As a reformer, Moses had fought for the principle of executive power commensurate with executive responsibility, and, believing in the principle, he had recommended in his Reconstruction Commission report that appointed officials should never have terms longer than the Governor's term and that they should always be removable by the Governor if they did not follow his orders. He had been eloquent on the point. "No Governor can be held responsible for the policies and conduct of high officers whom he does not appoint and whom he cannot remove," he had written. "If New York wants . . . efficient government, it must make someone responsible who can be held to account and give him power commensurate with his obligations. There is no other way."
But now Moses was to be an appointed official. And although he could count on Smith's support, Smith would not always be Governor. So there was another way. The bill Moses drafted establishing the Long Island State Park Commission provided that the term of its president—himself—would be six years, three times as long as the Governor's. And it further provided that no Governor could remove the park commission president just because the president was not following the Governor's orders. Removal, the bill provided, could only follow the filing by the Governor of detailed, specific charges of actual misconduct and a formal, public hearing, with both sides represented by counsel, on those charges.
It was not, moreover, the violation of stated principles for the purpose of cementing himself in office that most clearly revealed the change in Moses. Rather, it was the method by which he insured that, once in office, he would have specific powers sufficient for his purpose. For the method was that of concealment and deviousness.
Once, no reformer, no idealist, had believed more sincerely than he in free and open discussion. No reformer, no idealist, had argued more vigorously that legislative bills should be fully debated, and that the debates should be published so that the citizenry could be informed on the issues.
But free and open debate had not made his dreams come true. Instead, politicians had crushed them. And now he was going to make sure that,
with the exception of Al Smith and Belle Moskowitz, no one—not citizenry, not press, not Legislature —was going to know what was in the bills dealing with parks that the Legislature was going to pass. The best bill drafter in Albany set to work.
First and foremost, parks were land, and land was generally acquired by government through condemnation. But condemnation in 1924 was a slow process, since the state could not take title to property until a condemnation commission set its value. And since the property's owner could appeal to the courts if not satisfied with the commission's evaluation, he could delay the state further. He therefore possessed in his opposition to the state a weapon, even if it was a small one—and in the hands of the barons of Long Island, small weapons could become large.
So one clause within Chapter 122 of the Laws of 1924, "an act to provide for the location, creation, acquisition and improvement by the state of parks, parkways and boulevards in the counties of Nassau and Suffolk," a clause buried deep within the act, empowered the Long Island State Park Commission to acquire land by condemnation and appropriation "in the manner provided by section fifty-nine of the conservation law."
In 1924, "appropriation" had only one meaning in a legislative context: an allocation of funds by the Legislature. Most legislators—probably all legislators—would, if asked, have said that was the only meaning the word had ever had. And since section fifty-nine of the conservation law had been passed in 1884, most legislators had not read it. But the best bill drafter in Albany had read it—and he knew that in that section "appropriation" had quite a different meaning. Worried in 1883 about incursions by lumbering companies into the Adirondack forests, the Legislature empowered the Conservation Commission to condemn the forests and preserve them. But during that year, between the start of the condemnation proceedings and the actual transfer of title, the lumbermen stripped the parcels being condemned of their trees. In 1884, therefore, the Legislature passed an act—section fifty-nine of the conservation law—empowering the state to "appropriate" forest lands and defining "appropriation" as a procedure in which a state official could take possession of the land by simply walking on it and telling the owner he no longer owned it—and that if he wanted compensation, he would have to apply to the condemnation commission himself.
The "appropriation" method had never been used anywhere except in remote forests. It had never been intended for use in city, suburban or farm areas. Taking a man's land and telling him it would be paid for later was simply unheard of if the land had any substantial intrinsic value, as it always did in settled areas, and not just the value of things on it, such as trees. Moreover, the method had never been used anywhere for more than thirty years because of doubts about its constitutionality. But the Legislature had never gotten around to repealing section fifty-nine.
Deviousness was used in other sections of the act he drafted as well. Section eight, for example, entitled "General Powers," supposedly enumerated the powers of the Long Island State Park Commission over its land, and the powers enumerated in this section seemed innocuous enough. But in succeed-
ing sections of the act, each power was "defined," and each successive definition broadened the commission's authority.
The commission had the right to operate parks, section eight said. But section nine said that "the term . . . parks as used in this act . . . shall be deemed to include . . . parkways . . . boulevards and also entrances and approaches thereto, docks and piers, and bridges . . . and such other . . . appurtenances as the . . . commission shall utilize ..." And the term "parkways" was significant. The Legislature had specifically written into the State Highway Law provision that the supervisors of each county had veto power over the location of highways within its borders. But, because parkways hadn't existed when the provision was written, the Highway Law didn't mention parkways—and there was no local check over their location.
