City of Ambition: Franklin Roosevelt, Fiorello La Guardia, and the Making of New Deal New York Mason Williams Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Mason Williams All Rights Reserved Abstract City of Ambition: Franklin Roosevelt, Fiorello La Guardia, and the Making of New Deal New York Mason Williams This dissertation offers a new account of New York City’s politics and government in the 1930s and 1940s. Focusing on the development of the functions and capacities of the municipal state, it examines three sets of interrelated political changes: the triumph of “municipal reform” over the institutions and practices of the Tammany Hall political machine and its outer-borough counterparts; the incorporation of hundreds of thousands of new voters into the electorate and into urban political life more broadly; and the development of an ambitious and capacious public sector—what Joshua Freeman has recently described as a “social democratic polity.” It places these developments within the context of the national New Deal, showing how national officials, responding to the limitations of the American central state, utilized the planning and operational capacities of local governments to meet their own imperatives; and how national initiatives fed back into subnational politics, redrawing the bounds of what was possible in local government as well as altering the strength and orientation of local political organizations. The dissertation thus seeks not only to provide a more robust account of this crucial passage in the political history of America’s largest city, but also to shed new light on the history of the national New Deal—in particular, its relation to the urban social reform movements of the Progressive Era, the long-term effects of short-lived programs such as work relief and price control, and the roles of federalism and localism in New Deal statecraft. Table of Contents List of Abbreviations Used in the Notes………………………………………………..ii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………….iii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Part I: Foundations Chapter One: New York City Politics Before La Guardia…………………………13 Part II: The New Deal Chapter Two: “Jobs Is the Cry”: The Political Origins of the New Deal Intergovernmental Public Investment State……………………………………...85 Chapter Three: The New Deal’s “Lost Legacy”: The New Deal Works Programs and New York City’s Local Public Sector……………………………………...136 Chapter Four: From Fusion to Confusion: Remaking the La Guardia Coalition………………………………………………………………………...200 Part III: War and Postwar Chapter Five: The Battle of New York: Urban Politics and the Warfare State…...245 Chapter Six: “I Hope Others Will Follow New York’s Example”: From Intergovernmental Experiments to Municipal Commitments ………………….284 Selected Bibliography…………………………………………………………………322 i List of Abbreviations Used in the Notes FHL – Fiorello H. La Guardia FDR – Franklin Delano Roosevelt CCOHC – Columbia Center for Oral History Collection FDRL – Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (Hyde Park, New York) LC – Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress MRL – New York City Department of Records, Municipal Reference Library NA – National Archives II (College Park, Maryland) NYMA – New York Municipal Archives NYPL – Manuscripts and Archive Division, New York Public Library SWLAC-CU – Social Work Library Agency Collection, Lehman Library, Columbia University OF – Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Papers, Official File PPF – Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Papers, President’s Personal File PSF – Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Papers, President’s Secretary’s File SF – Fiorello H. La Guardia Mayoral Papers, Subject Files NYHT – New York Herald Tribune NYP – New York Post NYT – New York Times NYWT – New York World-Telegram TNR – The New Republic WP – Washington Post CPPC – Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 25 vols. (New York, 1972) CR – Congressional Record PPA – Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 vols. (New York, 1938-1950) PL – Elliott Roosevelt, ed., F.D.R.: His Personal Letters: Vol. 2, 1928-1945 (New York, 1947-1950) AHR – American Historical Review APSR – American Political Science Review JAH – Journal of American History SAPD – Studies in American Political Development Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all election return data has been compiled from the Annual Report of the Board of Elections of the City of New York and the annual volume of the City Record entitled Official Canvass of the Votes Cast. The New York Public Library and the Municipal Reference Library hold maps of each assembly district, showing election district boundaries; Arthur Mann, La Guardia Comes to Power: 1933 (Philadelphia, 1965), appendix, contains borough maps showing assembly district boundaries. Budgetary data are drawn from Citizens Budget Commission, Fiscal Facts Concerning the City of New York: A Statistical Summary of the City’s Finances, Vols. 1-2 (New York, 1940, 1947). Citations for Drew Pearson and Robert Allen’s “Washington-Merry-Go-Round” columns may be found at the Washington Research Library Consortium’s online archive: http://www.aladin0.