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

Chapter 21 – The Candidate

In 1934, Moses started to run for Governor as a Republican. The “old guard” of the GOP, the barons and property owners, hated Roosevelt and were keen to retain power in their hands. They also had a fight within their own party, with the incumbent Macy. At the centre of this was the battle over control of the power utilities; between public and private.

The “old guard” turned to Robert Moses. They shared Moses’s often expressed disdain for the masses and his hatred for the President and the New Deal. In public however, Moses was still seen as a man of the people, which would protect him against Democrat attack. Eventually Moses was nominated for, and accepted, the Republican nomination for Governor. His previous supporters in the press were mystified by Moses’s campaign. He made a number of campaign pledges which pleased both the young and old in the GOP. He then looked towards his ex-Democrat friends for support, but in such an antagonistic way that he alienated them. He also attacked his recent supporters in the press for questioning his closeness to the old guard. He assumed he had La Guardia’s support, and announced it without consulting him. He thus also displeased the Mayor of New York.

Moses refused to play the campaign game; there were no drive-throughs or cocktail parties. He campaigned mainly by press releases. Moses also attempted to deny his Jewish heritage.

He then turned to attack Governor Lehman and his links to Tammany Hall. He called Lehman “weak” and “snivelling.” A previous supporter of Moses, Lehman hit back. He repeated the accusation that Moses was being run by the old guard. He also used the public ownership of the power utilities to get the press and public on his side.

Late in the campaign, Moses went too far and called Lehman a liar, a charge never previously used in campaigns. Moses’s own supporters turned against him saying he was unfit for office. Moses continued to harangue all and sundry, friend and foe. Finally, Al Smith joined the fray. The former Governor respected Lehman and started to campaign for him. He would not actively campaign against Moses but his intervention was crucial. Allied with his alienation of his supporters, Moses’s popularity waned.

At the polls, Moses was heavily defeated, getting less votes than any other candidate in New York State history. The old guard were never again allowed to choose a candidate. Commentators said that it was Moses’s personality and personal attacks that had lost the election. Once the public had seen Moses not as a fighter for parks but as a man in himself, their trust in him had disappeared.

On election night, Moses seemed to disregard the result, saying that we would return to his State Park work. There were moves to remove Moses as Chairman, but Lehman and Smith, despite Moses’s behaviour during the election, continued to support him. However, the shine on Robert Moses had dulled. His arrogance and contempt had been seen by the public and they had not liked what they had seen.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Moses team was never explicitly about money for votes. Moses was asking for people to get power. He was not money hungry. Moses was power corrupt; he had the money to be money clean but power corrupt he was for sure.
• Moses was a public servant at his core. La Guardia was an equivocating double talking politician. Duplicitous and conniving;
• On the campaign trail, Moses denied his Judaism during his gubernatorial campaign in 1934 as the Republican candidate. He denied it and even threatened to sue a Jewish publication that claimed Moses as their own. His kids were in Episcopalian school and his Tammany hall friends were of course Catholics;
• Moses was all about road to the parks. And the public focus in elections is on the person; the public didn’t like him because the ends he pushed for. Moses was an intellectual and very arrogant; he did listen to other people. He needed to show himself as smarter; he shunned public appearances’
• Moses attacked Lehman. Lehman was the puppet. Keenan from the Lehman brothers. Moses tried to make up stuff about Lehman. And he tried to link Lehman to high milk prices. Lehman brother was connected to milk prices. Moses lies about control “he did lie about it.” Moses was seen as unfit; too nasty. Jim Farley the Big Bag Man. Wholesale liable. Accused some folks of slick traders and pretending to be civic champion….”he is entitled to all the fun of being an emotional stability.” Moses did not get Alan Smith’s political style and was not able to learn it for the election: “Moses, you know I play this game like a regular” said Al Smith. Moses list both houses and then 35% GOP lost in upstate New York. Sinking of a poor candidate; he was caught in the badness. Republicans lost across the US…Moses’ personality really sucked for the role of actual politician;
• Robert Moses realized that he was not going to get elected and sort to be a permanent civil servant, he wanted to be the locus of corruption (power).

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 22 – Order 129

Roosevelt as President felt it was time to get his revenge on Moses. Roosevelt withheld money from New York City and the Mayor, La Guardia, now knew about the feud between Moses and Roosevelt. Roosevelt said La Guardia would not get vital funding if Moses remained. La Guardia now tried to get Moses to resign from the posts he currently held. Moses was still held in high regard in terms of parks and this was not easy. Moses could not be removed unless he was charged with a misdemeanour.

In December 1934 Roosevelt raised an order to the PWA, Order 129, that stipulated that no funds would be given to any authority whose head held public office. This obviously referred to Moses. This gave La Guardia a public excuse to fire Moses. Roosevelt also told La Guardia that funds would be resumed if Moses was simply not appointed the following year.

In response, Moses leaked the order to the press, showing Roosevelt to be involved in New York affairs. Moses was showing himself as an underdog fighting for the city against the powers that be. The press firmly lined up on Moses’s side and the public also returned their support. La Guardia now came under intense pressure to relax the pressure on Moses or resign himself. Moses had turned the situation around and now enjoyed the full support of the city.