The commission had the right to "acquire . . . real estate," section eight said. But section ten said that "the term real estate as used in this act shall be construed to embrace all uplands, lands under water . . . and all real estate heretofore or hereafter acquired or used for railroad, street railroad, telephone, telegraph or other public purposes. ..." And the words "lands under water" were significant. Under legal precedent, owners of land fronting on the Great South Bay owned the land offshore to the distance of one mile —and if the commission owned land fronting on the bay, it therefore would own part of the bay itself, including the baymen's "sacred" bay bottoms.
By the time the "defining" of the terms used in section eight was finished, the Long Island State Park Commission would be empowered, if the act was passed, to write its own laws, hire policemen to enforce them and prosecutors to prosecute them. By the time it was finished, the commission would, if the act was passed, have over its land, land which if Moses had his way would total forty thousand acres, virtually all the powers granted to the City of New York in the city's charter.
Almost every clause in the act contained a sleeper. Section fifteen ostensibly dealt with the procedure to be used in acquiring property owned by other state agencies. But, apparently tagged on as an afterthought, there was another paragraph: "The . . . Commission shall have power to improve, maintain and use the lands of the municipalities adjoining the parks and parkways of the Commission, with the consent of the local authorities having jurisdiction thereof." The paragraph appeared innocent enough. Since the commission was operating in Nassau and Suffolk counties, what legislator would stop to consider that some lands on Long Island might be owned by New York City and that, once the act was passed, the Long Island State Park Commission would not need the consent of Long Island officials to use that land because "the local authorities having jurisdiction thereof" would not be Long Island officials but New York City officials? Once the act was passed, Moses would be able to use the city's water-supply properties despite the objections of the municipalities in which
those properties were located.
Moses concealed his purposes not only from those who, if they knew them, might oppose them—the legislators—but from those who thought they were his allies, the old men who had worked on the New York State Association report and who, through their individual commissions, had been running
the parks in the state for so many years. If these men were to oppose his plans, they could, with their control of their local legislators, pose a formidable obstacle to passage. So he didn't tell the old men about the true scope of his plans for the State Council of Parks. In fact, knowing that they were concerned about the fate of the pieces of land they had guarded so long, he assured them over and over that the establishment of the council would in no way affect their control over those lands. "It is," he wrote them, "merely a coordinating agency." Parks in each region, he promised them, would remain under the control of the regional commissioners.
Moses had to know that what he was saying was false. He knew that since regional commissions had to submit their budget requests to the Parks Council, the council, not the commissions, would decide how much money went to each region. The council, not an individual commission, would decide over-all park policies which would affect each commission's parks. And since the commissions would be rivals for funds, there was little danger of them banding together against the man who ran the council. That man would be in complete charge of all the state parks.
Not knowing what was in the bill, believing in coordination and believing in Moses, the old men supported it and him.
Having drafted the bills, Moses looked around for someone to introduce them.
F. Trubee Davison, the son of Morgan partner Henry P. Davison of Glen Cove, had been sent by the barons of the North Shore of Long Island to the State Assembly in 1923, just one year after his graduation from Yale. In 1924, he was only twenty-two years old and, in his own words, "wide-eyed and eager." Not only was he a Yale man but he was, within the limits approved by the barons, interested in reform, and Moses had found plenty to talk to him about. "He was charming," Davison recalls, "and I enjoyed talking with him a lot and I admired his obvious brains." And he was, he recalls, frankly flattered that a member of the Governor's inner circle would spend so much time with a freshman assemblyman.
Moses asked Davison to introduce the bills that would establish a State Council of Parks and a Long Island State Park Commission. He told him nothing about his plans for parks and a parkway on the North Shore. In fact, he told him very little of any of his plans, leaving the impression that the bills were routine measures and that the kind of parks he was talking about were parks in the traditional mold.
Davison was a believer in parks in that mold. He was flattered to be asked to introduce the bills. And when Moses told him that the Governor would like to see him and thank him for his support, he was overwhelmed. His visit to the Executive Chamber with Moses at his elbow was the first time he had ever met Al Smith in person. He didn't think to ask many questions about the bills—and he certainly didn't think to look up section fifty-nine of the conservation law or to study definitions of powers. Just to make sure he wouldn't have much time to even if he wanted to, Moses delayed giving him the bills until the last week of the session. "I never realized what
the word 'appropriation' meant," Davison recalls. "I thought it meant what it had always meant, so far as I knew: appropriation of money to be spent. Whenever someone asked me what it meant, I told them that's what it meant."
Not that many people asked him, of course. There was little interest in the bills and when, in the last-minute adjournment rush, they came to the floor, there was not a word of debate about them. On April 10, 1924, on the last day of the session, Assembly and Senate passed them both by unanimous vote.
