Conquering Gotham

by Jill Jonnes

  All along the cobblestoned streets, vendors braved the winter cold to tempt the passing crowds with trinkets, jewelry, and fruit. The rivers of people surged to a floodtide just below City Hall as they flowed toward the Fulton Street ferries and onto the Brooklyn Bridge, great armies of office commuters battling to get home. That scorned architectural hybrid of multitiered columns, the General Post Office, dominated the south side of City Hall Park. Normally the park was a rare oasis of peace with tall trees and soothing ornate fountains, its curved park benches filled with idle waifs and newsboys from Park Row straggling over from the newspaper offices overlooking City Hall. But where the park should be there yawned a great cut-and-cover maw, where the very rich and arrogant August Belmont was building his Interborough Rapid Transit Company subway stretching from Brooklyn to Harlem. As the Pennsylvania Railroad prepared to enter Gotham, it was still unclear if he was friend or foe.

  ELEVEN

  “WE SHALL MAKE OUR FIGHT ABOVEBOARD”

  On January 9, 1902, Alexander Cassatt formally initiated the PRR’s political campaign for its New York franchise by calling on His Honor Seth Low at Gotham’s white marble Italianate City Hall. The small, crowded antechambers reeked of stale cigar smoke and bustled with aides, job seekers, and well-wishers. Mayor Low and Cassatt closeted themselves and got right down to business, a frank discussion about strategy, legislation, franchises, and, of course, bribes. Tammany, payoffs, and boodle were something Seth Low knew all too well.

  As the young Republican reform mayor of Brooklyn in the early 1880s, Low had served on the board of the much-delayed Brooklyn Bridge and gained a firsthand education in the pitfalls of “doing business” with Tammany. Bribes were not enough. These venal men wanted rigged bidding, padded payrolls, and whatever else could line their pockets. Greed trumped any consideration of proper engineering, public safety, or swift completion. As Tammany boss Richard Croker had so candidly said, “I’m always looking out for my own pocket.”

  Consequently, His Honor needed to know exactly where Cassatt stood on bribes. Alexander Cassatt had just expended vast sums on his “community of interest” stamping out secret rebates. He harbored nothing but contempt for scalawags who ran their roads into the ground for personal gain and the ruination of their gullible investors. He was working hard to legislate (without success) against the squandering of $1 million a year in PRR stockholder’s money on the pernicious tradition of free rail passes to every politician and self-important journalist.

  Predictably, Cassatt was against paying bribes or sealing secret deals with Tammany. Why should his magnificent company grease any palms for the privilege of expending $40 million to build a monumental public work? Not only would the PRR provide construction jobs for thousands of New Yorkers for many years, but the completed terminal would be a crown jewel in the nation’s greatest city as well as an important economic asset, while the tunnels would at last connect Gotham with the rest of the nation. In short, the Pennsylvania Railroad under the presidency of Alexander Cassatt was not inclined to see boodle as business as usual.

  “‘If I help you,’ said Mr. Low, ‘You must give me your word that you will not attempt to get by secret means what you cannot get in an open way.’

  “‘Nothing could suit me better than that,’ said Mr. Cassatt heartily. ‘I give you my word and the word of my company. We shall make our fight aboveboard, and our plans must go through on their merits, or not at all.’”

  Alexander Cassatt now had a crucial ally. Low’s initial advice was to secure legislation up in Albany that would give the city’s Rapid Transit Commission (presided over by Low) first crack at granting the tunnel franchise. Those hearings would draw out friend and foe and reveal their strengths and weaknesses. The two men agreed to have their respective corporation counsels meet to consider the framing of the initial bill.

  A week after his City Hall colloquy with Mayor Low, Cassatt waded deeper into the political fray, writing Pennsylvania’s Republican senator Matthew S. Quay in Washington, D.C. “We shall require some legislation at Albany, as well as in New York City, to enable us to make our extension by tunnel into New York. As Mr. Edward M. Shepard [the Tammany mayoral candidate who lost to Low] has had large experience in this class of legislation, we had proposed to retain him as Counsel in this connection, but it had occurred to us that perhaps, for political reasons, his appointment would be inexpedient. Could you do me the favor of ascertaining how Mr. Platt would feel about this?” Senator Quay, the Keystone State’s all-powerful Republican boss, was a famously reticent and erudite politician, a saturnine scholar of Horace and Pliny renowned for keeping “silent in sixteen different languages.” Short, droop-eyed, and secretive, he was a longtime ally of Senator Platt’s and thus well placed to assist Cassatt. And, as it turned out, the Republican “Easy Boss” felt that Shepard was not nearly as qualified to represent the PRR as his own lawyer son, Frank Platt.

