Spitework

Freed from financial temptation by a fat inheritance and prepared by governmental studies at Yale, Oxford and Columbia, Robert Moses has given his whole life to able public service. Largest single monument to his brilliant, non-partisan career in New York State and City administrative jobs is Jones Beach State Park on the south shore of Long Island. He would seem to be the ideal public servant from the standpoint of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. But the campaign which dark, dynamic Mr. Moses waged last autumn as Republican nominee for Governor of New York was not calculated to win him friends in Washington. Not content with the stock Republican charge that Federal relief and PWA funds were generally being used for patronage purposes, he named names, cited cases. Hard and sharp were his jabs at President Roosevelt's good friends Herbert Lehman, James A. Farley and Basil O'Connor (Mr. Roosevelt's onetime law partner). Finally he declared the whole New Deal fundamentally unworkable. After losing the election to Governor Lehman, Mr. Moses picked up where he had left off in his $10,000-a-year job as New York City Park Commissioner, his nothing-a-year job as a member of the city's Triborough Bridge Authority. The bridge, which will connect Manhattan, Queens and The Bronx in the vicinity of Hell Gate, is being built with $42,000,000 of PWA funds.

Last fortnight Secretary of the Interior Ickes, who is also PWAdministrator and Petroleum Administrator, issued an order to the effect that no man could serve both as a city official and as an administrator of a PWA project within that city. If he tried to, PWA would shut off funds for the project involved. Immediately obvious was it that the PWAdministrator could have saved time by announcing that the Triborough Bridge Authority would get no more Federal money until Robert Moses resigned from it or from his job as City Park Commissioner. Apparently no one else in the land was affected by the order.

New York City civic associations rose up and roared against Secretary Ickes and President Roosevelt. The city's newspapers made out an airtight case of political spitework by the New Deal against last year's Republican nominee for Governor. Mr. Moses refused to resign either of his jobs. Instead he revealed that as early as last February, and twice since, Secretary Ickes had asked New York's Mayor LaGuardia to remove him from the Bridge Authority as unfriendly to the New Deal. Put on the defensive, Secretary Ickes barked: "When I issue an order I don't look to see whom it may affect." He explained his order as simply a move to "properly disassociate" Federal and local governments.

Asked if he had discussed the order with President Roosevelt, Secretary Ickes returned a flat "No." Last week newshawks put the question to the President. Did he have any information about the Ickes-Moses row? Lots, said the President.

Had he discussed the order with Secretary Ickes?

For months, said the President.

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