Moses was in a fever of impatience. On April 12, he wrote George Graves, Smith's secretary: "My dear George: As soon as you get a chance will you ask the Governor, please to sign the bill creating the State Council of Parks so that a meeting of this Council can be held at an early date." On April 18, a pen in the Executive Chamber scrawled across the bills: "Approved—AES." On the same date, Smith appointed to the regional park commissions the men whose names he had previously agreed upon with Moses. He appointed Moses president of the Long Island State Park Commission, a post that gave him automatic membership on the State Council of Parks, and as Moses' co-commissioners on the three-member Long Island Commission the Governor appointed two men Moses knew he could count on to let him run the commission by himself. On April 30, Moses and the other heads of the regional park commissions met in Albany and, with paternal smiles in his direction, the older commission heads elected the youngest member of the State Council of Parks as its chairman.
At the age of thirty-five, Robert Moses had power. And no sooner did he have it than he showed how he was going to use it.
was so lavish in purchasing automobiles for his friends' use and furnishings for their offices that by summer he had spent $63,089 of the $225,000 on such "overhead expenses."
Moses' Yale classmate Harold Phelps Stokes was an assistant to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. During the first week after his appointment, Moses dashed off a letter informing Stokes of the existence of the six hundred new acres at the Fire Island Coast Guard station and asking him to persuade Hoover to release them as an addition to the adjoining two-hundred-acre Fire Island State Park. When Hoover agreed, Moses had, in a single step, quadrupled the state park acreage on Long Island. During the first week after his appointment, he called on the New York City Commissioner of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity, Nicholas J. Hayes, and asked Hayes to release the 3,500 acres of city watershed properties. Hayes said that his responsibility was to protect the city's water supplies, not to give them away, but he was a good Tammany regular and a call from Al Smith persuaded him to accept a compromise Moses suggested: that the city keep control of the water on the properties and give the commission a "surface easement" that would allow it to use the rest of the land for parks.
Much of the remainder of the route for the envisioned "Southern State Parkway" was farmland. Moses quickly learned not to visit farmers during the day when they were occupied with chores. Instead, in the twilight of Long Island spring evenings, a big black Packard and uniformed chauffeur would be standing in the front yards of neat little farmhouses in Valley Stream, Rockville Centre and Merrick while inside, at the kitchen table, Robert Moses sat, jacket off, tie loosened and shirt sleeves rolled up, drinking what he later remembered as an endless succession of glasses of beer and trading an endless succession of loud jokes with an endless succession of jovial, florid-faced but canny German and Dutch farmers, trying to bargain them down to the price—$1,200 per acre—that he had set for right-of-way. Soon he had obtained options from a dozen farmers from whom he needed infertile land or land on the very edges of their farms, for which $1,200 per acre (payable by June 30, 1925, out of the anticipated legislative appropriation) was a good price. Approaching the socialites who headed the corporation that had purchased the old Taylor Estate next to the Timber Point Club in East Islip and turned it into a hunting preserve, he received a pleasant surprise: they had visited the estate only once in 1923 and were thinking of selling. Talking to them earnestly and winningly of the public service they would perform by selling to the state, he persuaded them to accept $250 and give him an option, subject to approval by the other stockholders, to purchase the estate for $250,000, payable by June 30, 1925. After he worked on the owners of the land he coveted at Hampton Bays and Sunken Meadow, they gave him similar options. The Montauk Point and Lloyd Neck owners seemed ready to follow suit. By the end of the summer of 1924, he seemed well on his way to establishing a state park system on Long Island on the basis of his charm alone.
But the charm could vanish swiftly. He joked and laughed with the farmers, but when one made clear that he would not sell his land, Moses could change in an instant to quite a different approach. P. G. Rasweiler was one of the five burly, thick-nec
ked, red-faced sons of John Jacob Rasweiler, a Brooklyn-born farmer of German ancestry who had gone broke trying to raise lettuce, spinach, cabbage and cauliflower on a farm in Valley Stream and then had sold it and purchased another in Malverne, where, in PG's words, "we all six of us broke our backs to make it pay." PG remembers well the day the "parkway business" started. "The farm was doing good," he recalls. "Then Moses came one day. He introduced himself as Tm Robert Moses, representing the State of New York. We're going to put a parkway through this section of Long Island.' He was very polite, very diplomatic, at first. But when he saw my father wasn't going to sell, he stood up in our kitchen and he said: 'You know, Mr. Rasweiler, the state is all-supreme when it comes to a condemnation proceeding. If we want your land, we can take it.'
"Father wanted to make an agreement with him—he didn't want to have to go to the lawyers—but Moses wanted to take twenty acres from us. The whole farm was only eighty, eighty-five acres. The twenty acres was the choice of the whole farm. It had been woodland; we had worked hard to get it cleared off. We had just gotten it cleared, and it was just about ready to begin making money for us. It was right in the middle of the farm; if he took it, all our rows would be cut in half—how could you plow? And he was offering us $1,200—the same price he was offering for bad land on the edges of other farms. That wasn't fair. But when we tried to explain that to him, he wouldn't even listen to us. Father asked him to go on the north boundary line instead. Father said if he'd take it from the boundary and not from the middle, he'd give it to the state for nothing. But Moses said no. His whole attitude was: This is where we're going, and that's it.' "
The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York Page 26