so to me in just those words—'He's a pretty poor excuse for a man.' " He never actually mentioned the full extent—or what he imagined to be the full extent—of Roosevelt's disabilities, recalled another member of the Smith entourage, "but he was always hinting around about it in the most vicious kind of way. 'Vicious'—that was the only word for it." His comments took in not only Roosevelt but his wife as well. "I wouldn't repeat what he said about Eleanor Roosevelt," another Smith aide said. "Just say he dwelt on her physical appearance and her voice and was quite insulting."
The comments got back, as comments made in political circles always seem to do, to their targets. And Roosevelt responded in kind. During this same period, he told Frances Perkins that, if he was elected, "I'm not going to have Bob Moses around, Frances, because I don't trust him. I don't like him. I don't trust him. . .. There'll be trouble." Roosevelt's feeling for Moses, says one man who knew both, was at least equal in intensity to Moses' feeling for Roosevelt. "You can employ euphemisms to describe the electricity that was present when those two men were in the same room," he says, "but if you are going to be accurate, you have to say there was real hatred there."
Election Day in 1928 was November 6. The dark forces to which Handlin referred had done their work well on the boy who had thought he could rise from the Fourth Ward to be President. Alfred E. Smith received 87 electoral votes to Herbert Hoover's 444. He even lost New York State. But Franklin Delano Roosevelt polled 2,130,193 votes to Ottinger's 2,104,193. The man who hated Robert Moses was Governor.
Al Smith was bitter over the anti-Catholic prejudice that had marked the campaign. But, at first, that was the only bitterness. He seemed reconciled, even relieved, to be out of politics. After twenty-five years in public office, he wanted to settle down with Katie and spend more time with the grandchildren he adored. After twenty-five years, he was still poor—the Governor's salary in 1928 was only $10,000, less than that of his cabinet officers—and he was tired of that, too; he wanted security in his old age and something to leave his sons. John J. Raskob, William T. Kenny and other friends had offered him the presidency of the Empire State Building Corporation, which was erecting New York's tallest skyscraper, at a salary of $50,000 per year. "I have had all I can stand of it. As far as running for office is concerned— that's finished," he said, and at the time he meant it; one proof was his voluntary surrender of the titular leadership of the national Democratic Party; another was his refusal to intervene when his ally Judge George Olvany was forced out as head of Tammany Hall in 1929—if Smith had intended to run for President in 1932 he would certainly have attempted to maintain control of Tammany to keep a base of electoral votes on which to build a campaign. In November 1928, as he packed up so that Roosevelt could move into the Executive Mansion early—and busied himself personally overseeing the installation of the ramps Roosevelt would need to move in a wheelchair around the mansion and the capitol—Alfred E. Smith, the Happy Warrior, was ready to retire, still mostly happy, from politics. He certainly bore no personal
animosity toward Roosevelt, and, raised in the Tammany tradition in which men were retired from active service honorably when the time for retirement came (the warriors who had held high political office becoming sachems, assured until they died of a voice in running the Hall) to make room for younger men coming along, "he considered," as Proskauer put it, "that he and Roosevelt were members of the same team."
Moreover, Smith felt that Roosevelt could be trusted to continue his programs. This was important to him. All through 1928, he had been pressing the Legislature for further improvements in working conditions for women and children, for extensions of the Workmen's Compensation Act, for liberalized welfare legislation, for movement in the new field of old-age pensions; and the Legislature had refused to be moved on these issues. Now he wanted Roosevelt to press for them. And certainly there was every reason for him to feel that his successor would. All during the campaign, Roosevelt had pledged himself to continue Smith's policies. His typical campaign speech, the New York Herald Tribune said, began with "a few words of fulsome praise for Alfred E. Smith." In the first weeks after the election, Smith was looking forward to helping the younger man get a good start in Albany. When he and Katie moved out of the Executive Mansion, in early December, he took a suite in the De Witt Clinton Hotel at the bottom of the little park in front of the capitol steps, so he would be available if his successor wanted to confer with him, and waited for Roosevelt to call.
