Moses secretly helped the very man he was publicly fighting to destroy

Evidence

For Moses, who never forgave and never helped someone he considered his enemy, did not act that way with Joseph Papp. Needing trucks, lights and other heavy equipment for his production and unable to afford to buy or rent it, Papp asked the Park Department for it. Constable would have refused the request, but felt he’d better ask RM about it. “Oh, give it to him!” was the order. Moses would not see Papp in person—fifteen years later he would still never have met him—but after the season closed, Papp got a letter from him. The young producer had always wanted a theater for his production; the letter said that the Park Department was going to build one for him. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4224

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The tension between Moses’ vicious public fight and his private magnanimity—‘one fight that RM was not at all sorry to lose’—opens the question of whether Moses needed to win battles he secretly wanted to lose, a genuinely layered reading of power.
• XREF: Echoes the book_so_far theme ‘thirty years of reputation cracked irreparably’ and Moses’ documented tenderness toward audacious young men. — connects to: Moses used personal charm to win over even a community he had devastated — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 3724; The Papp fight converted the New York press from Moses’ protector into his investigator — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 4230