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Progressivism as Regional Planning: The Politics of Efficiency at the Port of New York

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Jameson W. Doig
Jameson W. Doig
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

The traditional view of the 1920s as a decade of economic avarice, political corruption, and self-indulgence has been replaced by a more nuanced interpretation. Innovative approaches to the use of governmental power which thrived in the Progressive era were carried forward into the Age of Normalcy, and new dimensions were added, sometimes with quite interesting results. Moreover, the ideas and institutions tested in the 1920s were then at hand for expanded use and further modification in the next cycle of major reform, in the 1930s.

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Articles
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Studies in American Political Development , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Fall 1993 , pp. 316 - 370
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1. For an important early statement of this (now dominant) perspective, which finds advances as well as retreats from the prewar reform movement, see Link, Arthur S., “What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920s?” American Historical Review 64 (1959): 833–851CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hawley, Ellis W., ed., Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1981)Google Scholar, Introduction and passim; Link, Arthur S. and McCormick, Richard L., Progressivism (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1983)Google Scholar, chapters 1 and 4. For the earlier, more negative assessment of the 1920s, see, for example, Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957)Google Scholar.

2. See Scheisl, Martin J., The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1880–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967)Google Scholar, esp. chapters 7, 11; McCraw, Thomas K., “The Progressive Legacy,” in Gould, Lewis L., ed., The Progressive Era (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1974), 181–201Google Scholar.

3. Some of the Progressive impulses described here—the concern with improved economic efficiency and rational planning—can be distinguished from other themes identified with that era, such as the efforts that focused on limiting hours of work for children, improving low-cost housing, and other “social justice” goals, and the campaigns for the initiative, recall, and other instruments of “direct democracy.” However, the various goals were intertwined; for example, improved transport efficiency would reduce the cost of food and other provisions to the working classes and it might generate job expansion. On the wide range of ideas associated with the movement, see Gould, ed., The Progressive Era, especially the essays by Gould, James Penick, Jr., Melvin G. Holli, and Thomas K. McCraw.

4. Link and McCormick, Progressivism, p. 111.

5. See Scott, Mel, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 204–221Google Scholar; M. Christine Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), chs. 4, 8; Johnson, David A., “Regional Planning for the Great American Metropolis,” in Schaffer, Daniel, ed., Two Centuries of American Planning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 167–196Google Scholar; Heiman, Michael K., The Quiet Evolution (New York: Praeger, 1988)Google Scholar, chapter 2; Simpson, Michael, Thomas Adams and the Modern Planning Movement (London: Mansell, 1985)Google Scholar, chapter 6; Fishman, Robert, “The Regional Plan and the Transformation of the Industrial Metropolis,” in Ward, David and Zunz, Olivier, eds., The Landscape of Modernity (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992), 106–125Google Scholar. On the frequent assertion that The Regional Plan for the New York area did have a significant influence in shaping development, Fishman's analysis offers the clearest assessment, which is negative.

6. See Link, “What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920s?” pp. 364–365, and Platt, Harold L., “World War I and the Birth of American Regionalism,” Journal of Policy History 5 (1993): 128–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Platt demonstrates the important role of wartime experiences in shaping the views of city planners and others on the advantages of regional action.

7. See particularly Erie, Steven P., “How the Urban West was Won,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 27 (06 1992): 519–554CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. MacLeish, Archibald, “Port of New York Authority,” Fortune (09 1933), p. 119Google Scholar.

9. “By and large, these men and women were … inclined to believe that the American society was, in the final analysis, harmonious, and that such conflicts as did exist could be resolved.” This view was reinforced by the Progressives' faith in the “unlimited potentialities of science and administration” to find the best solution, behind which all citizens could unite (Link and McCormick, Progressivism, p. 116).

10. Following March, one can view an arena of social behavior as a sort of “garbage can” into which “various kinds of problems and solutions are dumped by participants as they are generated.” Sometimes the searcher will find something in the can which seems to offer a way to improve other social patterns; the new discovery might then become a solution to a “problem.” (For example, “a computer is not just a solution to a problem in payroll management, discovered when needed. It is an answer actively looking for a question.”) See March, James G. and others, Decisions and Organizations (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 294–323Google Scholar; the quotations are on 296–297. See also Kingdon, John W., Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), 89–94Google Scholar; also 181, where mass transit is described as a solution that is attached to various problems over time.

11. See Smith, Robert G., Ad Hoc Governments (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1974)Google Scholar, chapters 1, 2; Walsh, Annmarie H., The Public's Business (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978)Google Scholar, esp. chapters 2, 4; Sharkansky, Ira, Wither the State? Politics and Public Enterprise in Three Countries (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1979)Google Scholar, chapters 1–4.

12. See New York, New Jersey Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report with Comprehensive Plan and Recommendations (New York: The Commission, 1920), chapters 3, 5, 6; Grodinsky, Julius, Railroad Consolidation (New York: Appleton, 1930)Google Scholar, especially chapters 1, 2, 6.

13. Map no. 1 shows the waterways and major cities of the New York region, as well as the boundaries of the Port of New York District, within which the Port Authority operated.

14. Cohen was born in lower Manhattan in 1873, attended night law school, and became active in reform politics, serving for ten years (1904–1914) as chairman of the Legislative Committee of the Citizens Union. He was also counsel to the garment industry during these years; and when the workers struck in 1910, he and Louis Brandeis joined together to find a way to reduce management-worker conflict; their solution was a series of independent boards which would review labor issues “objectively” and propose cooperative solutions. The new system brought labor peace to the industry during the years 1910–1915, and it served as a partial model for the Port Authority. Cohen was also counsel to the New York State Chamber of Commerce, and when conflict on freight issues broke out between the two states in 1916–1917, he responded to a request from the Chamber's leaders, developed the concept of a port authority for the region, and then worked with business leaders and state officials to win approval for the new agency. See Cohen's, autobiography, They Builded Better Than They Knew (New York: Messner, 1946)Google Scholar, and Doig, J. W., Empire on the Hudson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, chapter 2.