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/pearson/pearson.shtml. For constant dollar calculations, I have used Robert C. Sahr’s conversion factor table: http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/individual-year- conversion-factor-tables. ii Acknowledgments Like all students of broadly familiar subjects, I owe my primary debt to other scholars who have worked on topics relevant to this study. In some instances I have drawn upon their interpretations (because I agree with them); in others, their work has made it possible for me to provide a deep context to the story I have told here. I am grateful to them all. I should like to say thank you especially to Thomas Kessner, author of what is presently the outstanding biography of Fiorello La Guardia, for his generosity and encouragement when I approached him out of the blue several years ago to ask if he thought this project worthwhile. He assured me that it was, and he pointed me toward some of the puzzles it has attempted to address. This work has been made possible by the efforts of archivists, librarians, and staff at many institutions: among others, Firestone Library at Princeton University, Butler and Lehman Libraries and the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University, the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Maps divisions, the National Archives at College Park, the Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, the La Guardia and Wagner Archives at La Guardia Community College in Queens, Sterling Library at Yale University, the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University, and the Municipal Reference Library. Above all, I am grateful to the staff at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, whose friendliness, professionalism, and good cheer were as much a source of pleasure as were the early-morning and early-evening train rides along the Hudson; to the staff of the New York Municipal Archives, who lived with this project nearly as long as I did; and to the custodians of the Allen Room at the New York Public iii Library, overseen during the period in which this book was written by the estimable David Smith and Jay Barksdale. My research in Hyde Park was assisted by a grant from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute’s Levy-Beekman fund. Tony Grafton, Dan Rodgers (whose own scholarly insights run through this book), and Sean Wilentz (who was primarily responsible for my decision to extend this study beyond its origins as an undergraduate thesis) began what I imagine was the thankless task of introducing me to the professional study of history. Betsy Blackmar, Alan Brinkley, Eric Foner, Ira Katznelson, Sarah Phillips picked up where they left off. To recount here their contributions to this book and to my scholarly development more generally would be tedious, but I want them to know how greatly I appreciate the time and energy they have invested in me. They should, of course, be excused from responsibility for the rough edges that remain. Ken Jackson was a friend to this project in many different ways. He taught me to view the subject from an urban historian’s perspective. He offered appropriate criticism when I needed to hear it and support when he thought I was on to something. Mike Wallace allowed me to participate in a seminar he was giving on twentieth-century New York at the City University of New York Graduate Center; I learned a great deal – how could one not? – from reading a partial draft of the forthcoming second volume of his Gotham project, and the seminar more generally. Joshua Freeman, who generously served as the outside reader on my dissertation committee, asked some very incisive questions of this study, which I hope to take up more adequately in future work. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my graduate school colleagues at Columbia, several of whom would be within their rights to view this project as a personal affliction. iv A special thanks to Justin Jackson, Thai Jones, Keith Orejel, Ezra Tessler, Tamara Mann Tweel, and Michael Woodsworth, each of whom read through (at least) several chapters of the manuscript. Erik Linstrum, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, has been with this project since the beginning, and I am happy to have the opportunity to thank him again now for his friendship and support. Mary Jo Bane, Brent Cebul, Jack Epstein, Archong Fung, Jennifer Hochschild, Alex Keyssar, Stephen Macekura, Andrew Meade McGee, Guian McKee, and Moshik Temkin each helped me to think more deeply about the research presented here. Brian Balogh’s unusual conception of how to treat “someone else’s graduate student” resulted first in my acquisition of a fridge full of Chinese food, then in my introduction to a remarkable community of scholars of American political history. Though it falls outside their official responsibility, portions of this dissertation have profited from the labors of Steve Forman and Justin Cahill at W.