  In a confidential letter William Baldwin, with his insider’s knowledge of New York’s byzantine politics, strongly counseled Cassatt against any such political hiring: “Mr. Frank Platt is a lobbyist, and his name connected with this work would suggest at once that there was money in it. If he gets his hands on the handling of the matter in any way, difficulties will appear, and it will have the wrong atmosphere. As I have said to you from the first, this whole enterprise is so big and so important, that there is absolutely no need of your making any move that would embarrass you in any way.”

  Boss Platt and his son were on poor terms with New York governor Odell, but as the reliable dispenser of largesse from the giant corporations and trusts, the “Easy Boss” could still command the legislature on many a vote. Cassatt duly contacted Senator Platt in Washington, who provided gratifyingly “prompt attention to our business.” But Cassatt also let Platt know that “On further reflection, we did not consider it necessary to employ special counsel…If you should consider it necessary that anyone should go to Albany to explain our purposes, I can arrange to have one of our executive officers go there at any time.” Platt did not let this interfere with zealous service, and moved quickly to pass the PRR’s New York State bill. Cassatt wrote Platt, saying, “You have placed us under an obligation which it will be a pleasure to acknowledge when an opportunity offers.” Little did Cassatt dream of the struggles that still lay ahead.

  It would be hard to conjure up two more opposing worldviews than those of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and Gotham’s boss-dominated politics. The PRR of Alexander Cassatt prided itself on being a modern twentieth-century corporation, a huge and complex organization where efficiency and a hierarchical meritocracy reigned supreme. It was the “Standard Railroad of America,” admired and respected for its methodical pursuit of technical excellence and an almost fanatical dedication to better service and safety. Management worked every day to improve the railroad that they proudly viewed as the centerpiece of an increasingly urbanized, industrialized America. They did not earn their steady profits by manipulating or watering their stock but by providing outstanding service. In an industrialized world of larger and larger modern entities—whether vast railroad, telegraph and electrical systems, big steel, bigger government, cities with their mushrooming populations and twenty-story skyscrapers, new universities dedicated to science and technology—all of these modern enterprises in the new and unfolding century now demanded proper organization and forward-looking management. This the Pennsylvania Railroad had in spades.

  But old-style nineteenth-century political bosses like Richard Croker evinced little interest in the complexities of the modern age. Even as President Teddy Roosevelt wrestled with just how activist and progressive government had to be in this new era of cosmopolitanism and corporate giantism, Croker clung to an almost feudal worldview that concerned itself purely with raw power and the proper rewarding of armies of political vassals. New York was the nation’s largest city and the world’s most important port, growing at an unprecedented rate but beset with wrenching wo
es: impoverished immigrants, disease-ridden tenements, overwhelmed transit systems, poorly maintained piers and docks, and inadequate sanitation.

  Croker, who had ruled Tammany and New York with an iron fist for almost two decades, “did not comprehend the issues of his day even remotely,” opined editor William Allen White. Tammany’s worldview was, in fact, dangerously parochial. To give just one small example: Tammany regarded the New York Health Department as little more than a handy political clubhouse, with employees “sitting around the corridors smoking and gossiping,…others [being] in a state of intoxication,” a dangerously ignorant attitude that had had devastating consequences in 1901 when smallpox struck New York’s slums. A near epidemic swiftly erupted, with almost 2,000 cases and 410 deaths, before the department bestirred itself to inadequate action.

  Thomas Collier Platt played a somewhat different game, catering as he did to the great trusts and corporations of the day, but the “Easy Boss” despised reformers as heartily as did Croker. The pallid Platt had only loathing for troublesome Republicans like Seth Low and Teddy Roosevelt who engaged in the mysterious “altruism,” that is, reformist impulses to serve the people. Platt, from his gilded horsehair settee in the “Amen Corner” of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, had actively sabotaged both men’s political careers, but the sheer size and power of these new modern entities—whether corporate trusts or skyscraper cities—cried out for the stronger and more imaginative governance the reformers espoused.

