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PARTISAN REVIEW
Nevertheless , Moses ' particular genius , and a major reason for his
success , lay in his ability to pursue his ends by satisfying the demands of
powerful economic and political blocs and citizens, without, however,
becoming their servant. He attached himself to AI Smith shortly before he
became Governor of New York , and from him obtained the legal authority
and the first funds to build parks and parkways. His initial success gave him
enough surplus funds to make plans for future projects , 'and to be ready with
such plans when the federal government began to funnel construction money
to the city during the Depression. By then, he had also built an empire which
was completely free from public accountability, except to the bondholders
who financed his highway projects, so that he had total control over large
amounts of construction money at a time when the city was bankrupt. As a
result , it could only build the projects Moses wanted built ; more important,
all the businessmen , lawyers , unions, and politicians whose livelihood came
from public funds were dependent on his largesse, and gave him their
allegiance in exchange for the contracts , campaign funds , etc. , only he could
provide.
Still , the primary reason for Moses' success was the coincidence of his
vision with the interests of the city's increasingly affluent white middle class.
First, Moses gave them the parks and beaches at which they could spend their
new leisure time , and to which they could drive on his parkways in their new
cars ; just as important, Moses anticipated and shared their antipathy
to
mixing with poor and especially poor black people, effectively barring them
from these facilities by not permitting buses on the parkways . Later, the white
middle class New Yorkers who had moved to the suburbs before and after
World War II could use these parkways and the other highways Moses would
build to commute to the city, and once again , Moses helped see to it that they
would have no poor neighbors by preventing the construction of mass transit.
And toward the end of his career, Moses built urban renewal projects-and
cultural centers-for affluent people who wanted to stay in the city . In return,
the middle class population of the entire metropolitan area gave Moses
whatever political support he needed to maintain and enlarge his power, so
much so that none of the nominally more powerful politicians who wanted to
fire him could do so, including Mayor LaGuardia, Governor Lehman , and
even President Roosevelt.
Caro 's claim that New York's building program could not have
materialized without Moses is belied by the fact that after World War II, most
other American cities constructed exactly the same highways and urban
renewal projects , and while many copied Moses' plans , they too were
responding to the demands of middle class voters, and wanted the jobs,
profits and political funds that flowed from the construction projects. Moses