15. The detailed story of the conflicts and negotiations in 1906–1921 which led to the creation of the Port Authority, and the plans developed by the study commission in 1918–1921, are described in Bard, Erwin W., The Port of New York Authority (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942)Google Scholar, chapter 1, and in Doig, Empire on the Hudson, chapters 2 and 3.

16. See Doig, Empire on the Hudson, chapter 3.

17. In the decade preceding 1921, the governorship had alternated between the two parties, and the 1920 election would probably have retained Democrat Alfred E. Smith in office, except for the Harding landslide, which gave Republican Nathan L. Miller the victory. Miller's two-year term would be the last for a Republican until 1940.

18. See map no. 2.

19. The Narrows Tunnel and related rail connections were part of a set of proposals by William J. Wilgus, who had served in the first years of the twentieth century as chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad and had been responsible for construction of Grand Central Terminal. See Konvitz, Josef W., “William J. Wilgus and Engineering Projects to Improve the Port of New York, 1900–1930,” Technology and Culture (1989): 398–425Google Scholar.

20. Hylan's background and behavior during these years are described in Derrick, Peter E., “The New York City Transit Crisis of 1918–1925” (Master's thesis, Columbia University, 06 1967), 25–31Google Scholar.

21. The Port Authority's aim, Hylan warned, was “to develop Hackensack Meadows and Newark Bay at the expense of the City of New York” (annual address of the mayor, January 2, 1922, reprinted in the New York Times, January 3, 1922).

22. On this New Jersey perspective, see, for example, New Jersey Harbor Commission, Fourth Preliminary Report (1914); New Jersey Board of Commerce and Navigation, Annual Report (1916, 1917); New York, New Jersey Port and Harbor Commission Joint Report (1920), pp. 52–59; Bard, Port of New York Authority, chapter 1.

23. The quotations are from the 1914 report (p. 28) of the New Jersey Harbor Commission, the first state agency to sketch out the plan described in this section.

24. In an effort to scuttle Hylan's Narrows Tunnel plan and to undercut his general argument that New York should resist cooperation with New Jersey, the New York Times — probably inadvertently—sketched out an important part of the argument for a “New Jersey plan”:

Compare, for example, the pictures and maps of the Port of Newark and the New York City port. It is plain that Newark has the railways in greater completeness than New York has the ships … Newark is a completer economic unit than the City, because Newark—the port, not the city—has better access to deep water than New York City has to the railways across the Hudson, (editorial, January 3, 1922)

25. The ICC analysis of the region's transport problems is found in its opinion in the New York Harbor Case (47 ICC 643ff.). In its campaign to gain support in New York for the Port Authority's own proposals, the New York Chamber of Commerce also warned that the ICC might support New Jersey's cause:

Without a comprehensive joint development of the Port, New Jersey is likely to secure a preference in railroad rates. It is thought by many authorities that should New Jersey proceed alone in developing her portion of the harbor New York would not be successful [in keeping New Jersey from obtaining lower rail rates]… If the Port Authority plan does not succeed, there is every reason to believe that some day the New Jersey cities will be able to secure a differential … [placing New York] at a serious economic disadvantage. (Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, “The Plan of the Port Authority of New York [ sic] for Future Port Development,” January 1922, p. 7; emphasis added)

26. Another major advantage of Newark and Elizabeth marine terminals is the availability of extensive space near the piers, where freight can be marshaled for loading and be stored temporarily. With the advent of containers in the 1960s, large amounts of such “upland” space became a crucial advantage, and docks—such as those of Manhattan and Brooklyn— which were hemmed in by highways and buildings could not compete for containerized traffic.

27. The main candidates for developing marine terminals were Newark and Elizabeth, on Newark Bay, and Bayonne, Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, and West New York, all communities in Hudson County which had already constructed some piers along the Hudson River. (See map no. 1.)

28. The Port Authority had to consider the interests of the whole port, as well as the relations of each part. It had to … project larger plans for future development as far ahead as the process of reasoning could foresee, so that each part of the port in the development of its local projects and its growth might properly coordinate them with the whole. (Port of New York Authority, Report with Plan for the Comprehensive Development of the Port of New York, December 21, 1921, p. 14)

29. Port Authority, Report with Plan …, 1921, p. 11.

30. See map no. 2.

31. Indeed, to some staff members deeply involved in thinking about freight problems and about the great inefficiencies of the railroad system, the Comprehensive Plan would continue as a live possibility—and the only way to obtain a modern, efficient transport system for the nation's largest port—throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. (See Bard, Port of New York Authority, p. 350; author's interview with Roger H. Gilman, January 20, 1988.)

32. The Development Commission had examined the issue of whether a bridge or tunnel across the Hudson could be justified as a way to bring freight into Manhattan by motor truck, and decided in the negative. The commission “has analyzed the highest [possible] development of motor-truck service,” its final report concluded, and “we have seen that the existing Jerries, without either bridge or vehicular tunnel, could handle the entire Manhattan tonnage” (New York, New Jersey Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report …, 1920, p. 243).

33. See Outerbridge, E. H., chairman of the Port Authority, “The Hudson River Bridge and Highway Development,” 12 8, 1921Google Scholar.