  Americans no longer lived in the ideal yeoman farmer world of Thomas Jefferson, where each man, each family forged its own way. This was the Gilded Age of J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller, men whose giant corporations and industrial trusts held the fates of millions of citizens in their hands. Nearly seven-eighths of American wealth was now owned by 1 percent of its families. The sheer size of the workplace and the booming metropolises created complexities and demanded all manner of new laws and regulations. Reformers had fought hard to restrict child labor, for a ten-hour workday, to protect those injured in industrial accidents, to ensure that those living in city tenements had light and air, and that cities had clean water. Yet both Croker and Platt disdained the “constructive” side of politics and government, except as it might augment influence, patronage, or boodle.

  And so New York’s powerful newspapers watched in almost morbid fascination as the redoubtable Alexander Cassatt, who led the nation’s largest, most profitable, and most admired railroad, strode into the city’s rough-and-tumble political arena utterly determined to proceed honorably, actually presuming to prevail because of the sheer magnificence and scale of his railroad’s proposed enterprise. This was such a radical approach that it elicited praise from the New-York Tribune: “There was no secrecy about the matter [of the franchise] at Albany or elsewhere, and no sharp practices…employed to gain support in any quarter.” Of course, it would be great sport to watch Cassatt as he proceeded gamely forward.

  On Friday morning March 21, 1902, Alexander Cassatt and a phalanx of top PRR officers arrived at City Hall at eleven o’clock for the first formal hearing on their tunnel bill. All about the grandiose structure, trees were budding a fresh green, while across in City Hall Park pounding construction deep down in the IRT subway site joined the blaring clang and roar of the incessant traffic.

  When Mayor Low opened the Rapid Transit Commission’s hearing, even those officials “heartily in favor” of the tunnels and terminal complained about the prospect of a perpetual franchise. The Citizens Union denounced the bill for that reason, as did the Merchants Association. The PRR counsel remained adamant on this point, saying, “To get a perpetual charter is absolutely necessary, and if that cannot be had the plan is useless.” If their franchise was beholden and wobbly, the PRR explained, no financier would lend the huge sums needed for construction.

  Banker August Belmont, supercilious and ill-tempered, was present to register his suspicions that somehow, somewhere the PRR franchise would interfere with his nascent subway empire. And so it went, mistrust evident in every utterance. After all, corporate encounters in recent years had left the cynical citizenry of Gotham feeling badly snookered. In a press release, Cassatt quickly asserted that the PRR was “perfectly willing to pay the city proper compensation for any privileges granted and to have this compensation readjusted every twenty-five years.” As the PRR men headed back to the ferry and home, it seemed a most inauspicious start. The Saturday headlines the next day said it all: “Tunnel Bill Opposed.”

  On Monday, Cassatt, determined to salvage the situation, raced back to Gotham from Philadelphia, showing off a bit and indulging his love of speed. One of the PRR’s swiftest engines, pulling only the president’s deluxe Pullman car, sped the ninety miles north on that bright and sunny morning in a record-breaking seventy-nine minutes, thus clipping four minutes “from the record made by J. P. Morgan’s special train on February 7.” Of course, after this exhilarating sprint, Cassatt and his party still had to slog across on the ferry. Cassatt made one point clear to the inquiring Tribune reporter: “There will be no room for anything besides our own passenger traffic. The best thing for our neighbors to do is to build a tunnel or tunnels for themselves as we propose to do.”

  At City Hall, Cassatt and his men huddled with Mayor Low. As many politicos and newspapers—filled with ads for Easter hats and gloves—had reminded His Honor, he had once solemnly vowed never to grant a perpetual franchise. This was true, the mayor acknowledged that day to the press, explaining, “No one in this community is more averse to the perpetual franchise than am I.” The city reserved the right to future ownership of the still-to-be-built subways, “but in the case of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel, on the other hand…the city would acquire what would be of comparatively little value without the outside railroad systems connected therewith.” That said, to universal surprise, Mayor Low ignored the naysayers, and signed the tunnel bill. Yet even as Mayor Low signed, he announced the bill would return to the state legislature for certain changes before going over to the Board of Aldermen. A cautiously jubilant Cassatt said, “We do not know just what course things will take…If nothing unforeseen happens we will begin construction work by early summer.”

