Park opposition came from wealthy estate owners protecting their private grounds

Evidence

There are people in this state who are opposed to parks,” Al Smith said. His rasping, friendly, compelling voice sliced through the static of the crystal sets in tens of thousands of steaming living rooms in which sat families who had spent that last weekend in a desperate search for parks. “There are people in this state who are opposed to parks, to the park program, because they do not desire public parks or parkways too close to their private estates, golf clubs and fox-hunting and polo fields.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 852

Categorization

• SEED: The opening line pattern — declaring an enemy by class interest over the radio — is a template for how public-works populism was sold.
• XREF: connects to: Long Island estate barons converted private power into state legal authority to exclude outsiders — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 669; Wealthy club owners spent fortunes buying adjacent land purely to block outsiders from view. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 684; Landowners’ resistance made large regional parks seem financially and legally impossible — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 691 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Entrenched property-ownership ideals defeated the effort to treat land as a social resource #corroborates (0.80) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 1077