along, relations between Washington and City Hall are most cordial and friendly. . . . There was no need for all this 'pro bono publico' business"—was lost in the cheering.

  Ickes, who hadn't wanted to become involved in the first place, had suffered not only pangs of conscience but a public humiliation of monumental proportions. "Moses did me more damage than any other one person during my years with Roosevelt," he was to write. But even Ickes could not forbear to cheer the episode's victor. Reminiscing in a letter to Burlingham years later, he said, "There can be no doubt of the porcupinish disposition of Moses. And is he clever! ... He put it all over President Roosevelt and me in that squabble." Cleveland Rodgers summed up the dimensions of the triumph when he wrote: "The battle of the Triborough Bridge was over. Moses won against the most powerful opponent he ever encountered."

  And Moses won more than a battle. For in it, as Rodgers wrote, he "received the most impressive demonstration of public confidence in his career." That was the battle's most significant development. At the conclusion of his gubernatorial campaign, Moses' stock of public confidence had never been lower. But at the conclusion of the Triborough Bridge fight, just four months later, it had never been higher. By placing Moses in a position where he was in fact the opponent of bureaucrats and politicians that he had for so long claimed to be, Franklin Roosevelt had allowed him to screw his halo back on. And so firmly did Moses screw it back on—without ever again making the mistake of running for public office—that in the public's eyes the last of the glow would not fade for almost thirty years. "After