  TWELVE

  “UGLY RUMORS OF BOODLE”

  Young William Randolph Hearst’s populist, powerful, and widely read Journal American immediately attacked Mayor Seth Low for signing the tunnel bill, trumpeting “A Colossal Robbery of the People of New York in Progress.” This was a disturbing development for the Pennsylvania Railroad, for Hearst was a dangerous enemy, as Tammany had discovered during the Ice Trust scandal. His editorial particularly objected to the perpetual franchise, asserting, “It is infamous that the rights of the people in these franchises, worth hundreds of millions to the Pennsylvania Company, should be given away forever…IT IS A JOB. A GIGANTIC JOB.”

  Oddly, Hearst, himself a rampaging reformer, had taken a vociferous dislike to the new mayor. In early March, William Baldwin had made sure the PRR’s Philadelphia office saw a Hearst editorial attacking Low as a “snob,” leading “an administration of men who look upon the ordinary voter exactly as they look upon one of their servants downstairs in the kitchen.” Moreover, the Hearst paper portrayed Low as a yacht-owning elitist in cahoots with the Pennsylvania Railroad, evidenced by his appointment of Gustav Lindenthal as bridge commissioner. (While Lindenthal was more than qualified for such a position, one suspects it served as consolation for Lindenthal’s beloved North River Bridge losing out to the tunnels.) “[Low] does know very well and intimately the Pennsylvania millionaires…and he plans to give them a perpetual franchise in New York City in defiance of existing laws.”

  Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1904.

  Young Hearst had confounded Gotham with his lightning rise to power. Armed with his family’s glittering mining fortune, he had stormed the New York newspaper world in the fall of 1895, hell-bent on trouncing publisher Joseph Pulitzer and displacing the
World as Gotham’s and the nation’s leading Democratic newspaper and champion of the working people. At first, few took Hearst or his newspaper seriously. Plenty of better men had expended vast sums and failed to make a mark among New York’s crowded field of powerful newspapers. “Though he continued to dress like a dandy and live the life of a playboy, Will Hearst was, or believed himself to be, as authentic an advocate of the workingman as his rival,” writes biographer David Nasaw. “There was no blue blood in the Hearst family. While Will had been raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and gone to Harvard, he had never forgotten where his father came from…In New York, as in San Francisco, he ran a paper that was pro-labor, pro-immigrant, and anti-Republican.”

  The paterfamilias, George Hearst, had been a barely literate scraggle-bearded miner savant, a self-taught geologist who roamed the West for years and struck one fabulous bonanza after another. His holdings were legendary: the Homestake gold mine, the Ontario silver mine, and the Anaconda copper mine, among others. The elder Hearst bought himself a U.S. Senate seat from the California legislature, served with no distinction in Washington, D.C., and died there in early 1890. Now his formidable widow, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, reluctantly doled out millions to her ambitious only child.

  William Randolph Hearst swiftly showed he was very much a force to be reckoned with, a genius at journalism, promotion, and ballyhoo. From the start, the Journal American’s illustrations were extraordinary, while the news was always played to be as sensational as possible—blaring, eye-catching, a titillating mix of crimes and accidents, dirty politics, scandals, and his trademark crusading investigative reports. Hearst was fearless in taking on all the powers that be. With his daily paper (price: one cheap penny) gaining readers fast, Hearst next raided his targeted rival, the Sunday World, with its circulation of 450,000, dangling an irresistible salary before editor Morrill Goddard, a seasoned and brilliant newspaperman. Goddard was sorely tempted, but couldn’t bear to leave behind his carefully cultivated staff. Master of the grand gesture, Hearst expanded his offer to include them as well. Pulitzer, learning that Goddard had jumped ship, responded with a better offer. Goddard returned to the gold-domed Pulitzer Building. Hearst bid higher and “Pulitzer was left with an empty office and one stenographer,” writes Hearst biographer Nasaw. “Even the office cat, it was reported, had defected to Hearst.”