Al Smith mastered Albany not through oratory but by solitary study of obscure texts

Evidence

When he went back, he read harder. Since most of the bills amended or referred back to other bills passed years before—and not described in the new bills—he took to spending evenings in the Legislative Library reading those old bills. Since some of the most confusing wording was based on legal technicalities, Smith began to borrow lawbooks from law libraries and take them back to the furnished room with him. Sometimes, leafing through the thick volumes, he thought wryly that their very appearance would have intimidated him a few years before. Tired of listening to speeches he couldn’t understand, he would pay clerks for transcripts and study the transcripts. Near the end of the session, the annual appropriations measure, hundreds of pages long, containing tens of thousands of items, was published. No one, so far as anyone in Albany could remember, had ever read the entire appropriations bill. In 1906, Al Smith read it. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 526

Categorization

• XREF: Follows the ‘apprenticeship through diligence’ pattern of other figures; resonates with the reader’s interest in how people acquire hidden mastery. — connects to: Al Smith was an indifferent student distinguished mainly by his loud speaking voice — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 498; Moses surpassed Al Smith as Albany’s master bill drafter — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 622

Broader Connections

• Al Smith was an indifferent student distinguished mainly by his loud speaking voice #contradicts (0.95) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 498
• Moses surpassed Al Smith as Albany’s master bill drafter #complicates (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 622