And there he waited.
After a week had passed and Roosevelt had not contacted him, Smith swallowed his pride and telephoned the new Governor. He told Roosevelt that he had assumed he would want some assistance with the details of his inaugural address and first message to the Legislature, and had asked Mrs. Moskowitz to prepare a list of items that might be included. Roosevelt replied that the address and the message were almost finished, but he would be glad to show them to Smith and Mrs. Moskowitz when they were. And this, as Arthur Schlesinger puts it, "he 'forgot' to do. When the address was given, it was devoted largely to rural problems and made hardly a reference to what had gone before." When puzzled reporters asked Roosevelt whether he was going to continue the Smith policies, his evasive answer was: "Generally, for that is what we said all through the campaign."
Explanations for Roosevelt's treatment of Smith vary from historian to historian, depending on whether the historian has received most of his information from intimates of Roosevelt or of Smith. Roosevelt-oriented historians say that Smith, whether or not he intended to continue to run the state after he had left office, gave that impression to Roosevelt (they cite his offer of Mrs. Moskowitz's help on the inaugural address as one way he did so). Personal feelings aside, these historians point out, Roosevelt had long viewed the Governorship as a way station on the road to the White House, began planning for a 1932 presidential bid immediately after the election—and knew that if Smith changed his mind and decided to run for the presidency, he would be the man Roosevelt would have to beat. His greatest political problem in Albany, moreover, would be to get out from
under the shadow of the man generally acknowledged to have been the state's greatest Governor.
But political considerations alone seem inadequate to account for Roosevelt's actions. One is forced to take into account another side of his complex character, the side which Raymond Moley was to call a "lack of directness and sincerity," and of which Robert Sherwood was to say that "at times he displayed a capacity for vindictiveness which could be described as petty." This side was frequently to be on display when Roosevelt dealt with people he had needed once but needed no longer. "Roosevelt was never at his best in getting rid of people no longer useful to him," Oscar Handlin was to write. "The lack of directness and candor in his actions left a bitter impression of shiftiness, of disloyalty, and of ingratitude." And the impression was to be strengthened in his relations with Smith and Smith's people, in Moley's opinion, because "Roosevelt . . . was deeply sensitive to the fact that so many among the people who knew him . . . believed, for one reason or another, that he lived beyond his intellectual means." Says Moley: "This opinion hurt Roosevelt, but he braced his determination to overcome it. It may be added that with this effort came a not quite Christlike tendency to beat down not only the opinion itself but those who held it. It is not remarkable, therefore, that when he became governor he did not avail himself of Smith's generous tender of help and advice. . . . The mighty engine of governmental power was not destined to spare those who had once deluded themselves with a notion that Roosevelt was a weak man." Of the many books written on Roosevelt, it is significant that every one whose author was an intimate of both Roosevelt and Smith—Miss Perkins, Proskauer, Rosenman and Jim Farley, for example—stresses this side of Roosevelt's character in attempting to explain his treatment of Smith.
The final humiliation of Al Smith at the hands of the man he had asked to be his successor revolved around Robert Moses.
Among the subjec
ts Roosevelt was not anxious to discuss with Smith during the period between the election and the inauguration was that of the appointments he would make. Finally, Smith, humbling himself again, went to see Roosevelt at the Executive Mansion. Trying to make the Governor-elect see that they were both members of the same team, he said, "You know, I'll always be ready to help you. I'll always come up any time you want me. I'll talk to anyone you want me to talk to. I'll negotiate with anyone about anything. ... I know all these people. I don't have anything [to do]." He said he understood that Roosevelt would want to replace most of his appointees with his own men. There were only two members of his administration who he thought were absolutely indispensable. They were Mrs. Moskowitz, whose title was "personal secretary to the Governor," and Moses. Roosevelt, describing this conversation to Frances Perkins, said that Smith told him, "You see, Mrs. Moskowitz knows all about everything. She knows all the plans. She knows all the people. She knows all the different characters and quirks that are involved in everything. She knows who can and who will
do this or that." As for Moses, Roosevelt told Miss Perkins that Smith is "very dependent on Bob Moses, as you know, and thinks very highly of him. He feels that nobody else can carry on the-parks, or the highways, or even the state hospitals except Moses, because he's got so much ability."