34. Generally called freight classification yards or break-up yards.

35. The entire system of lines is described in the Port Authority's Report with Plan …, December 21, 1921, pp. 27–32.

36. See ibid., pp. 20–21, 33–35. The entire system would handle outward bound freight as well, of course.

37. The Port Authority contrasted its plan with the development efforts of the past, when “scientific knowledge” was often “not applied to the development of these natural resources.” Ibid., p. 13.

38. Ibid., pp. 20–21. Although the Port Authority announced its plan in December 1921, only eight months after it had been created, all the proposals had their roots in the ideas sketched out by the Port Authority's predecessor study commission in its report of December 1920. Since the new agency's personnel were mainly drawn from the study commission, and since the Authority was required to send a plan to the legislatures by early 1922, that result should not be surprising. The earlier commission had devoted three years to studies of the Narrows tunnel, the option of a gigantic bridge to bring railroad trains over the Hudson into Midtown Manhattan, and a range of other alternatives.

39. New York Times, editorial, January 1, 1922.

40. Port of New York Authority, Report with Plan …, December 21, 1921, p. 22.

41. Under Article VI of the 1921 compact, the Port Authority was given “full power and authority to purchase, construct, lease and/or operate any terminal or transportation facility” within the Port District, to levy charges for use of its properties, and to borrow money and issue bonds, secured by its properties. However, the second paragraph of this article states that “the powers granted in this article shall not be exercised by the port authority until the legislatures of both states shall have approved of a comprehensive plan for the development of the port.” A deadline of January 1, 1922 for submitting the Comprehensive Plan was set by separate legislation passed in April 1921 (Laws of N.J., chapter 152; Laws of N.Y., chapter 203).

42. The Port Authority created an advisory committee of business and civic associations, identified 114 organizations from all parts of the region which should be included on the committee, and held several meetings with the entire committee and separate meetings with groups of New Jersey associations. As Bard comments, “for the most part the suggestions that were received in these meetings concerned the extension of belt lines to reach particular localities. The New Jersey groups emphasized the development of Newark Bay and the Long Island groups urged the development of Jamaica Bay.” The port agency listened to their demands and generally responded by “accepting their proposals.” By the end of the process of consultation, “a belt line had been drawn wherever one was demanded” (Bard, , The Port of New York Authority, 1942, pp. 48–49)Google Scholar.

43. The Authority's proposals were endorsed by the Brooklyn Eagle (December 19, 1921) and the Brooklyn Times (December 30, 1921) and by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce (which, however, said it preferred the Narrows Tunnel for the belt-line connections from New Jersey to Brooklyn). The Brooklyn Times commented that “the problem is much larger than any rivalry between Jamaica Bay and Newark Bay” and requires “the best thought of the community,” which had now “succeeded in building up a plan.” “The initiative lies with the Port Authority,” the Brooklyn paper concluded; “the immediate duty is to support the plans of that Authority” (editorial, December 30, 1921).

44. And permitted the New York Times, in endorsing the Port Authority's plans, to unfurl the banner of “national service”:

The problem from a national point of view is to bring together the rail and steamship terminals in such a manner as to serve most economically and efficiently both the land and water carriers and the nation's largest market. No plan designed to serve particularly any borough or any city can compare with that national service, (editorial, December 1, 1921)

45. These negotiations are described in Cohen, Julius Henry, “Developing Port Facilities by Interstate Compact and Agencies,” 08 30, 1921, pp. 12, 14—15Google Scholar; Cohen, , “Developing the Port of New York,” 12 6, 1922, pp. 11–12Google Scholar (both in Port Authority library); and Bard, The Port of New York Authority, pp. 44–45.

46. Edwards's veto in the spring of 1921 had been overridden by the Republican dominated legislature. However, when he reviewed the Comprehensive Plan in early 1922, Edwards commented:

While I opposed the creation of this body, believing that the interest of New Jersey lay in working out alone the development of its resources, it is my personal opinion, from an examination of the report and plan, that the Commissioners of the Port have dealt justly by this State and that the plan should be approved. (New York Times, January 11, 1922)

47. The Chamber of Commerce of the state of New York produced a document early in 1922 that listed twenty major business and civic groups from New York City which endorsed the plan, and another twenty from other parts of the state; the pamphlet also reprinted a sample of newspaper editorials in support of the project. (“The Plan of the Port Authority of New York for Future Port Development,” January 1922)

48. “The existence of this Port Authority,” Hylan argued, “again demonstrates the danger of having Albany create boards, commissions and bodies not responsible to the people … The responsible municipal officials cannot plan and execute constructive measures in the interests of the people if the policy of legislative obstruction is to be continued. “The mayor also noted his concern that the bistate agency would develop New Jersey's waterfront “at the expense of the City of New York” (New York Times, January 3, 1922).

The issue of democracy was also pressed by other city officials, as they fought against the Port Authority and its proposals. Murray Hulbert, president of the Board of Aldermen (and once a member of the bistate study commission), doubted that “three men over in New Jersey sitting with three men in New York” should decide the destinies of New York communities; far better “to have it done by the eight members of the Board of Estimate, who are elected by and are responsible to the people of the City of New York.” The city's corporation counsel, John P. O'Brien, saw the Port Authority as a “great octopus” whose tentacles would be cast around “the property rights and the liberties” of local citizens; and he urged that the city government be given a veto power over the Comprehensive Plan, as well as the right to name two of New York State's three commissioners on the Port Authority board (Board of Estimate of New York City, Public Hearing, January 26, 1922, pp. 17 and 119–120).

