Western Political Science Association

University of Utah

Review
Author(s): Denis Killeen
Review by: Denis Killeen
Source: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), pp. 584-585
Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/447381
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584 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics does not limit itself to the Mussolini
era or to the Lenin transformation of Marxism into statism. Contemporary socie-
ties, including the Chinese and Cuban, are examined along with such sub-political
structures as the Garveyites and the Black Muslims in the United States.
The SDS-Weatherpeople are also called under the microscope with devastat-
ing results. It is doubtful that a serious Marxist-Leninist would be swayed by the
cogent methodology set forth by Gregor, but to those not already locked into a
collectivist thought pattern this book is vital reading.
PHILLIP ABBOTT LUCE

Arizona State University

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. By ROBERT A. CARO.
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. Pp. 1162. $17.95.)

This book is a monument. It is over eleven hundred pages long; it took seven
years of intensive work to research. It investigates the life of a great builder who
had largely escaped scrutiny during a half-century of public service, and with a
little effort it allows for generalization about political behavior.
The portraits of people close to Moses at different stages of his career are
among the many features of this study. The best of these is the material on Al
Smith who, so unlike Moses in background and education, gave him his start as a
great builder. There was a strong and genuine attachment between these two men
which lasted till Smith's death; Moses referred to no later governor as "Governor."
He aided Smith in bill drafting and legislative in-fighting. The governor gave
Moses his choice of rewards: Moses chose parks. The parks he planned in the
1920s were built with skill and determination; he took on the rich and sometimes
the poor who stood in his way. In building his parks and parkways he used the
tool he had despised as a younger man. Patronage from construction meant con-
tracts for labor, materials, condemnation, legal counsel, insurance and supporting
services. He also found that by using all appropriated funds to begin work the
legislature would be forced to follow through. He explained that "once you sink
that first stake, they'll never make you pull it up."
The author shows that Moses had an enormous thirst for power - sometimes
it seemed he wanted power for its own sake - and he used every means to attain
power. Yet throughout this book we realize that the power he wanted was to shape
land and water to fit his image of what was beautiful and useful. He played to the
newspapers; the New York Times was practically a public relations sheet for much
of his work. He collected personal scandal on people and reports of weaknesses
which were held in dossiers to be used to intimidate anyone who opposed him.
Yet the great failing of Robert Moses was to some extent the same narrow vision
which afflicted the nation as a whole; he believed in mobility and that meant the
auto, parkways, and expressways. His vision of driving seemed to be frozen on a
1914 picture of a leisure class in romantic cars on a lovely afternoon outing. When
the roads became congested in the late 1930s, his answer was to build more roads
and add more lanes, build more bridges and add a second deck, build more tun-

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 BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES 585

nels and add more tubes. Each time a new facility was opened, the congestion sur-
passed the new capacity. Moses avoided all attempts to balance the movement of
people among various modes of travel. He wanted no part of rail or bus transpor-
tation. The overpasses on Long Island parkways were deliberately kept low so no
buses could pass through even if the law allowed it.
Moses developed legal and political institutions which insulated his activities
from governmental scrutiny. The public authority device had been used before but
Moses created a contractual relationship with bondholders which the Constitution
forbade the states to impair. The open-ended nature of the debentures established
a perpetual institution with power to tax through tolls, contract for services, spend,
hire police, and control personnel largely without oversight. He was able to borrow
huge sums because the banks knew his credit was strong; contractors wanted to
build and unions wanted work. The Triborough Bridge Authority Act was the
foundation for the power he wielded; the statute authorized the issuance of new
bonds "partly to refund bonds then outstanding and partly for any other corporate
purpose"; this established a political system above politics and allowed this master
politician to show disdain for the more ordinary variety. He drafted the state laws
which gave him autonomy from state law.
The posture of the Caro book is hostile to Moses. As the subtitle suggests,
Moses is seen as responsible for the fall of New York. A strong case has certainly
been made. However, he was not responsible for the senseless production of in-
efficient cars. His beautiful salt water beaches, such as Jones Beach, on Long
Island are a continuing benefit to the public; were it not for Moses this land would
have been subdivided in tiny lots to the exclusion of the public. The quality
materials used and his architectural design were unmatched in public works.
Though he did not support mass transit, he was not alone in his myopia and mass
transportation has never had the leadership it so desperately needed - the leader-
ship of someone like Robert Moses.
DENIS KILLEEN
Central Connecticut State College

Philadelphia: Neighborhood Authority and the Urban Crisis. By CONRAD WEILER.

(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974. Pp. 218. $12.50.)

Conrad Weiler promises in his preface to present an account of events in

Philadelphia's recent history and to interpret these events in terms of the "urban
crisis." Weiler's study focuses primarily on changes which occurred between 1951
when the city elected a Democratic mayor and 1971 when Frank Rizzo was elected,
"virtually setting the stage for the politics of white ethnicity and coercion." This
period reflects the changes in the city's bases of authority and in the role of the
neighborhood. The author concludes that Philadelphia ended the "urban crisis"
by redistributing its sources to the suburbs through a process called "metropolitan
geopolitics."
Weiler's basic premise is that Philadelphians lack a strong positive image of
their city and its government and seems to suggest that some of Philadelphia's

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