Roosevelt was evasive. And in the days following the Executive Mansion conference, Smith could see which way the wind was blowing. Roosevelt took pains to let reporters know that he had not had a single conference with Mrs. Moskowitz. He dodged their questions about Moses.
Mrs. Moskowitz was, after all, more of a personal adviser to Smith than a state official. He did not again raise with Roosevelt the question of her reappointment. But Smith felt, as one observer recalls, "that it would be a tragedy—a real tragedy—for the state to lose Moses' services as Secretary of State. There just wasn't anyone else with his ability around." Telephoning Roosevelt again, he asked for an appointment. Roosevelt was at Hyde Park, sixty miles from Albany, but, for Moses, Smith made a journey to Canossa. He was rewarded by an end to evasion. As soon as he had finished pleading with Roosevelt to reappoint Moses, the Governor-elect leaned back, puffed on his cigarette for a moment and then said flatly: "No. He rubs me the wrong way."
It is significant that, although Moses held other state positions, the conversation between Smith and Roosevelt concerned only the Secretaryship of State— for the reasons why Moses' other positions were not discussed do much to pinpoint the sources of his power.
Moses' six-year term as president of the Long Island State Park Commission did not expire until 1930; although Roosevelt was Governor and the commission presidency was a gubernatorial appointment, Moses did not need Roosevelt's approval to remain in the post. The chairmanship of the State Parks Council was conferred not by the Governor but by the council. Moses did not need Roosevelt's approval to remain in that post, either.
The only way Roosevelt could remove Moses from either of his park posts was by bringing formal charges against him. But charges of what? If Moses had been guilty of impropriety or illegality, how was a Governor supposed to know it? Moses kept the operation of the commission so secret that no outsider knew where to start looking for proof or could guess whether, if he did look, he would find any. A Governor could, of course, launch a full-scale investigation into the commission, but this would involve the gravest political risks since public opinion was firmly behind Moses. And what if the investigation did not find anything? Then it would look like a malicious attempt to defame a great man. An attempt could be made to defeat Moses at the next State Parks Council election, but his careful stacking of the council membership had made that very difficult. The Governor could, of course, change the membership, but only gradually since the members' terms were also six years. And if word of a council-packing attempt got out, public opinion would again side with Moses. Parks were supposed to be free from politics.
As he had done in the little world of Yale, Robert Moses had erected within New York State a power structure all his own, an agency ostensibly part of the state government but only minimally responsive to its wishes. The structure might appear flimsy but it was shored up with buttresses of the strongest material available in the world of politics: public opinion. A Governor—even a Governor who hated the man who dwelt within that structure— would pull it down at his own peril.
Moses understood this. Asked forty years later why Roosevelt did not oust him from his park posts, he would laugh and say, "He couldn't afford to. The public wouldn't have stood for it. And even if he tried to, it would have been very difficult. See, the law didn't permit it, except on charges. It was set up that way, see. That's the way it was set up." This explanation came at the end of a four-hour interview. All during it, Moses had been serious and guarded in his statements. But when he said this, he suddenly threw back his head and laughed, a laugh of pure enjoyment. "That," he said, still laughing, "was the way it was set up, don't you see?"
Roosevelt apparently saw. Moses pushed matters to a head himself. The duties of Secretary of State included the organization of the inaugural ceremonies—it was the Secretary, in fact, who would administer the oath of office to the new Governor—and Moses had to confer with Roosevelt about the arrangements. At the end of one conference, he raised the subject of his reappointment, and, when Roosevelt dodged, Moses demanded, "You don't want me to stay on, do you?" Whatever Roosevelt's exact reply was, he made it clear that Moses' assumption was not incorrect. But the Governor-elect had then to make it clear that he was talking only about the Secretaryship. He had to ask Moses hastily to stay on his park jobs. Revenge could not have been nearly as sweet as he had hoped.