49. The New York Times, for example, favored giving the city government the power to name commissioners to the Port Authority. But it argued that the city should be given that role only when it becomes clear that the City Administration has given up its hostility to the Port Authority plan …, when it has shown willingness to cooperate cordially, and when it can be trusted to appoint Commissioners for their ability, integrity and competence, and not for their political value or in the mere hope of patronage. (Editorial, February 3, 1922)

See also the observations of Governor Miller, Nathan L. on the city's “destructive” approach (message to the legislature, recommending approval of the Comprehensive Plan, 01 16, 1922)Google Scholar, and the comments in Bard, PortofNew York Authority, p. 61, and in Cohen, Julius Henry, They Bmlded Better Than They Knew, 1946, pp. 292–293Google Scholar.

50. The headlines in the New York Times capture the spirit of the occasion. Smith spoke at a hearing on January 31, and the February 1 headlines read: “Ex-Gov. Smith Lauds Port Project Bill; Rejects Hylan Plan/His Break with Tammany”. On Sunday, February 12, the Times carried a special feature story under the following heading: “‘Al’ Smith's Triumph: His Speech on Port Authority Analyzed by an Engineer Who Heard It—An Event in Politics.” The quality of his analysis as well as his sharp rejection of the “Tammany Plan” arrested press and political attention. (See also Cohen, 1946, pp. 296–297.)

51. Hays distinguished between “two competing systems in America” during the Progressive era—one a “spirit of science and technology, of rational system and organization,” which sought to ensure that public programs were shaped by “cosmopolitan considerations” and technical expertise; the other, drawing on “grass-roots impulses,” encouraged a host of alternatives to be debated without allowing “complex and esoteric facts … to dominate” the political process. Hays, Samuel P., Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (New York: Atheneum, 1969), viiGoogle Scholar. The Port Authority embraced the first of these two political systems with enthusiasm; however, as we will see below, it resisted the implication that “cosmopolitan” meant centralized, national controls, as it championed a regional vision of economic and political cooperation shaped by technical studies.

52. For a spirited argument from this perspective, see Cohen, Julius Henry, “The New York Harbor Problem and Its Legal Aspects,” Cornell Law Quarterly V (05 1920): 373–408Google Scholar.

53. For example, Erwin Bard writes that “within the Port Authority the center of gravity began shifting to vehicular traffic … Hopes for railroad cooperation were fading; the attempt to use coercive pressure was gaining no ground. Negotiations for the Hoboken Shore Line collapsed early in 1926. The ‘do-something’ policy in terms of construction was rising. It was imperative that the Port Authority's credit … be established. The bridge-building program offered a chance” (Bard, Port of New York Authority, p. 185).

Carl Condit, in his extensive analysis of the region's rail and terminal system, puts it this way: “The potentially powerful Port Authority, however, was easily discouraged … The commissioners quickly lost interest in the railroads and turned to the construction of transharbor arteries for automotive vehicles” (Condit, , The Port of New York, Vol. 2 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981], 131,133)Google Scholar.

And Herbert Kaufman: “I always cite the Port Authority as a classic case (the other being the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) of switching proclaimed missions in the interest of organizational survival, the paramount value. It went from promoting the unification of rail service in the port to a host of activities that helped diminish use of the railroads. The change might have occurred anyway, but that's beside the point; the Authority changed sides to protect its own existence. Most organizations would do the same” (Kaufman, letter to the author, October 5, 1990).

54. At a meeting in Albany in 1919, Cohen contrasted the Holland Tunnel project to the Comprehensive Plan in this way: the first was a question of providing “one trouser button and buttonhole,” while the Plan was “an order for a whole new suit of clothes” (Cohen, 1946, p. 261). On this analogy, the 179th Street Bridge would provide a second button and buttonhole, while the set of three Staten Island crossings might offer an equally modest alteration in the region's clothing.

55. “Pollution cannot well be prevented or regulated by the independent action of forty municipalities … The Commission … believes the Port Authority should be vested with jurisdiction over all forms of harbor pollution” (New York, New Jersey Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report …, 1920, p. 34).

56. See Authority, Port, Annual Report, 01 19, 1924, pp. 21–22, 43–49Google Scholar. It might be thought that this was merely a political stratagem at the Port agency, reducing the prospect that it might be criticized for wandering beyond the boundaries of the Comprehensive Plan. However, that ploy could hardly be expected to mollify a critic, since a quick look at the map of the Comprehensive Plan would show a potential opponent that the plan does not include water crossings where the vehicular bridges under discussion—the George Washington, and three Staten Island spans—would be built.

Indeed, most of the outside interests advocating new bridges and tunnels, and action by the Port Authority to build them, focused their attention on the needs of automobiles; trucks, with their freight traffic plausibly connected with the goals of the Comprehensive Plan, were secondary. These advocates viewed the port agency as the proper target of pressure because it had been created to aid in interstate transport planning broadly, and it had been given the power to issue bonds for such projects and pay for them out of tolls. Only within the port agency was the railroad-oriented Comprehensive Plan treated as the standard against which its various activities should be measured.

57. Section 4 of the Comprehensive Plan reads as follows: 4. Manhattan service. The island of Manhattan to be connected with New Jersey by bridge or tunnel, or both, and freight destined to and from Manhattan to be carried underground, so far as practicable, by such system, automatic electric as hereinafter described or otherwise, as will furnish the most expeditious, economical and practical transportation of freight, especially meat, produce, milk and other commodities comprising the daily needs of the people.

The section then turns to the need for “suitable markets” and warehouses, and for connections of “the said system” to “all the transcontinental railroads.”

The reference to section 4 occurs in the two Staten Island bills, approved by both legislatures in 1924, and in the George Washington statute, passed early in 1925. The 1926 bill authorizing the Bayonne Bridge cites the Comprehensive Plan but is silent on the relevance of section 4.

