RM impatient: RM to Graves, Apr. 12, 1924, Smith Papers.
11 . The Majesty of the Law
SOURCES
Books:
Talese, The Kingdom and the Power; Warner, The Happy Warrior; see also "Sources," Chapter 6.
Author's interviews:
Leonard W. Hall, William Latham, Richard Mayes, Robert Payne, Joseph M. Proskauer, P. G. Rasweiler, Sidney M. Shapiro, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, Albert L. Warner.
NOTES
RM's overhead expenses: Attorney General Albert Ottinger, press release, reprinted in NYT, May 18, 1925. Exempting friends: Graves to RM, May 5, 1924, Smith Papers.
Fire Island State Park: Blakelock, The Long Island State Parks.
Smith calling Hayes: RM. Drinking beer: RM, Shapiro.
One day's hunting: Deer Range stockholder Percy R. Pyne II statement in NYT, Jan. 9, 1925.
Threatening the farmers: Author's interview with P. G. Rasweiler, confirmed by RM to Graves Oct. 29, 1926, Smith Papers, and by Shapiro, who boasted about taking the surveys from the adjoining farm. Also Robert A. Hug "and neighbors" to Smith, Oct. 25, 1926, Smith Papers. Threatening the Timber Pointers: Havemeyer quote from newspaperman Lloyd Record, who heard him. "Mr. Moses told me": Macy's testimony under oath in examination before trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court, related in NYT, Oct.
Notes for pages 185-197
1188
27, 1925. Threatening the North Shore robber barons; seeing the surveyors and being threatened with appropriation:
Davison, Hall, Mayes, Payne, Latham. Stimson to Smith: May 18, 1925, Smith Papers. "Teach a lesson": Incident recounted in Old Westbury landowner Henry M. Earle to Smith, June 23, 1926, Smith Papers. "I felt awful": Davison. Lawyer's opinion: Marvin Shiebler to Robert P. Griffing, Nov. 13, 1925, Macy Papers.
Taylor Estate fight: Timber Pointers' contentions in court briefs—for example, "Pauchogue Land Corporation, Plaintiff, against Long Island State Park Commission, and Robert Moses, Townsend Scudder and Clifford L. Jackson, individually and as Commissioners of the Long Island State Park Commission, Defendants"—"Brief on Behalf of Plaintiff-Appellant"; "Appellant's Reply Brief"; and "Record on Preliminary Injunction for Submission to the Finance Committee of the Senate and the Ways and Means Committee of the Assembly." Smith's advisers believe he won't sign: Tone of Graves to RM, Oct. 9, 1924, and of RM to Smith, Oct. 10, 1924, Smith Papers. The closed hearing: Virtually all Smith biographers give accounts of this hearing, which became a legend in New York State, but all these accounts have Smith treating Have-meyer's remark as a joke. The account the author believes to be accurate comes from RM, in interview with author, and is confirmed by Carlos Israels' and Joseph Proskauer's recollections of what Belle Moskowitz and Smith, respectively, told them the next day.
W. Kingsland Macy: The "observer" was Alva Johnston, who profiled Macy for The New Yorker, Sept. 12, 1931; quotes are from pp. 26 and 25. Of many newspaper profiles of Macy, the most detailed are S. J. Woolf, NYT Magazine, May 17, 1931, and Brooklyn Eagle, Sunday Magazine Section, Jan. 4, 1931.
Troopers on property: Pyne in NYT, Jan. 9, 1925. $25,000 limit and Macy's refusal to view the fight in purely business terms: Havemeyer to Macy, Apr.
28, 1925; Jan. 5, 1926; Macy to Havemeyer, Apr. 28, May 5, 6, 1925; Jan. 5, Dec. 23, 1926, Macy Papers.
Furman finds illegal: "Order to show cause," issued by Mr. Justice George H. Furman, Judge of the County Court of Suffolk County, Dec. 30, 1924. Macy refusing to show reporter around: Macy note to Miss Vunck, undated, Macy Papers. "The amateur in politics": RM.
