One of Moses' secretaries, however, was attempting to pick up the program at home. Unable to do so, or to locate WNYC at all, she finally realized that the station was off the air. She managed to telephone Allyn Jennings backstage at the Museum. Rushing over to the technicians, the Moses aide asked what was going on. They assured him with straight faces that the program was on the air. Running outside to his car, Jennings turned on the radio, dialed WNYC, got only silence and realized that the technicians must be deliberately fooling him. Running back into the auditorium, he handed up a note to his boss, just as he was coming to the end of his speech. The Park Commissioner, who had believed that he had been speaking for the past forty-five minutes to tens of thousands of New Yorkers, learned that he had been speaking to only two hundred—the two hundred right in front of him. The WNYC microphone in front of him was dead. Someone must have ordered WNYC to cut his program off the air— and must have ordered the technicians to go through all the motions necessary to conceal this fact from him. And glaring down at them as they made still another thumbs-up gesture, he realized that only one man would have thought of that touch. That guinea son of a bitch had outsmarted him again.
La Guardia may have been able to keep Moses from reaching the public's ears, but the Mayor could do nothing about the public's eyes. The next day his Park Commissioner's plan was on page one of every newspaper in the city, with support for that plan on virtually every editorial page. But the Mayor, using all of his power and all of his cunning, cut Moses out of the public housing picture as completely as he had cut him off the air.
The arena in which the initial confrontation took place was an eleven-member committee the Mayor had formed some months before—and to which, not suspecting Moses' designs, he had appointed him—to advise him
on public housing. Moses attempted to persuade the committee members to endorse at least some of his proposals, but La Guardia, working through Windels, the committee's chairman, made sure they didn't—by employing relentless pressure. Windels would decline, years later, to furnish any details of the in-fighting. "But I'll tell you this," he said. "When it came to things like that, La Guardia was as hard and as shrewd as they come. Whatever it was necessary to do, he did." The committee declined to recommend a single one of Moses' proposed sites or any diminution whatever in the powers of the La Guardia-appointed and -dominated City Housing Authority.
La Guardia handled all negotiations with Federal Housing Authority chairman Nathan Straus personally. He made all announcements of new projects from his own office, and in general made sure that Moses never knew what new public housing project was being planned until the planning was completed and the necessary federal funds allocated. Moses raged, publicly assailing the "secret, surreptitious" program, but he could not budge the Mayor. By the end of 1941, thirteen separate public housing projects containing a total of more than 17,000 apartments had been constructed in New York, far more than in any other city in America, and Moses had had nothing to do with any of them. The Mayor was even able to indulge himself in an additional soup^on of personal satisfaction. The printing bill for the four-color brochure Moses had distributed at the Museum of Natural History was more than a thousand dollars; when Moses submitted the bill to Comptroller McGoldrick, the Mayor smilingly told the Comptroller, "A beautiful printing job"—and ordered him not to pay it.
The tunnel and housing fights convinced La Guardia, according to Windels, Kern, Berle and other top mayoral assistants, that his Park Commissioner was intent on increasing his personal power. And La Guardia, determined to concentrate power in the city in his own hands, acted as he would have acted toward any rival. The unifying motive behind Moses' actions in both fights was his desire to expand his power—in the tunnel fight to attain power to build not just bridges but all interborough crossings; in the housing fight to extend his power, hitherto limited to the fields of parks and transportation, into a wholly new field of governmental endeavor. La Guardia kept Moses' power confined within its traditional spheres.
Following the tunnel and housing fights, moreover, the Mayor began to re-examine the implications of the virtually unlimited power he had given Moses within those traditional spheres—and to conclude that his power should be curbed in those spheres, too.