58. Cohen, J. H., “Accomplishments and Plans of the Port of New York Authority,” address before the American Association of Port Authorities, 10 6, 1927, p. 7Google Scholar (Port Authority library).

59. See Cohen, , 1920, and Port Authority, Annual Report, 1924Google Scholar.

60. See, for example, Ripley, William Z., Mam Street and Wall Street (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927)Google Scholar, chapters 8, 9; Locklin, D. Philip, Economics of Transportation (Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1966), 228Google Scholar.

61. “About 100,000 carfloat barges bearing a million cars a year are floated across in both directions in this duplicated service, which uses 28 piers on the North River [Hudson River], 12 on the East River, and 6 stations on the Harlem River” (Port Authority, Annual Report, January 24, 1925, p. 16).

62. See, for example, MacElwee, Roy S., Port and Terminal Facilities (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1918), 4, 89–96Google Scholar, and , MacElwee, Port Development (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1925)Google ScholarPubMed, chapters 14, 15. I am indebted to Josef W. Konvitz for directing my attention to these important volumes.

63. “In the past, provisions for the terminal handling of this vast commerce have been developed as the pressure of necessity and the expediency of the moment required … When terminal facilities at one point became saturated … new and additional points for terminals had to be sought … at high cost, and without relation or coordination with other units” (Port of New York Authority, Report with Plan …, December 21, 1921, p. 10).

Two years later, the Port Authority spoke more sharply: “The transportation systems of this country … have been built up upon the theory of individualistic control, development and advantage. The executives and managers have reached their positions after years of service, in which they have become imbued with that theory … They are primarily employed and appointed to devote their ability first to the promotion of the particular and private interest of the corporation which they serve” (Port of New York Authority, Annual Report, January 19, 1924, p. 38).

64. See, for example, the concluding comments in its third annual report: “It is only in recent years that it has come to be recognized that the transportation systems of the country are public highways, and that the public interest must predominate in the principles which govern their policies and operation” (Port Authority, Annual Report, January 19, 1924, p. 38).

As the discussion above suggests, the perspective on efficiency employed by Port Authority planners differed significantly from the concept of market efficiency generally used by economists (e.g., Keeler, Theodore E., Railroads, Freight, and Public Policy [Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1983])Google Scholar.

65. Croly, Herbert, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 359, 362Google Scholar.

66. Port of New York Authority, Report with Plan … December 21, 1921, p. 22; emphasis added.

67. For a rich description of the attitudes and behavior of rail officials in this period, see Grodinsky, , Railroad Consolidation, 1930, pp. 19–21, 40–42, 48–55, 75ff., and 133ffGoogle Scholar. See also Herring, Pendleton, Public Administration and the Public Interest (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936)Google Scholar, chapters 11, 12; Bard, 1942, p. 71. The railroads' aversion to cooperative etforts continued, largely unaltered, throughout the Great Depression and beyond; see Latham, Earl, The Politics of Railroad Coordination, 1933–1936 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), 12, 84–86, 258CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Locklin, , Economics of Transportation, 1966, 226–249Google Scholar; and the author's interviews with Jervis Langdon, railroad official from 1927 until the 1980s (October and December, 1991).

68. Proposals for a railroad bridge from New Jersey to 23rd Street in Manhattan had been actively urged on the railroads in the late nineteenth century, and similar proposals (generally for a railroad bridge terminating at 57th Street) had been pressed upon the rail lines intermittently in the first decades of this century. The Pennsylvania was an advocate of that joint effort until about 1905; finally, discouraged by the weak prospects for agreement, it built its own tunnel under the Hudson to a new terminal at 33rd Street.

69. The ICC decision cited the inefficiencies of freight movement in the New York region, noted that since much of the nation's international trade flowed through New York these inefficiencies might place an “unjustifiable burden upon the people of the whole country,” and warned that the ICC might in time require lower rates on the New Jersey side of the harbor if regional leaders did not find an alternative way to improve freight handling in the bistate area (47 ICC 643ff.).

70. Railroads across the nation had long resisted sharing their individual facilities, and until the 1920 Transportation Act, the ICC had no authority to compel cooperative use of terminals in order to improve service to shippers or promote efficiency. The 1920 Act added a new paragraph which appeared to strengthen ICC powers: If the Commission finds it to be in the public interest and to be practicable, without substantially impairing the ability of a carrier owning … terminal facilities to handle its own business, it shall have the power to require the use of any such terminal facilities, including main-line track or tracks for a reasonable distance outside of such terminal, by another carrier or other carriers“ (sec. 3, para. [4]; emphasis added).

71. For the “cat and mouse” image of these years, I am indebted to Samuel Moerman, who observed the Port Authority's efforts from the late 1920s onward, and who was actively involved, as a lawyer in Washington, in Port Authority and railroad matters from the 1930s into the 1980s (interview by the author, October 29, 1990). I am not sure that the image captures the complex power relationships in the early 1920s, however; as the text below suggests, the Port Authority may for a few years have had the potential to control the railroad cat, but the cat adroitly evaded that threat until it was no more.

For a much more detailed treatment of the Port Authority's railroad negotiations, see Bard, Port of New York Authority, pp. 63–173. Large parts of his careful analysis are organized in terms of individual rail projects, as each evolved through several years (Belt Line 13; the Hell Gate case; the effort to acquire the Hoboken Railroad; etc.); this has the advantage of providing an extensive review of developments in each area. This benefit is purchased at some cost, however, for the reader obtains little sense of the pressures of time under which many distinct issues and negotiations were being pursued simultaneously by Cohen and his colleagues. The discussion below is organized so as to provide some sense of these pressures and complexities as they were experienced by the participants. This mode of presentation will throw into doubt the standard interpretation of the Port Authority's evolution—an interpretation constructed around the argument that the Port Authority realized by the mid-1920s that its railroad plans were doomed to failure, and that it then abandoned them to embrace the lucrative field of automotive transportation.

