he possessed an arrogance which made him conceive himself so indispensable that, in his view, his resignation was the most awful threat he could think of. Robert Moses possessed the same
he possessed an arrogance which made him conceive himself so indispensable that, in his view, his resignation was the most awful threat he could think of.
He wandered tirelessly around New York, and a woman who occasionally wandered with him said he was "burning up with ideas, just burning up with them," ideas for great highways and parks circling the city's waterfront and for more modest projects that he thought would also improve the quality of life for the city's people—little
when he argued for his ideas before the Good Government organization for which he worked and before the Board of Estimate, he was very careful always to have his facts ready, never to exaggerate them and always to draw from them logical conclusions, for he believed that Truth and Logic would prevail.
observers said that the viciousness of the jeering crowds seemed to make no impression on him, so deeply did he believe that if only they could be made to understand how good his system was, they would surely support it.
In those pre-World War I years of optimism, of reform, of idealism, Robert Moses was the optimist of optimists, the reformer of reformers, the idealist of idealists.
They came to it to learn, not just the engineering of great roads, for they could learn engineering elsewhere, but rather a secret available at that time nowhere else: the secret of how to get great roads built.
Mayor Wagner said to him: "Paul, my experience with Moses has taught me one lesson, and I'll tell it to you. I would never let him do anything for me in any way, shape or form. Pd never ask him—or permit him—to do anything of a personal nature for me because—and I've seen it time and time again—a day will come when Bob will reach back in his file and throw this in your face, quietly if that will make you go along with him, publicly otherwise. And if he has to, he will destroy you with it."
incisive and visionary analyst of social problems. In 1875, Joseph
At midnight, with the puzzle almost completed, she arose, walked across the room, rang the bell pull and, when the maid arrived, said calmly, "Susan, call Dr. Brill. I'm dying." When Dr. Brill arrived, she was dead.
"I didn't come to him," Johnson recalls. "He approached me and asked me to room with him. Of course I was glad to. We had been friendly before. But I think the fact that he approached me is an indication of a tendency I noticed in Bob; he selected his friends."
He never went out for the Lit but he made himself an important member of the staff of a less prestigious publication. He never went out for a major sport but he was active in a minor one. He was never invited to join one of the better clubs but he was president of the lesser club he did join.
Crossing the Mediterranean on a leaky, shuddering tub named the Equator, the youths found themselves in the company of hundreds of Levantine natives and a troupe of women Dougherty describes as "international tarts sailing for the winter season in Cairo and Alexandria."
European cities, which also mushroomed in the Industrial Age but which had been built atop previous centuries' strong administrative foundations,
Unlike European cities, which also mushroomed in the Industrial Age but which had been built atop previous centuries' strong administrative foundations, America's had sprung into gianthood relatively overnight, often organized around nothing but the factory or the mill, and had no such tested governmental framework.
"There was the constant futile search for the great administrator, great by instinct and personality. He wasn't found because he doesn't exist. A great administrator needs the tools and techniques of sound administration." The search, he said, "should not be so much for good men as for these good tools and techniques; the idea should be not so much to jail the grafters as to install [in government] business systems which will make grafting difficult." Before government could become humanitarian, he said, it must become businesslike.
The reaction to rebuff was not graceful. Moses' irritation with the Bureau began to spill over into his work. He didn't feel it was important any more. Investigations didn't accomplish anything. He didn't want to count barrels of concrete; he wanted to pour them.
Acting as adviser to several Training School students, Moses developed the habit of writing large question marks in the margins of their reports next to statements he questioned—and the papers often were returned with their margins literally filled with these indications of his displeasure. Sometimes, the papers were not returned at all. "I have your memorandum and it's no damn good," he would say to a student. "I threw it in the wastebasket."
Neither Mary nor Bob had much interest in the things that forced other young couples to be concerned with money, anyway; they were perfectly happy, for example, to furnish their living room with only Bella's old sofas and their own shiny idealism.
Gradually Tammany's strategy became apparent. Each disputed case, the speakers were saying, should be decided on its individual merits by the Board's Bureau of Standards and included as a separate item in the budget, a policy which would not only drag out the hearings indefinitely but would in itself defeat the principle of universal standardization. The Tammany members of the Board said that after careful consideration they didn't see how any other policy could be adopted; humane considerations, fairness, justice— these must not be ignored.
Convinced he was right, he had refused to soil the white suit of idealism with compromise. He had really believed that if his system was right—scientific, logical, fair—and if it got a hearing, the system would be adopted. In free and open encounter would not Truth prevail? And he had gotten the hearing. But Moses had failed in his calculations to give certain factors due weight. He had not sufficiently taken into account greed. He had not sufficiently taken into account self-interest. And, most of all, he had not sufficiently taken into account the need for power.