The aftermath of the conversation must have made it positively sour. Stalking out of Roosevelt's office, Moses immediately composed a curt letter saying that he would resign as Secretary of State "when Governor Smith leaves Albany." Then he released it to the press, embarrassing Roosevelt, who had no successor ready to announce.
Moses, moreover, included in the letter a paragraph saying, "In accordance with our understanding, I shall carry on the state park work." And a flood of editorials greeted this statement with relief. "It is gratifying," said the World. "Gratifying," chimed in the Times. And Roosevelt, in a hastily composed one-paragraph reply to the resignation letter, had to express gratification, too, saying, "I am, of course, very happy that you will continue to carry on the work . . . You have rendered conspicuous service and I can assure you that I shall often avail myself of your continued cooperation."
The identity of the replacements for Moses and Mrs. Moskowitz could not have been more insulting to Al Smith if Roosevelt had selected them with that aim in mind. As his personal secretary, he chose Guernsey Cross, whose sole qualification was that he was big and strong enough for the Governor to lean on when he walked. As Secretary of State, he chose the Boss of the
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Bronx, Edward J. Flynn, whose experience in government, as distinguished from politics, was nonexistent and who didn't even want the job and would not agree to take it until Roosevelt, after Moses resigned, frantically pursued him on a trip around Europe by transatlantic telephone calls and cables. ("The basic reason for my appointment," Flynn later wrote, "was that Roosevelt did not want to appoint Moses.") Flynn's lack of experience in government forced Roosevelt to downgrade the Secretaryship, reducing it mainly to its licensing and ceremonial functions. Flynn never devoted much time to it and it was never again to be a sort of Deputy Governorship, or, in fact, of any real importance in the state governmental setup. What made Roosevelt's refusal to reappoint Moses all the more bitter to Smith was that the new Governor, anxious to avoid any appearance of an open break with his immensely popular predecessor, reappointed sixteen of the eighteen members of Smith's cabinet, every one except Moses, the only one Smith had asked him to reappoint, and the State Industrial Commissioner, a minor official whose dismissal Smith intimates interpreted as a "th
row-in" so that newspapers would not be able to comment that Moses had been the only one thrown out.
At the inauguration, however, Smith and Roosevelt put on a show of harmony. When Franklin and Eleanor moved into the Executive Mansion on December 31, Al, who had returned to the mansion for the occasion, met them at the door and, as reporters crowded close to listen, said, "A thousand welcomes. We've got the home fires burning and you'll find this is a fine place to live." Roosevelt, turning to the reporters, said, "I only wish Al were going to be right here for the next two years." One reporter, watching Al depart, waving his brown derby, as the crowd sang "Auld Lang Syne," wrote that Roosevelt was wearing "a smile that had a trace of wistfulness." The next day, at the official inaugural ceremony, the charade continued. In a brief valedictory, Smith praised Roosevelt to the crowd that jammed the Assembly Chamber.
Only Moses would not put on a show. When Roosevelt stood up to take the oath, Moses realized for the first time just how weak his legs were. ("The platform was high above the crowd," he told the author, "and people couldn't see what was going on, but both his legs had to be locked upright, the hinges squeaking and then snapping into place.") But that didn't stop Moses from doing what he had planned. When Roosevelt made his way to the lectern, one arm gripping a cane, the other the arm of his eldest son, James, and placed his hand on the family's two-hundred-year-old Dutch Bible, Moses administered the oath of office—and, as soon as it was finished, without waiting for Roosevelt's inaugural address, stalked off the platform and out of the Chamber.
fore refused to parley and instead hired champions to fight Moses—and the champions included Grenville Clark, whose brilliance as an attorney was not at all dimmed in their eyes by the fact that he had been a Harvard classmate of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York Page 44