72. In early December 1921, the railroads had indicated that they were willing to join the Port Authority in pursuing its stated principles for port development—that “terminal operations … should be unified,” that efforts at coordination should “adapt existing facilities as integral parts of the new system,” and that “duplication of effort” should be eliminated. However, before the rail executives finally accepted those principles, they insisted that the Port Authority preface them all with the condition, “ so far as economically practicable”; and in mid-December the Port Authority agreed to do so (Port Authority, Report with Plan …, December 21, 1921, pp. 11–12).

During the 1922 negotiations, the railroads argued that the port agency's plans would involve large and unnecessary capital expenditures and would reduce management discretion in seeking the best profit position for each railroad. Therefore, the standard of economic practicality would presumably be violated! (See Bard, Port of New York Authority, pp. 63–66 for a summary of these negotiations.)

73. Ibid., p. 66.

74. See Cohen, J. H., “Developing the Port of New York,” 12 6, 1922, p. 8Google Scholar (Port Authority library).

75. Port Authority, Minutes, November 8, 1922.

76. On November 23, 1922, for example, Commissioner De Witt Van Buskirk spoke to business leaders in Jersey City on the need to move quickly on unification of freight handling, despite rail lines' resistance. “It is hoped that the railroads may see the light of day,” the commissioner argued; “if not, steps must be taken to impress upon them more emphatically” the need for action. In early December, Commissioner Alfred E. Smith spoke in Manhattan on the “absolute lack of co-operation on the part of the railroads” and argued that the force of the ICC might have to be used to carry out the Plan (“Says Roads Block Port Unification,” New York Times, November 24, 1922; “Insists City Share in Port Authority … Lays Delay to Railroads,” New York Times, December 9, 1922).

77. Each railroad, the Authority's staff argued, published rates for “circuitous routings which would give each the longest practicable haul on their own lines … In some cases cars traveled 187.5 miles instead of … 42.5 miles [via a direct route], consuming five days en route; other shipments traveled 115 miles instead of … eight miles, four days being consumed en route.” (The quotations are from the Port Authority's summary of staff testimony, included in its Annual Report, January 19, 1924, p. 14.)

78. The railroad quotations are from the ICC stenographers' minutes, as quoted in Bard, Port of New York Authority, pp. 71–72.

79. Cohen also developed a brief in connection with a separate ICC hearing, in opposition to a proposal by the New York Central that it be given control over a small railroad which had been used by several major railroads in the region; it seemed clear that the ICC should block the proposal, Cohen argued, for that merger would weaken the likelihood of a unified rail system in the New York region.

80. In Hastings, the ICC considered a request from business groups in Minnesota that it compel the Burlington and Milwaukee railroads to cooperate in order to provide more efficient terminal services for local shippers. The Commission reviewed its new powers under the 1920 Act and concluded that “we may require the use of such terminal facilities by another carrier… under the conditions described in the act” (Hastings Commercial Club v. C, M & St. Paul Ry. Co. 69 ICC 489 at 496 [1922]). On the 1920 act, the traditional problem of joint terminal use, and the Hastings case, see Sharfman, I. L., The Interstate Commerce Commission, Part 3, Vol. A (The Commonwealth Fund, 1935), 411–430Google Scholar.

81. The summary and the quoted railroad statement are found in the Port Authority's Annual Report, January 19, 1924, pp. 15–16; see also pp. 6–7 and Bard, 1942, pp. 72–73.

82. See Port Authority, Annual Report, January 1924, pp. 18–21. The estimated total for lighters and towed barges was more than 2,000 per day, with many of the vessels carrying well under full capacity.

83. These inland terminals would be huge centers where freight from all railroads could be received and then sorted by area of destination within Manhattan. The sorted freight could then be packed efficiently on trucks bound for specific locations, thus reducing the crosscutting paths and half-full trucks that spread out from individual railroad piers and terminals. The 1923 activities are described in ibid., pp. 18, 47.

84. See ibid., pp. 35–36.

85. Ibid., p. 38.

86. Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 15, 1926, p. 9Google Scholar.

87. See ibid., pp. 23–26.

88. Ibid., pp. 9–12. Progress in these three areas is also discussed in the Annual Report of January 1925, pp. 6–7, 11–23.

89. The key provisions are found in the Laws of New York, 1922, Chapter 43 (Comprehensive Plan Act), as amended by Laws of New York, 1924, Chapter 623 (Subpoena Power), Sections 16 and 17. For discussion, see Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 1925, pp. 43–44Google Scholar; Bard, Port of Xew 1 'ork Authority, pp. 74–76.

90. The Hell Gate spanned the East River, bringing railroad tracks from New England and the north onto Long Island. Because the New York Central could not use the Hell Gate crossing, it brought its Long Island-bound freight down on its Albany-to-Manhattan tracks and transferred the freight cars at its 68th Street yard to car floats in the Hudson River; the cars were then floated around Manhattan to the East River, where they landed at Long Island City. Compounding this circuitous passage, the Queens Chamber argued, shipments into and from the Island were further delayed by congestion at Long Island City piers. See Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 1925, pp. 13–15Google Scholar.

91. Cohen filed the complaint with the ICC in March and the state complaint in early December 1925. Under the Subpoena Act, the Port Authority could instead have issued an order, forcing joint use of the Hell Gate. But it was not certain whether the courts would uphold that act until New Jersey had passed concurring legislation, which was still pending in 1925. On the Hell Gate case in 1924–1925, see Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 1925, pp. 13–15Google Scholar, and January 1926, pp. 27–29; and Bard, Port of New York Authority, pp. 78–84.