"The defendants have proceeded . . . illegally": Van Siclen, "Injunction Order," quoted in NYT, Feb. 18, 1925. Van Siclen, "Order of Preliminary Injunction," Feb/ 17, 1925, p. 2.
Senate Finance Committee hearings: NYT and HT, Feb. 12, 1925. RM's edited transcript: Copy found in Macy Papers.
Smith veto message and legislative fight: From three newspapers, NYT, HT and Brooklyn Eagle, various issues, Apr. 2-June 27, 1925.
Macy-RM face-to-face confrontation: Macy statement issued May 5, 1925; Pauchogue Land Corporation "Complaint" in "Record on Preliminary Injunction," p. 13.
RM stalling: Among those who said so were Justices Van Siclen and Dike. Van Siclen commented, "The suit should have been tried long ago" (NYT, May 28, 1925). Dike was to blast the "dilatory tactics of the Commission," adding that RM's actions seem to show "a studied effort to affront the court" (Brooklyn Eagle, Oct. 19, 1925).
Macy's confidence: Macy to Havemeyer, May 5, 1925, Jan. 5, 1926, and others, Macy Papers. Wait, Smith said: Proskauer.
NYT editorial: Feb. 17, 1925. "The bible": Talese, p. 7. NYT slanting Van Siclen story: Handling of Ottinger story, May 18, 1925; editorial on Ottinger charge, May 18; the paper stated as a fact that the Governor was "willing to make any reasonable compromise . . ." (June 5, 1925); a June 14 article contains such phrases as "The Governor believes in parks. He loves them. . . . Not long ago he motored over Long Island, where [park] plans have precipitated bitter opposition by certain wealthy residents." Another article (Jan. 12, 1925) began: "Whatever may be the outcome of the controversy between the Long Island State Park Commission and the group of men opposing purchase of the George C. Taylor property on the Great South Bay, an examination on the ground indicates that the property in many respects is ideal for a public park . . ." Not only does the article make no mention of the opponents' contentions that the park was too far from New York City, too inaccessible to public transportation, etc., for a park; it ignores their contention, later proved true, that developing it would take, in terms of public expenditures of the time, an enormous expenditure: "seemingly it could be developed at no very great expense," the
Notes for pages 198-209
article states, and it is obvious from the article, although it never says so, that that statement is based entirely on RM's estimate of that expense.
Adolph S. Ochs: Helping RM preserve the Saratoga Battlefield: RM to State Comptroller Morris S. Tremaine, Aug. 8, 1928, Smith papers. His interest in parks: Talese, pp. 79, 96-97. The publisher's intense interest in parks occasionally proved an embarrassment to RM; once, while the Governor was visiting Sulzberger at the publisher's Lake George home, RM wrote Smith a letter about new park plans, delicately hinting to Smith that he not tell Ochs about them lest they find their way into the pages of the Times before they were finalized; RM to Smith, Aug. 8, 1924, Smith Papers. Iphigene "thrilled": Iphi-gene Ochs Sulzberger interview with author. Warner: Interview. Ochs's Park Association award: NYT, Dec. 25, 1931.
RM's secret visit to Ward and Mastick: RM.
Citizens Union statement: NYT, June 23, 1925. Price: Smith telegram to Price, June 25, 1925, Smith Papers. Roulstone's tour: NYT, June 21, 1925.
Record speed of veto; Knight and Walker quotes: NYT, June 27, 1925. "Sealed orders": Smith quoted in NYT, June 26. "Too much pressure": Mastick, NYT, June 26. "My career would end": World, June 27.
Bitter facts; options lost: Annual Report of the L1SPC, 1925, p. 47. Deciding to call Heckscher: RM. Smith-Heckscher conversation: Related in numerous biographies of Smith, including Josephson,
p. 333-
Court fight: Tuttle, HT, Sept. 13, 1925. Smith tried privately to persuade Macy: Macy to Smith, Sept. 12, 1925, Macy to Heckscher, Oct. 11, 1925, Macy Papers.