This was not, according to the Mayor's top aides, a wholly new feeling. For some time, they say, he had been becoming worried about aspects of Moses' park policy, the same aspects, in general, that were worrying reformers like Exton and Weinberg. If he had not discerned before precisely what those policies meant for those of the city's people who most needed parks, he was beginning to discern it now; Windels recalls the Mayor raging
when he realized that the prices Moses' concessionaires were charging at such new city-built or -refurbished park restaurants as the Tavern-on-the-Green and the Claremont Inn were so high that they could not be used regularly by poor or even middle-class families. In transportation, La Guardia had had a vague feeling ever since the beginning of his mayoralty that great road-building projects must be accompanied by corresponding improvements in mass transportation, but because he admired Moses' parkways and bridges, he had not pressed the Commissioner to include provision for mass transportation on them. But as new parkways and bridges became jammed as quickly as they opened, the vague feelings hardened; by 1939, La Guardia would be pressing Moses hard indeed as to why he was not paying more attention to the suggestions of the Regional Plan Association. And beyond questions of parks and transportation, the Mayor had for some time been becoming progressively more aware of the question that a later generation would call "priorities." By 1938, he was acutely aware that the great strides made in parks and parkways were not being matched in any other areas of public works—not even in areas like schools and hospitals in which the need was desperate. "His feelings about Moses had subtly and gradually but substantially changed by the time I resigned as Corporation Counsel [in 1937]," Windels says. "He still felt he had matchless abilities and energies, but he also felt now that those abilities and energies must be channeled in the right direction if the city was to benefit from them."
Now, with the Mayor's feelings intensified by the tunnel and housing fights, "he was worried about how much power Moses had in the city," Kern says. "I know because he kept talking about it. He felt [Moses'] power must be reduced. These feelings really became very strong." And this analysis of the Mayor's feelings was documented by the Mayor's actions: in November 1938, shortly after Moses' Museum speech, he cut from the list of WPA projects at least two large park projects he had earlier promised Moses he would include; in December, La Guardia stood up to him, and to The New York Times, with a new firmness in cutting the Park Department's budget request; early in 1939, the Mayor made it clear to Newbold Morris and Joseph McGoldrick, his Board of Estimate allies, that they were to take a harder line on Moses' requests to the Board.
But by 1939 the Mayor's feelings were not to be nearly as crucial to Moses as they had been in the past. To a large extent, in fact, he no longer had to concern himself with such feelings. To a large extent, it no longer mattered to him what the Mayor thought.
Of all the remarkable qualities of Robert Moses' matchless mind, one of the most striking was its ability to take an institution with little or no power, and, seemingly, with little or no potential for more power (at Yale, an unprestigious literary magazine; in state government, the Long Island State Park Commission) and to transform it into an institution with immense power, power insulated from and hence on a par with the power of the forces that had originally created it. And now the mind of Robert Moses had begun focusing on the institution known as the "public authority."
created by an interstate compact between New York and New Jersey, would not be created until 1921, would not float its first bond issue until 1926 and would not become financially successful until 1931, when, after five years of near fiscal disaster, it would persuade the two states to let it take over the highly successful Holland Tunnel, which had been constr
ucted by an independent commission.* It was not until the New Deal, when Depression-strapped municipalities, unable to finance major public works themselves, suddenly realized that RFC and PWA grants were available for self-liquidating projects, that urban authorities began to be established in any number. In 1933 and 1934, when Moses was playing the crucial role in setting up the Triborough, Bethpage, Jones Beach, Henry Hudson, Marine Parkway and Hayden Planetarium authorities—and a lesser but still key role in the creation of seven other authorities—there were only a few handfuls of other authorities in the entire country.