92. The Hoboken line was only 1.2 miles long, but it was an important element in Belt 13, since it connected directly with the Hoboken piers, where consolidated lighterage would be established under the Port Authority's plans. These various developments are summarized in the Port Authority's Annual Report, 01 19, 1924, pp. 14–16, 25–32Google Scholar, and Bard, 1942, pp. 68–71, 140–144. On the debate regarding whether the agency should buy the Hoboken line, see the Port Authority's Minutes, October 24, 1923.

93. As the Port Authority reported at the beginning of 1926, “While some of the details await completion the principal features of the transaction have been settled” (Annual Report, January 1926, p. 7). For details on the evolution of the Hoboken case, see Bard, Port of New York Authority, pp. 143–154.

94. The agency's considered position on this issue was set forth in a formal statement at the end of 1921 by Chairman Eugenius H. Outerbridge. In explaining why the Port Authority was not including recommendations regarding vehicular traffic in its Comprehensive Plan, the chairman noted that the port agency had been “directed to prepare and present to the Legislatures of the two States a comprehensive Bi-State plan for freight movements.” It had “neither the time nor the means” to study “vehicular and [rail] passenger transportation and these were outside the scope of its functions as defined in the legislation.“ Outer-bridge then referred to state policy which placed ”construction of vehicular tunnels“ in the hands of the joint commissions then working on the Holland Tunnel. He also conjectured that in time a vehicular bridge over the Hudson would be built, which—following the precedent of the East River spans—would become a “free passageway” (Outerbridge, “The Hudson River Bridge and Highway Development,” December 8, 1921, Port Authority library).

95. New York Times, August 8, 1923.

96. Smith, Alfred E., Annual Message 01 1924Google Scholar; Silzer, George S., Annual Message to the Legislature, 01 1924Google Scholar.

97. The limited attention which Cohen and his colleagues devoted to the Staten Island bridge legislation is suggested by the text of that law, which justifies the bridges as needed in order to improve freight service to Manhattan, under Section 4 of the Comprehensive Plan. See Note 57 above.

98. The letter, which has the stylistic markings of a J.H. Cohen legal brief, quotes at length from the Comprehensive Plan's discussion of railroad freight bridges and tunnels, and then jumps to this conclusion:

It undoubtedly was the intention of the legislatures, as well as Congress, that the planning and developing of interstate bridges and tunnels dealing with freight movement by rail or by vehicle should be pursuant to a definite and well knit plan, under the supervision and direction of a single coordinating agency representing the two States” (E. H. Outer-bridge, letter to governors Alfred E. Smith and George S. Silzer, March 9, 1923, pp. 2–3; emphasis added [Port Authority commissioners' files]).

99. Alfred E. Smith, veto message of May 30, 1923; George S. Silzer, veto message of March 22, 1923 (both in Sizler files, New Jersey State Archives).

100. The summary and quotations are from the Port Authority Minutes, November 21, 1923. Silzer's urging, that bridges be included in the forthcoming hearing, was motivated by his interest in being associated with a major step in stimulating economic development in northern New Jersey and by his evolving alliance with an engineer, Othmar Ammann, who was strongly interested in building a Hudson River bridge. See Doig, J. W., “Expertise, Politics, and Technological Change,” Journal of the American Planning Association 59 (Winter 1993): 36–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101. The Port Authority's discussion of the December 5 hearing and related observations are included in its “Report on Vehicular Tunnels and Bridges,” December 21, 1923, which is published as an appendix in the agency's January 1924 Annual Report, pp. 43–49.

102. The campaign for the Hudson River crossing is described in Doig, J. W., “Politics and the Engineering Mind: O. H. Ammann and the Hidden Story of the George Washington Bridge,” Yearbook of German-American Studies 25 (1990): 151–199Google Scholar.

103. See Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 1926, pp. 5–29Google Scholar.

104. Ibid., p. 41.

105. The main obstacle was the War Department's demand, early in 1926, that the Port Authority assume all prior and contingent liabilities of the Hoboken Railroad. The uncertain-ties and potential cost implications of accepting this demand would have made it difficult to predict that the line would break even financially. The Port Authority had planned to purchase the railroad from the War Department by selling bonds (it had no other source of funds in those years); since bonds could only be sold on the assurance that the railroad's future income would be adequate to repay the bondholders, the War Department's position essentially blocked the purchase. A review of the earlier negotiations suggests that the department was never interested in selling the railroad to this public agency; in 1922–1925 one obstacle after another had been placed in the Port Authority's path. See the Port Authority's annual reports for 1922–1926, and Port of New York Authority, Special Report in Matter of Acquiring Hoboken Manufacturers' Railroad Company from War Department, March 4, 1926 (Box 130H, files of Governor A. Harry Moore, New Jersey Archives, Trenton).

106. At the end of 1924, for example, the Authority appeared confident that unified, efficient service would be established throughout Belt Line 13 “early in 1925,” and its annual report included six full-page photographs and two fold-out charts showing the changes in physical layout and in freight rates that were underway or in the offing. (See Port Authority, Annual Report, January 1925, pp. 6, 9–11.) A year later, the Port Authority noted that the plan for a neutral director, who would be “in full charge” and with power to control movement of freight throughout the system, “has not yet been put in force”; even so, the agency concluded optimistically, physical improvements along the line were providing “increasingly valuable service to shippers” Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 1926, p. 8)Google Scholar.

