Chapter 18 – New York City before Robert Moses

Nowhere had the Great Depression hit harder than in New York City. More than one person in every three had lost their jobs. The rest were often paid a fraction of their former salaries. Malnutrition was rife. Children missed out of education. There was fear and terror of the future.

Tammany corruption within the city was endemic. Federal relief payments were being syphoned off. The test for employment was politics rather than need. By 1932, New York’s debts were over $1 billion, equal to the debt of all the other states combined. The reckoning for Tammany rule had arrived.

The city’s failures were not entirely due to the Depression. They were also caused by under-investment in crucial infrastructure. Corrupt employment practices had resulted in a lack of qualified technical staff. Public works were either lacking or substandard. The development of parks and parkways driven by Moses stood out even more starkly as an example of what could be done. Road connections, both by bridge and tunnel, between Manhattan and the mainland were seriously inadequate. New York City, in terms of the state of its parks, playgrounds, statues and other public provisions, was a crumbling disgrace.

Central Park was a good indication of the demise of the city. The idealist construction of the 19th Century had been destroyed by the Tammany governance.  The zoo there stank from neglect, the animals either sick or malformed.

The city was surrounded by beaches, but their use by Tammany insiders restricted the general public to severe limitations. The beaches that were available were inhabited by lifeguards who couldn’t swim, or homeless people’s makeshift shacks.

During the Depression the parks started to fill with shack towns or “Hoovervilles.” There was a tremendous strain on housing and the slums were overflowing, with barely an acre of green space to provide relief. In 1932 there was only one playground for every 14,000 children. This did not prevent the construction of a casino in Central Park, at vast expense, by Mayor Jimmy Walker, who proceeded to use it as his own personal domain; somewhere to wine and dine his cronies.

Moses had other things on his mind, namely, the construction of metropolitan parks and parkways, the Triborough Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and connecting roads to alleviate the city’s traffic problems. Moses was planning to connect Manhattan with the northern states, Long Island and New Jersey. It was the most ambitious city development plan in the world. But was it achievable?

Moses persuaded Roosevelt to allocate funds as part of the State Budget. The rest of the money however, was to come from the city. Roosevelt’s successor, Herbert Lehman, was a champion for Moses and set up a special commission with Moses as chairman to start the development. Some of the initial funds were syphoned off for other purposes and it was a struggle for Moses to persuade the funders. New York City meanwhile, was unable to pay its employees and was close to being declared bankrupt. However, in the summer of 1933, Moses was to bring fresh hope to his plans by running for Mayor.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• The bridge is power, it’s the layers, public relations, and banks. Moses used the power of the bridge in order to leverage towards other projects;
• Any jurisdiction runs the risk of being mismanaged when the same people get re-elected time after time; it goes from democracy to kleptocracy rather rapidly. Mismanaging funds is often the act of screwing the future to help the present (since we don’t know what the future may hold).

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50

Chapter 3 – Home Away from Home

Moses moved to Oxford University in England for his post-graduate work. This was to give him a clear, definable sense of public purpose and the duties and rights of those born to privilege (noblesse oblige). Moses swapped the pseudo-democracy of Yale for the elitism of Oxford, which he preferred and became the first American President of the Oxford Union debating society.

Moses continued his foreign travels around the colonial British Empire between terms. He enjoyed the bohemian atmosphere of post war Oxford, affecting a haphazard style of dress and carelessness with money. He told his parents that he would be devoting himself to public service, but this devotion was also accompanied by an increasing arrogance and Anglophilia. He developed a contempt for the working classes and especially for the colonised populations of the British Empire, saying “the subject peoples of the British Empire were not ready for self-government.”

Moses’s prose style hardened and improved at Oxford. His cast of mind had also hardened into support for noblesse oblige, encapsulated in the British Civil Service, a perfect instrument for civil reform but one disfigured by patronage. However, his notion of meritocracy applied only to the members of the educated upper class. A system that for him elevated the most intelligent young men into powerful and influential positions. He advocated suppression of socialist tendencies and working-class activism that challenged these beliefs. He urged the American Government to follow the British model and supported the election of Woodrow Wilson as President.