RM under oath: NYT, HT and Brooklyn Eagle; court transcripts. Goldsmith memorandum in NYT, Sept. 12, 1925.
Jones Beach: Babylon Leader, issues of July 18, 25, Aug. 15, 1924; Amityville Sun, Aug. 8, 1924; Long Island Sun, Nov. 20, 1924. RM's feelings: RM.
12. Robert Moses and the Creature of the Machine
SOURCES
The general picture of corruption on Long Island is drawn from interviews
with Richard Mayes Nassau ( oiinty Democratic leade< in the (920*1 I930s; Eugene Hi
who opposed RM in court conhm. during the [930*1; James B, ( ooper. J' editor of the Babylon Leader, Leonard W. Hall, a GOP assemblyman at the time; Dolie McWhinney Ad
ams. I nomas McWhinney's daughter; Paul Reinhardt. an Oyster Bay restaurateur and intimate of politicians; three of RM's key aides at the time, Sidney M. Shapiro, William Latham and one who prefers to remain unidentified; the author's casual conversations with old-time Long Island politicians during several years as a reporter for Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. There are various newspaper articles on one aspect or another that came to light. But the most graphic over-all picture is probably that provided by RM's own articles in the State Bulletin, 1921, 1922 and 1923.
The on-the-record court fight is contained not only in numerous newspaper articles but in the court records cited in the "Notes" for Chapter 11. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering is detailed in the Macy Papers, in the Smith Papers, in an interview with Gladys Vunck, Macy's personal secretary, and in a confidential interview with one of Moses' aides.
Other information was supplied in interviews with Israel Ben Scheiber, William S. Chapin, Gilmore Clarke, Mrs. W. Kingsland Macy and Mrs. Harold Morse.
The compromise reached in Albany is discussed in newspapers and explained in the Macy Papers, in the Smith Papers and in interviews with Miss Vunck and RM.
NOTES
Hewitt offering to sell: Hewitt to RM, Dec. 31, 1924, Smith Papers. RM's refusal: Lutz to Smith, June 24, 1925, Smith Papers. RM refused to give inside information on highway routes to Smith's friends: Francis Pettit, one of them, to Smith, complaining, Mar. 21, 1925, Smith Papers.
Doughty and Booth & Weston: Hurley, Shapiro; confirmed by confidential sources.
Giving Hempstead Town politicians access to LISPC plans: Smith to Gen. George W. Goethals, Mar. 30, 1926, Smith Papers; NYT, Dec. 12, 1925, gives details of formation of the joint commission to plan Jones Beach. Moses be-
Notes for pages 209-227
1190
coming friendly with McWhinney:
Adams.
Lawyer forming corporation: Nassau County Clerk's Office, Certificate of Incorporation, Index No. 5415, Year 1926. The only land it ever purchased and sold: Nassau County Clerk's Office, Records of Purchases of Real Property—Onslow Estates (microfiche). The specific purchases and sales involved can be found in the County Book of Deeds—Liber No. 1075, p. 48; 1086, p. 5; 1101, p. 355; 1118, p. 251; 1128, p. 37; 1168, p. 247; 1181, p. 163; 1197, p. 160; 1235, p. 443; 1227, p. 379; 1517, p. 89. Also helpful were interviews with Hurley and confidential source. Contracts to Weston and Hendrickson: Hurley, Mayes, confidential source; various newspapers, various issues, 1927-29.
Doughty's friendship: Hall, Hurley, confidential interviews. The alliance between Moses and Doughty—and with Doughty's nephew and successor, J. Rus-sel Sprague—was to be an open secret of Long Island politics for the next forty years.