With the lone exception of the Port Authority, moreover, every public authority created in the United States had been created in a single pattern: each had been established to construct and operate one, and only one, public improvement, a single isolated bridge or tunnel or sewer system, to issue only enough bonds to pay for the construction of that improvement, and only bonds with a fixed expiration date, and, when that date arrived— or sooner, if revenue was collected faster than expected—to pay off the bonds, eliminate all tolls or fees, turn the improvement over to the city and go out of existence. The Port Authority, empowered to operate several improvements, had become America's first "multi-purpose" public authority, but each of its projects fit the traditional pattern since each was financed by a separate bond issue and both Authority members and public officials expected that as soon as each issue was paid off, the tolls on the facility financed by that issue would be eliminated, t Motivated by the failure of several Port Authority projects to earn enough to meet the interest and amortization payments on their bonds, the Authority's brilliant general counsel, Julius Henry Cohen, was attempting in 1934 to break new ground
* Moses had played a small but significant role in the tunnel's construction. One of his first assignments for Al Smith was to analyze two conflicting construction proposals, the commission's plan to build the tunnel by conventional methods at a cost it estimated at $28 million and General George W. Goethals' plan to build it by a new method at a cost Goethals estimated at $12 million. The young reformer, unequipped with the slightest practical experience in construction, interviewed the famed builder of the Panama Canal, and gave Smith his verdict: "a great personality, a go-getter, but neither a great engineer nor a financier." Equally unimpressed with the commission's engineers, he talked with independent experts and concluded—and told the Governor—that the Goethals plan "would not work" and that while the commission's would, the cost would be not $28 but $48 million. Smith's reaction, Moses was to recall, "introduced me to his extraordinary head for facts and figures and his immense loyalty to his assistants, no matter how green, young and new at the game." Ignoring protests, the Governor threw out the Goethals plan and accepted the commission's, but allocated for it the $48 million that Moses had suggested. The actual cost turned out to be $49 million. t Because the facilities would thereafter belong to not one but two states, there were plans to have them run by bistate commissions with members appointed by both legislatures.
by devising a new kind of bond and persuading bankers who held the Authority's outstanding bonds to accept the new one in their place. Under the plan Cohen had in mind, the individual bond issues would be combined into a single general issue supported by the revenues from all Port Authority enterprises, a move which would allow use of the Holland Tunnel surpluses to bail out such money losers as its two bridges connecting Staten Island with New Jersey. And since the new issue would be "open-ended," the Authority could use any over-all surplus to finance new projects. The bankers refused to consider "open-end" bonds for unspecified new projects but, in !935> did agree to a consolidation of outstanding bonds in a "General and Refunding Bond" that could be used for one new project—the proposed Lincoln Tunnel—and it was this bond, rather than any devised by Moses, that was the first bond issue in the United States secured not by a single public improvement but by an authority's general revenues.
But Moses went much further. Originally, he had conceived of his authorities in the traditional mold: the legislation he had drafted establishing the Triborough, Henry Hudson and Marine Parkway bodies, for example, had explicitly authorized each to construct only a single, specific project and to issue bonds only for that project; the bonds were to be paid off as soon as possible, and not only was a time limit (forty years) set on their expiration but that time limit also limited the authority's life—as soon as its bonds were paid off, it was to go out of existence and turn over its bridge to the city government. The legislators who had created Robert Moses' authorities and the mayor who under the State Constitution had had to ask the legislators to create them had conceived of them as mere creatures of the sovereign city. Legislators and mayor, as well as the city's citizens, continually reminded by the press of the long tradition that all its bridges be toll-free, had been assured that the tolls would be removed forever as soon as their cost had been paid for. And there had been no deliberate attempt to mislead them: Robert Moses had thought of public authorities as men had always thought of public authorities.
But Robert Moses' thinking was changing.
The primary factor behind the change was money.