Roosevelt however would not give an inch. He still wanted to go through with the order. Unfortunately for him, the press found out that Roosevelt was aware of, and even directed the order. The Reformers then joined on Moses’s side. They made it a matter of the principle of the division of powers, of the city being held hostage by the President. By mid-February 1935, the level of protest became countrywide and unignorable. A congressional investigation was talked of. A report from the Attorney General judged the order to be illegal.

Roosevelt was desperate to find a way out. La Guardia suggested that he would apply the order in the future, but not retroactively. Al Smith had been persuaded by his supporters to intervene and now he decided that now was the time. He called a press conference, supporting Moses but not directly attacking Roosevelt but attacking his administrators. Roosevelt decided that this was the time to back down. Moses had won the battle and retained public confidence.

With funding resumed, the Triborough Bridge project was finally completed. Moses arranged a grand opening. The press speculated whether the President would attend. The President said he would attend but only if he was introduced by La Guardia. Both Roosevelt and Moses avoided voicing their mutual animosity, effectively putting their public spat to rest.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• When La Guardia was angry with Moses, he threatened but Moses said look at the contract! The contracts had been signed by the mayor because he trusted Moses to be just. Also don’t forget Moses could get projects done without a scandal! On time for the election;
• La Guardia believed lawyers were like prostitutes except they sell their knowledge of the law; Moses believed that tax payers had a right to get value for money coming from all workers and employees, both would be somewhat right and somewhat wrong;
• Graft through fees for lawyer was a common thing, commissions for real estate agents. Insurance broker fees called commissions and public relations fees called retainers….no coincidences goes unpaid. How do you prove a lawyers fee for billable hours is not graft?
• Tom Shanahan was a banker who was able to get into construction contracts and would basically ensure a cash back to Shanahan fees for banking services and then a donation to the Democrat party. Shanahan would basically say I will expose the nasty stuff from the 1930s. Shanahan worked with Moses.

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 24 – Driving

With his new sense of power, Moses now sought to remake the city. For this he needed federal resources. He started to ignore or circumvent many of the laws of the city in order to keep up the pace of development. He continued to fight other departments with all his political skills, using the press when necessary to spearhead his attacks. If any of his projects were delayed, Moses sent word through the press that they were being held up by bureaucratic red tape.

At this time, press barons such as W.H. Hearst were drumming up scare stories about the “red peril.” To be called out as a communist at this time was the worst anybody could be called. Moses used information about opponents, especially with regard to memberships of suspicious organisations, in order to smear them. One target was Paul J. Kern, key assistant to La Guardia, who Moses felt was interfering with his plans. Moses called Kern a Russian agent because of some unfortunate pro-Russian sympathies in the past. The Hearst empire began hunting for Kern’s scalp. Kern was eventually fired.

Moses’s developments turned to the city itself. This was more complicated than Long Island. The city had evolved into a thriving community and could not be rearranged by the broad brushstrokes Moses was used to. Every change made a multiplicity of consequences. A highway would have an immense impact on neighbourhoods, destroying good things as well as bad. Success in city planning required a more subtle and sophisticated formula. A more human aspect had to be added, but Moses would not allow it to be added.

To find out what ordinary people really needed, the public had to be talked to. Moses was not used to this, in fact was not interested in this. He was only interested in the grand designs. There were tough choices to be made, but they could only be made using in depth knowledge of the people who were to be served. However, Moses only ever considered common people in the mass. Parks were no longer there simply to provide nice views for motorists.

Despite all these real needs, Moses refused to adapt his designs. He started to hire people who would bend to his will and by this, lost out on the great talents who had advised him before. More and more the designs would be Moses’s alone, and however brilliant he may have been, it could never match the co-operative working using all the talents of before. By working like this, Moses was running out of hours needed to supervise everything. The majority of parks began to decline in quality. Original creation was being superseded by repetition with cheap materials.

Moses was not interested in anything small, and so many small projects, mainly in the slums where the poor and ethnic minorities had to live, were given the lowest priority. The Reformers understood that if the government didn’t provide parks for the poor in the city, then nobody would. This especially affected the black community. Their swelling population was not being provided for by the city. Moses’s parks system had effectively barred them from the great state parks due to lack of rail or bus transport. Small parks were thus essential, but they were not part of Moses’s plans and this was becoming increasingly obvious. For the 300,000 people of Harlem there was not a single green space. Conservation was giving way to recreation; concrete was replacing grass. The Reformers wanted to discuss their concerns with Moses, but Moses wasn’t listening.

Analysis & Key Takeaways

• Playground and Swimming Pool Discrimination: the realization that Moses is a total asshole is complete. Robert Moses did not build playgrounds for black children. Moses was intentionally not supplying parks in Harlem. Spanish Harlem was also discriminated against according to Caro; particularly by employing only white lifeguards (i.e not looking after other races lifeguards)….the cold water would deter black swimmers or so Moses thought: what a douch bag! Moses said he wanted the water colder so only white swimmers would feel welcome: horrible if true! Moses did not like Small Parks, these parks would help the black community most. There was no green space in Harlem….concrete replaced grass…this is where we see the dark said of Moses.
• Remember that the slums were not exactly beautiful places to live, but instead of restoring those neighbourhoods, the city of New York would incrementally remove basic amenities like gas, water. The slums would be starved until there were fewer and fewer residents making it easy to then bulldoze the houses to build new lucrative developments which would make New York too expensive for folks making less then above the national average.

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