Compromise in Albany: Wadsworth's orders: RM. The maneuvering is detailed in RM's interviews and the Smith Papers, the attempt to stop it in the Macy Papers. Macy got his first hint: Macy to Charles D. Hillies, Republican national committeeman, Apr. 4, 5, 1926, Macy Papers. (In one letter Macy raged: "The entire program of the Long Island State Park Commission is moving forward through a number of small and apparently unimportant bills in spite of ... promises to the contrary.") He might have known earlier that he had been betrayed had he read, in a Brooklyn Daily Times, Feb. 19, 1926, account of one of his trips to Albany, an article evidently leaked to the paper by RM: 'The joke is said to be that while the Long Islanders were in secret session at some hotel here [in Albany] on the best methods to block the Taylor estate park development, Governor Smith was fixing his signature to the appropriation bill, included in which is an appropriation for the park at East Islip." Macy-Hutchinson confrontation recounted in Macy to Hutchinson, Feb. 20, 1926.
Hidden appropriations for development of LI parks: It is impossible to locate all of them in state budgetary bills, or in the 1926 LISPC Annual Report or anything else RM wrote in this period— or in any newspaper. But they are detailed in a memorandum prepared by the Suffolk County Taxpayers Association,
Apr. 4, 1926, entitled: "Long Island State Park Commission Program by Piece-meal Legislation," Smith Papers.
Smith inviting Hewitt and Hutchinson to LI: RM.
Trial before Strong: NYT and HT, May 18, 26, June 4, 8, 1926.
Bella and Emanuel: Israel Ben Schei-ber, who was the social worker.
For both sides weren't equal: "A business affair": Havemeyer to Macy, Apr. 28, 1925. "Ramifications": Macy to Havemeyer, Jan. 5, 1926. Printing bill: Macy to Havemeyer, Apr. 23, 1928. Stenographic bill: Macy to Havemeyer, Dec. 23, 1926. $10,000 bill: Havemeyer to Macy, Apr. 28, 1925. "My limit": Havemeyer to Macy, Jan. 5, 1926. Macy's determination to carry on alone: Macy to Havemeyer, Jan. 5, 1926. $43,192.61: Havemeyer handwritten memo attached to letter to Macy, May 1, 1928. Macy being dunned: Martin A. Schenck, for Davies, Auerbach & Cornell, to Robbins (Macy's personal attorney), Apr. 22, 1929. The author cannot locate any definitive final total of Macy's court costs, but they appear to have been about $74,-000. All of the documents cited above are in the Macy Papers.
Macy: See note, Chapter 11. RM the only person he wanted to see: Mrs. W. Kingsland Macy.
The lessons RM learned: Interviews with RM, Shapiro, Latham, jChapin and other RM aides.
Planning Jones Beach: RM, Shapiro, Gilmore Clarke, Mrs. Harold Morse.
13. Driving
SOURCES
Books:
Moses, Dangerous Trade) Working for the People; and The State Park Plan for New York — Revised to Show Progress to Date; Rodgers, Robert Moses. See also "Sources" for Chapter 6.
Author's interviews:
Dolie McWhinney Adams, Richard Boyce, Gilmore Clarke, Morris Ernst, James J. Flynn, Mrs. Elmer B. Howells, William J. Junkamen, William Latham, Michael J. Madigan, Mrs. Harold Morse, Sidney M. Shapiro, Mae Smisek.
NOTES
The need for haste: RM. RM in action:
Junkamen, Clarke, Flynn, Latham; con-
Notes for pages 229-247
L191
fidential sources; Mrs. Morse. Outings: Dolie McWhinney Adams, Mae Smisek. "No side": Morris Ernst.
Inspiring designers: Shapiro, Clarke, Latham, LISPC official Richard Boyce.
Jones Beach: Rodgers, pp. 50-56; Shapiro. $20,000: Rodgers, pp. 54, 55; confirmed by Michael J. (Jack) Madi-gan, one of the firm's foremen. Guggenheim: Rodgers, pp. 52-53.