The carrying charges—interest and amortization—on the $5,100,000 in bonds that had been sold to pay for the Henry Hudson Bridge were about $370,000 per year, a sum that could be collected, at ten cents per car, from 3,700,000 cars. But the number of drivers handing their dimes to the bridge toll collectors was not 3,700,000. In 1938, it was 10,300,000; in 1939, 12,700,000. And maintenance costs on bridges were, Moses was learning, gratifyingly minimal. Painting the entire Henry Hudson, for example, cost only $18,000, and painting was needed only once in four years. The salaries of toll collectors, the only operating personnel required, totaled less than $50,000 per year: "Our bridge was fabulously successful," Jack Madigan would say. "We were earning— after the carrying charges — $600,000 per year NET!!!" And that was just one bridge! The Triborough, on which the annual carrying charges were about $1,800,000, but on which the toll was twenty-five cents for cars and more for trucks, was by 1938
earning per year NET!!! $1,300,000. More significantly still, on all Moses' bridges, the traffic volume for each month was higher than the volume for the corresponding month the previous year; clearly, volume—and revenue —was going to be far higher than even those fabulous figures.
Under the laws creating the authorities—the bills that Robert Moses himself had drafted on his yellow legal note pads—unexpectedly high revenues could be used in only one way: to retire an authority's bonds faster than scheduled, to speed the date when the authority would go out of existence and turn its bridge back to the city.
With surpluses of such unprecedented size, the bonds of Moses' authorities would be retired very fast indeed. At the rate the Henry Hudson Bridge was making money, for example, its cost would be amortized not in forty years but in ten years, perhaps, or nine, or eight. In a decade or less, the bridge that the city had never been able to finance would have been built by Robert Moses—built and paid for, to stand for centuries as a great free public improvement for its citizens.
Using the surpluses in the way required by law would therefore make the Henry Hudson Bridge—and the Triborough—spectacular successes, all the more spectacular in a city in which public works always seemed to cost the public more, not less, than anticipated.
But this was not the kind of success in which Moses, obsessed by accomplishment and power, was interested. Money—revenue, surpluses— was the key to accomplishment and power—but only if he could keep it and use it. It was of no use to him if he had to give it to bankers as fast as he got it. It was of no use to him if, as soon as he had paid off the bankers, he had to surrender control of his bridges. Money was of use to him only if, in other words, he was able to use the bridge surpluses for other purposes than bond paying and if he was able to keep control of the bridges instead of turning them over to the city. And under the law this was impossible.
But what if the l
aw was changed?
What if, in some way, he was able to keep the money?
Madigan and others close to Robert Moses saw his supple mind coiling around the possibilities. The actuality of the money, he began to realize, was not its most significant aspect. Its potential was what mattered. The total annual income of his authorities was, by 1938, $4,500,000. This amount was not insignificant to him; it was as large as his total annual Park Department budget. But it was not as significant as $81,000,000. And $81,000,000 was the amount of forty-year, 4 percent, revenue bonds that could be floated—"capitalized" was the word in the bankers' vocabulary that Moses was learning—with an income of $4,500,000. If he was able to keep the authorities' revenues and use them to float bonds, he would be able to float $81,000,000, or $35,000,000 more than the total $46,000,000 in bonds that the three New York City bridge authorities currently had outstanding. He would have $81,000,000 to use to create dreams and power.
Much more than $81,000,000, in fact.
The multiplier factor would be increased by the proven success of his
bridges. When he and Jack Madigan had originally been attempting to persuade bankers to invest in the authorities, the ability of toll bridges to attract substantial amounts of traffic had been in doubt, and the bankers had therefore demanded a coverage of 1.75 or 2.00 (anticipated earnings double that required to cover interest and amortization) and a return of 4 percent on their investment. Now toll bridges were a proven commodity. Bankers might settle for a coverage of 1.5 or even 1.4 and an investment return of 3 percent or even 2.75, and any reduction in coverage or interest rates meant an increase in the amount of bonds that the authority income could capitalize. More important, if some of the money raised by the floating of new bonds was used to build new bridges on which tolls could be charged, the authorities' income would be more than $4,500,000. Since each dollar of tolls could capitalize roughly eighteen dollars in bonds, there was therefore an additional built-in multiplier factor at work: the more public works he built, the more money he would have to build still more public works. And this factor would work indefinitely—forever, possibly.
The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York Page 94