When Moses complained about the inefficiency—the shipyard often had scores of hulls and not a single keel to attach them to— he was ignored by Hog Island officials. Trying to outflank the officials, he wrote a report detailing the inefficiency and proposing a complete new material-procurement method and persuaded Van Schaick to give it directly to Washington. Washington was impressed and called the local officials on the carpet. Their response was to wait until Washington's interest died down and then call Moses in and fire him.
But had anyone troubled to closely study her career, he would have seen that there was a difference between Belle and the average reformer: Belle Moskowitz's dreams became realities.
the academies served liquor at tables on the dance floor, had rooms ready for hasty rental down adjacent corridors and seemed expressly designed for what reformers euphemistically referred to as "the downfall of young women."
Belle altered the pattern. Instead of loudly denouncing conditions at the academies, she quietly checked incorporation certificates to learn the names of their owners—and found that they included both Tammany leaders and community pillars. Instead of giving the names to the newspapers, which would have brought headlines but not results, since all her ammunition would have been used up, she went to the leaders and pillars and told them she would keep their names secret if they saw to it that regulatory legislation was passed—and strictly enforced. It was.
Some agency heads were responsible to the Governor, some to the Legislature and some to officials who were themselves elected by the people and were hence not responsible to either Governor or Legislature.
The Governor technically had the power to veto appropriations, but since state law forbade him to veto part of an appropriation item, legislators simply made sure that each debatable expenditure was lumped with one too essential to be vetoed.
With reform leaders taking the floor to argue for its principles, many of its key points were adopted by the Constitutional Convention. But Tammany and the upstate bosses outwitted the reformers by persuading them to combine all the proposed constitutional amendments in a single package, and distaste for one or two unimportant but unpopular amendments, combined with a quiet mobilization of Tammany and upstate machines, resulted in the defeat of the package in a November 1915 referendum.
"There was a real divergence of opinion there," staffers recall. "Moses was very theoretical, always wanting to do exactly what was right, trying to make things perfect, unwilling to compromise. She was more practical; she wanted to do the same things as Moses, but she wanted to concentrate on what was possible and not jeopardize the attaining of those things by stirring up trouble in other areas."
While Moses paced and argued, trying to change her mind, Mrs. Moskowitz would sit quietly and, when Moses had finished, would quietly repeat her earlier decision. "There was never any question," recalls another staffer, "that she was the boss."
His analysis of a state job began to take into consideration not only whether the position was necessary for the betterment of mankind but also who had appointed the man who now held the position.
Nor had Smith's actions been pro forma when the Black Horse Cavalry refused his request for $75,000 to enable the commission to begin work. Here was a ready-made opportunity to reap political capital. As Mrs. Moskowitz had surmised, the GOP's federal wing raged against their party's legislators, along with most of the state's important newspapers. Without doing anything else, simply by letting the commission die and pointing out that the Legislature had killed it, Smith would have scored a political coup.
He asked the members of the commission to put up the $75,000 themselves, and when they did, he publicly promised that he would abide by, and sponsor, any recommendations it made when it completed its report.
rented bungalows near a beach in Douglaston, Queens. Moses never caught any train out from Manhattan but the latest available, which arrived in Douglaston about eight-thirty. Darkness would be falling, but Moses would always go for a swim?
In July, however, Mrs. Moskowitz told him that he must begin laying off his staff at once. He had to let some of the young men go with only a week's notice. By Labor Day, the staff had been disbanded Some sections of the report existed only in recommendation memos, others only in rough-draft form. Only a few sections were actually completed. Lugging the commission's files to his already cramped apartment, Moses wrote the rest of the report alone. By October, it was finished.
The organization chart of the sovereign state of New York still looked like a web spun by a drunken spider, and the man elected to represent all the people of the state was still trapped in the web, unable to exercise power or leadership.
"The only serious argument advanced against . . . [the] proposed reorganization and budget system is that it makes the Governor a czar,"
Economy in administration, if accomplished, would redound to his credit. Waste and extravagance could be laid at his door. Those who cannot endure the medicine because it is too strong must be content with waste, inefficiency and bungling—and steadily rising cost of government.
The system here proposed is more democratic, not more "royal," than that now in existence. Democracy does not merely mean periodic elections. It means a government held accountable to the people between elections. In order that the people may hold their government to account they must have a government that they can understand. No citizen can hope to understand the present collection of departments, offices, boards and commissions, or the present methods of appropriating money.
If this is not democracy then it is difficult to imagine what is.
departments—sixteen instead of twelve because of Mrs. Moskowitz—and each department headed by a single officer except in certain cases where considerations—Mrs. Moskowitz's—dictated the retention of a council or board.