Babylon election: RM's feelings: RM, Shapiro, confidential source. Coolness toward Mary in town: Mrs. Howells. RM threats: LISPC press release, Apr. 12, 1928. Finding the weak spot: RM, confirmed by confidential source and Babylon Town Supervisor Joseph Warta. Without warning, "Judases!": Babylon Leader, Mar. 16, 1928; confidential sources. No tolls: RM letter to Leader, published Mar. 3, 1928. Cooper's feelings: His editorials in Leader. State employees voting: Leader, Apr. 16, 1928; Suffolk County Taxpayers Association press release, Apr. 17, 1928. The release states: "The State Park Commission . . . had at least ten automobiles in operation at this election. ... It was further reported by the inspectors of election that many young men, unknown to them, had been brought in these cars and demanded the right to vote." Strangely, the release states, the registers customarily provided by the Town Board for poll inspectors to check the qualifications of voters were not provided this time. "There were no challengers at the polls and no one to decide upon the qualifications to vote of the young men brought to the polls in state automobiles, upon this occasion."
"Scandalous": Leader, Apr. 6, 1928.
"A vote of confidence": LISPC press release, Apr. 4, 1928, Macy Papers.
9,700 acres: NYT, Nov. 3, 1928. Overall progress from newspaper stories, spring and summer, 1928; Annual Report of the LISPC, 1928.
Editorials: NYT, World, Dec. 20, 1928.
State parks: Moses, Dangerous Trade, pp. 119-31; Moses, Working for the People, pp. 149, 167-80; Moses, The State Park Plan for New York — Revised to Show Progress to Date (1924). Attendance soared in the upstate parks as well as on Long Island: during the summer of 1928, 3,000,000 persons visited the new state
parks in the Niagara and Allegheny regions, a million more than had visited them in 1925.
14. Changing
SOURCES
Books:
Graham, AI Smith; Moses, A Tribute to Governor Smith; sec also "Sources," Chapter 6.
Author's interviews:
Howard S. Cullman, Leonard W. Hall, Carlos Israels, Joseph M. Proskauer, 11-wood M. Rabenold, Emily Smith Warner.
NOTES
No one bother to reply: On July 6, 1925, RM to Graves, he made one such suggestion, calling the writer a "crackpot"; on Oct. 2, 1924, he called another a "nut"; the increasing frequency of the suggestion that no reply be made is documented by letters in the Smith Papers.
Twomey story: Related by Hall; it was also related to the author by two other legislators of the era, who prefer to remain anonymous.
Park philanthropists' philosophy: Annual Reports and Minutes of the ASH PS, Jan. 7, 1921-Feb. 14, 1927.
Moses had let them believe: RM's statements and press releases of this period continually reiterate that the State Council of Parks would be only an "advisory body." The fact that the old men believed him is shown not only in their speeches and general support of his bills, but, specifically, in Minutes of society meetings, p. 460, for example.
"The height of impertinence": Staley to Kunz, quoted in society Minutes, p. 1431. The Minutes also show their growing realization of the significance of his bylaws.
Letchworth State Park: Society Minutes, Apr. 26, 1926, p. 1716; one trustee says there that the park should be kept as "a shrine" to nature. Another, p. 1487, quotes Wordsworth's "one impulse from a vernal wood . . ." Through a series of manipulations and behind-the-scenes bureaucratic ploys, backed in the crunch by Smith's power, RM eventually succeeded in ousting the defiant society trustees and in transforming Letchworth Park along the lines he envisioned.
Niagara and Clearwater: Obituary, Kingston Leader and Kingston Daily Freeman, Sept. 23, 1933; NYT, Sept. 24, 1933- "Your views are just": RM to Smith, Dec. 17, 1924, Clearwater to RM, Dec. 12, 1924, Smith Papers. Wilcox: Obituary, Buffalo Evening News
The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York Page 184