Moses graduated from Oxford with honours in 1911. He then carried on his studies in London and Berlin. Moving back to his old rooms in New York in 1912. He enrolled at Columbia University for his PhD, completing his thesis in 1913. While he was completing his thesis, he entered the training school for the Bureau for Municipal Research. His education was over and he now entered the world of public service.

Analysis & Key Takeaways: Chapter 3

• Having contempt for the working class is obnoxious; like having contempt for something you do not appreciate, understand or are exposed to. We can only interpret reality from the information we are exposed to in publications, in anecdotes and in relationships. If we believe the patterns [we are exposed to] are objective reality then we are doomed. Doomed to jump to conclusions for quicker decision-making (finding short-hands from the gut) that are possibly very wrong.
• Robert Moses went to Oxford which has a reputation for telling its students that they are special, smarter and better then non-Oxford students or people generally. This brand management has a re-enforcing nature to it.  In Moses’ case, it may have contributed to his contempt for the poor (financial and possibly spiritual, attitudinal poverty). Poverty and races were strongly correlated in New York in the 20th century and still is due to variables such as: a), b), c)….and z) the time value of money which compounds for those who have it, but subtracts for those who do not understand compounding interest and/or do not have sufficient cashflow. For Oxford graduates, “anything is possible, so they are told, so why are these poor non-Oxford folks so down? Well, then we the elite shall marshal them….” Meanwhile, there are likely Oxford students who aren’t condescending, I am just as guilty as others of extrapolating from patterns that or only partially representative of objective reality.
• A recurring theme in this book is that the municipal government is where things done rather then where deadlocks form, municipal is where anyone serious about getting public policy should start. Why are there layers of government controlled by individuals anyway? Technology isn’t in place yet.
• PhDs should be completed quickly if you can.  It’s intellectually self-pleasuring in the best case scenario. Don’t think you’re smart because of a PhD or other advanced degree. But go out and test your hypothesis in the wild, post-doctoral, test and refine.

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50

Chapter 19 – To Power in the City

The Good Government Movement had been revitalised by lawyer and politician Samuel Seabury while presiding over the extensive 1930–32 investigations of corruption in the New York City municipal government. The Tammany hold on the city was beginning to loosen, and Reformers were beginning to get the upper hand. Moses was still a hero to many Reformers, and the changes to Moses’s character over the years were considered less important than his high purpose and ability. When Seabury turned down the nomination for Mayor, the way seemed clear for Moses to run on an independent or “fusion” ticket. Seabury however, was hostile to Moses. As an enemy of Tammany Hall, Seabury felt Moses, through Al Smith, was too close to Tammany and would be unable to stand up to the endemic corruption in the city.

Moses’s main rival was to be Fiorello Henry La Guardia, son of immigrants and raised in tenements, a Republican considered too liberal for most members of the GOP. The Reformers were suspicious of La Guardia because of his upbringing, his radicalism and his aggressive championing of the have-nots. At a late stage of the nomination process, Moses seemed to have it in the bag. However, Seabury turned against Moses, accusing the fusion leaders of selling out to Tammany Hall. The fusion leaders panicked and looked around for another candidate. Moses had wind of this and withdrew his nomination. The nomination went to La Guardia.

Moses refused to become involved in the race for mayor. However, when La Guardia’s campaign started to flag, Moses was asked to offer his support. Moses agreed and made a number of press attacks on Tammany Hall while at the same time extolling La Guardia’s virtues of honesty and integrity. Although Al Smith would not endorse any candidate, the fact that Moses supported La Guardia seemed to imply Smith’s support, a notion La Guardia’s supporters did nothing to dispel.

La Guardia became the new Mayor of New York. As first order of business, La Guardia appointed Moses Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Commissioner of the Triborough Bridge Authority. Both state and city legislatures voiced opposition to these appointments as it would give Moses immense power, as well as breaking a long-held precedent that a person could not hold both a state and a city job at the same time. This opposition was blasted by the press and the Reformers, and the barons of Long Island pulled their strings. On April 9th, the bill bringing all Moses’s posts together and appointing him as head, was passed.

