Reform economy and machine patronage both starved New York of public works

Evidence

The city’s failure was most apparent, and the problems largest, in those categories of municipal responsibility in which the betterment of its people’s lives required the construction of public works on a scale commensurate with the city’s size. The concern of the people’s tribunes during the Low and Mitchel reform administrations had been for the people’s welfare, but that welfare had been conceived of primarily as a lessening of the burden on taxpayers through governmental economy rather than through the construction of civic improvements whose cost would increase that burden. And while Tammany administrations had spent the taxpayers’ money with a lavish hand, the taxpayers had received in return surprisingly little increment in life-improving steel and concrete, because the disproportionate amount of the city’s budget funneled by Tammany into salaries—into patronage—left little money available for construction contract appropriations. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1460

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book-so-far theme (ch8) that Moses’ standardization would cut paychecks — patronage salaries versus construction spending is the same structural tradeoff. — connects to: Economic whisperers, not voters, decided New York’s public works for three decades. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 3200; New York state government grew more fragmented from 1915 to 1919 — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 451

Broader Connections

• Economic whisperers, not voters, decided New York’s public works for three decades. #qualifies (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 3200