Dwarkesh Podcast
00:22:00 · Robert Caro
[00:22:00] S1: Great, great question. Yeah, the answer is yes. Well, you say, could they have done the same thing? So the easy, the first part, the answer is yes, they had the power to fire him. He wasn't an elected official, but couldn't, there wasn't really a possibility. The answer to the question at the bottom is no, they couldn't because he was simply too popular. You know, you could fire Robert Moses, you know, that's like firing some idol, person who was the idol of New York. But in addition, he had, with his genius, he had created in all his different posts, a chairman of the State Power Authority, chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority, Parks Commissioner, Long Island Parks Commissioner, Jones Beach Commissioner. He had created such an interlocking, you couldn't fire him from everything because the terms ended in different ways, and in some you didn't have the power to fire him from, that he had really made it impossible, well, almost impossible, because at the end, if you wanted to do it, Rockefeller did it. But by that time, cracks had appeared in the armor. I think for decades, the answer to your question is you couldn't do it. But then as he got older, cracks appeared in the armor and you could, if you wanted to brave criticism in all the newspapers and public criticism and everything else, you probably could have done. Good question.
00:24:01 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
[00:24:01] S0: Which leads into the next question I want to ask you. So you interviewed him seven times and the seventh time you mentioned your awareness of a donation that was made to his commission by a millionaire whose golf course was spared by the new route for his parkway. And after that, he didn't talk to you again. If you had gotten an eighth interview with Robert Moses, what is the one question you would most want to ask him? [00:24:35] S1: Oh god, what a great great question. Well, you know, off the top of my head, I think if I only had one question to ask him, I think I'd ask him, did you realize you were changing? That's a great question you asked. But that's the answer I'll give for now. That's something I always wanted, would like to have asked him, you know? [00:25:20] S0: Do you think he realized that he was changing?
00:25:24 · Robert Caro
[00:25:24] S1: No. I think he felt from the beginning that he had this vision for building roads here and their parks here. That was the best thing to do, And it was going to get done and it should get done no matter how many hardships he had to inflict on people, no matter how many thousands he had to evict, no matter what he had to do, he was going to get the roads built. And you see this increasing ruthlessness, this other ruthlessness of him. If someone stood in his way, he was gonna find a way to remove that person as an obstacle. I mean, I'll give you an example of that if you want. There's a politician in the Bronx named Henry Epstein. Henry Epstein is opposing the Cross Bronx Expressway. He's saying to Robert Moses, you're putting it right through a neighborhood where you have to evict tens of thousands of people. You can just move it two blocks to the south, and you only have to evict a couple of 100 people. Moses sets out to destroy Epstein and basically does by making it known he's having an affair. If he can find a weakness in somebody, that he has a mistress, that he's taking money or something, he'll use it. He'll use whatever he has to, to get things done. He learns that in my opinion, by failing to get things done when he's very young. He has things that he wants to get done and they don't get done. And the awareness comes on him and we can see it in the book or in my learning about him. I try to show how he learns that he has to find weaknesses in people. He has to use it. If he has a weakness, he's going to use it. He's going to get things done. There's a hardening and increased ruthlessness where the only thing that matters is to get the thing done. Anyone who stands in his way, if Moses has to destroy him, he'll destroy him.
00:27:53 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
[00:27:53] S0: As you say, you're writing not the history of one man, but of an era in America. And one of the most interesting things about the power broker is especially in the period in which he's able to accomplish so much so quickly. What's happening and you talk about this is the Great Depression. You know, he's hiring thousands of architects, tens of thousands of linemen for pennies on the dollar to do big public works for the city. And so I wonder how big a part of Moses's early achievements is just that the government, because of the Great Depression, could compete with the private sector for the top talent and for lots and lots of labor working 20 fourseven through the winter moving fast? [00:28:51] S1: Yeah, another good... Yes. And the answer to your question is that played a big role because like he needed architects for something. I don't remember what it is. It's in the power broker. And they lined up on 5th Avenue, thousands of out of work architects, you know, that he could hire for very low wages, you know, very low wages, but more than the wages they were available, you know, because they didn't have anything to do. He was able to hire so many people and hire and fire them in a ruthless way, you know, making the workmen work hard, you know, he could just fire them. It was the depression and they didn't have other jobs to go to. I think that was, he used that, yes.
00:28:51 · Robert Caro, Dwarkesh Patel
[00:28:51] S1: Yeah, another good... Yes. And the answer to your question is that played a big role because like he needed architects for something. I don't remember what it is. It's in the power broker. And they lined up on 5th Avenue, thousands of out of work architects, you know, that he could hire for very low wages, you know, very low wages, but more than the wages they were available, you know, because they didn't have anything to do. He was able to hire so many people and hire and fire them in a ruthless way, you know, making the workmen work hard, you know, he could just fire them. It was the depression and they didn't have other jobs to go to. I think that was, he used that, yes. [00:29:48] S0: So as somebody who has studied urban development so deeply, here is one thing I'm curious about. You look at the things that were built at the beginning of the last century or before the beginning of the last century, you know, Grand Central Station and all the beautiful architecture in New York versus the things that are built in the second half of the century. They look a lot less beautiful. [00:30:18] S1: Yeah. [00:30:19] S0: And the earlier, beautiful things were built by a much poorer country. [00:30:23] S1: Yeah. [00:30:24] S0: What what changed? Why were you able to build more beautiful Well, things
00:30:24 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
[00:30:24] S0: What what changed? Why were you able to build more beautiful Well, things [00:30:27] S1: one thing that changed is you had all these out of work artisans who could, we'll just say, carve stonework on buildings. Like my apartment is on the 15th Floor of an apartment house. Across the street is a building that's 15 stories or 16 stories high. And you say, look at all the beautiful carving that's done in the stonework of that building up on the roof. I said, the only person who can see it is the people in my apartment and the people in the apartment next to them. Someone was willing to spend that money because the builders who built that could hire skilled people at such low wages that they could make them do the decorations to make a building beautiful up on floors that nobody's gonna see them because people came cheap.