Roosevelt’s New Deal for New York, assigning unemployed men to carry out public works, began operation. However, when Moses inspected the work being carried out on his parks by these men, found that they had few tools and little training. Moses arranged to have 80,000 of these men carry out renovations as part of his parks plans. Moses meanwhile was touring the sites in his office cum car with his secretary and his engineers. Moses extolled his engineers to use their imagination and design structures appropriate to the individual places. His concentration was not reserved for one park, but all the parks.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Tammany hall broke the idealistic spirit of Robert Moses and left him turning to the darkside of ignoring democracy ;
• From 1930 to 1968, Robert Moses became the Darth Vader of New York…advocating for prejudicial, biased projects based on income and even race to a certain extent.

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50

Chapter 20 – One Year

In early 1934, Moses was appointed as Commissioner for State Parks. Moses moved quickly to get rid of all staff who could not work at the pace he required. Moses then hired an army of architects and engineers from all over New York State. The ranks of Civil Works Administration (CWA) workers were also being addressed through discipline and training enforced by new superintendents, backed up by the local police.

The winter was bad that year with temperatures plummeting to -14C. Nevertheless, workers were still expected to wield their pickaxes, shifts working around the clock. By May however, the weather changed, and New Yorkers headed for the parks. By then, the parks had been transformed through the completion of 1700 projects.

Moses was not only transforming existing parks but was creating new ones using as much public land as could be identified. During a six-month period, Moses created nearly seventy green spaces, playgrounds and parks amongst the slum tenements. Other government departments looked on in anguish as all their land, planned for housing and other public works, was eaten up by park development. Occasionally, La Guardia would intervene, but for the most part, Moses had his way.

The press and people of New York cheered the new developments. The achievements of the new Commissioner in his first six months of office were seen as near miraculous. His picture stared out from the city newspapers over one hundred times that year. Al Smith however, was struggling in his new role. He was being rebuffed by Roosevelt and his association with the new Empire State Building was becoming stressful due to the difficulty of finding tenants. His one shaft of light was the opening, by Moses, of the Central Park Zoo. Moses had arranged a hero’s welcome for Smith at the opening ceremony, making him Honorary Night Superintendent of the Central Park Zoo.

Moses’s attention to detail was becoming his hallmark. Even though finances were tight, his prompted his architects and engineers to use their imagination. Tight budgets meant that the materials used had to be cost-effective, but that did not seem to limit unduly the scale and attractiveness of the Zoo and associated park developments.

The Triborough Bridge development meanwhile was coming the fruition, linking three boroughs and two islands. More than five thousand men worked on the site and many times more were servicing the construction from across the state. The development totally transformed traffic flow across the city and between the city and neighbouring states. The combination of cheap labour, bridges and parkways to serve the parks, and attractive parks to persuade motorists to pay the bridge tolls, meant that even in the age of depression, a huge program of public works could be achieved.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Parks were more popular than movie theatres in the early 20th century which illustrates just how much the future is an undiscovered country;
• Robert Moses’ success in understanding that the toll revenue from the infrastructure projects were critical to not just paying down the Bonds but could be a source of further capital to follow his goals; he would draft those goals on yellow legal pad;
• Moses issued bonds outside of the tax revenue and normal budgetary powers, so elected officials were then going to Moses to decide what they should be investing in;
• Moses was a passenger on many small plane flights over Manhattan so that he could plan his next projects in 1934, hence the benefit of a higher vantage point.

Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3
Chapter 4	Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8	Chapter 9
Chapter 10	Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14	Chapter 15
Chapter 16	Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20	Chapter 21
Chapter 22	Chapter 23	Chapter 24
Chapter 25	Chapter 26	Chapter 27
Chapter 28	Chapter 29	Chapter 30
Chapter 31	Chapter 32	Chapter 33
Chapter 35	Chapter 36	Chapter 37
Chapter 38	Chapter 39	Chapter 40
Chapter 41	Chapter 42	Chapter 43
Chapter 44	Chapter 45	Chapter 46
Chapter 47	Chapter 48	Chapter 49
Chapter 50