107. For a summary discussion of the rise and fall of Belt Line 13, see Bard, Port of New York Authority pp. 63–74.

108. The tone and substance of the Port Authority's conclusions can be suggested by a few excerpts: “Each railroad in the port owns and operates its fleet without reference to the marine facilities … of any other carrier. There has been no coordination of effort … The system naturally produces duplication of effort and interference which … can largely be eliminated.” Noting that the railroads were operating 1,700 barges, tugs, and other watercraft, the Authority concluded that by “coordinating operations to a degree, the railroads will be able to give a better service and at the same time save several millions of dollars yearly.” (The quotations are taken from Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 1927, p. 15Google Scholar; diagrams of consolidated towing methods and tables of possible savings are included with the report.)

109. In the words of the president of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, who issued a statement on behalf of the railroad executives:

To consolidate the harbor service of the New York railroads and to eliminate the competition which now exists among them as they strive to meet the demands of their patrons would serve … to eliminate in every way the human element which plays an important part in their present efficiency … If anything is done to eliminate competition, service is likewise going to suffer” (“Statement on Pooling Railroad Marine Equipment …,” April 27, 1927, as quoted in Bard, 1942, p. 108; emphasis added). 110. The ICC opinion continued, in words that could easily have been written by Julius Henry Cohen: “Where it [Congress] had formerly safeguarded the carrier in the exclusive use of its terminals, it now recognized that there is a broader interest than that of the individual carrier …, that of the public. The object of the statute was to make more flexible the use of existing terminal facilities” (Hastings Commercial Club v. C. M.&St.P.Ry.Co., 69 ICC 489 [1922], as quoted in Sharfman, 1935, Part Three, p. 415). See also note 80 above.

111. In 1922, the ICC majority had concluded that the Milwaukee Railroad should be required to share its terminal facilities with the Burlington, a competing rail line, for a reasonable charge. The two lines had not reached agreement on the charge by 1926, when the commission reversed its position and concluded that it did not interpret such sharing as necessary under the 1920 act. Four of the twelve ICC members dissented, arguing that “the public interest requires the fullest utilization of existing terminal facilities”—which had once been the majority view. See 107 ICC 208 (1926), discussed in Sharfman, 1935, Vol. 3, pp. 416–417.

112. Brief of Julius Henry Cohen, before the ICC, May 16, 1927, as quoted in the Port Authority, Annual Report, 01 1928, pp. 40–41Google Scholar.

113. See review of the decision in Port Authority, Annual Report, 02 1929, pp. 30–31Google Scholar, and the thoughtful analysis of the arguments presented in the hearings and the ICC decision, in Bard, Port of New York Authority, pp. 84–92.

114. For overseas markets, shippers could, of course, send their goods through Philadelphia, Baltimore, or other ports, where rail-to-ship transfer was more efficient and less costly; indeed, the Pennsylvania and B&O railroads encouraged shippers to use those ports, since that would increase their own traffic. However, ships departed from and arrived at New York piers far more frequently than they did at any other American port, and that time advantage tended to compensate for the intraport inefficiencies. Also, the New York region was the largest metropolitan area in the country, so the railroads served a gigantic market that could not be shifted to other regions.

The vitality and future profitability of the railroads, both in the New York region and nationally, were widely endorsed in these years before the crash of 1929. As one leading scholar commented: “Is there not an encouraging outlook for the railroads ahead? It has never been so bright as it is now in 1927 …” (Ripley, Main Street and Wall Street, p. 254).

115. Port Authority, Annual Report for 1928, 02 1929, p. 13Google Scholar.

116. The Port Authority's leaders had met with the railroad executives in the summer of 1928, the agency reported a few months later, and had reached agreement that “the wise policy of the immediate future was to concentrate on a particular project and to defer consideration of other projects involving railroad cooperation until a determination of economic practicality should have been reached” (Port Authority, Annual Report for 1928, p. 13). As other parts of that report make clear, the railroads would be the judges of whether any of these projects were economically justified.

117. The planned total was reduced from nine to three terminals in 1929. The terminal at Eighth Avenue was opened in October 1932. The railroads' attitude toward this project was assessed by Erwin Bard after ten years of operation:

The railroads agreed to promote the use of Union Inland Station. The record indicates very strongly that they have not lived up to their agreement … It appears that wherever it lay within their discretion they have hindered its fullest use. With [few] exceptions the railroads have not chosen to truck freight direct from break-bulk stations in New Jersey to Union Inland, but have preferred to continue to pass Union Inland freight through their regular pier stations” (Bard, Port of New York Authority, p. 122; and see pp. 123–128 for his detailed analysis of the railroads' actions).

Later studies would raise doubts that the Port Authority's proposed terminal scheme was a meritorious idea, either in the thriving economy of the 1920s or in later decades; see the analysis by O'Hara, Clifford B. (“Union Inland Freight Terminal #1, ” 11 1991Google Scholar, and letters to the author, March 16 and July 8, 1993).

118. See Port Authority, Annual report, 03 1930, p. 36Google Scholar, and Annual Report, February 1931, p. 31.

119. Dyson, Freeman, Infinite in All Directions (New York: Harper Row, 1988), p. 181Google Scholar. In relation to the Port Authority's ideas, however, the obstacle was, perhaps, the structure of American values as much as it was the behavior of an old technology. As Carl Condit points out, the railroads “shared in the national phobia about comprehensive planning” (The Port of New York, Vol. 2, p. 121). The ICC also lent a helping hand, in its efforts before the 1920s, and since; as Pendleton Herring comments: “Under the sheltering arm of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the railroads and the shippers have both found protection from the harsh impact of laissez faire” (Public Administration and the Public Interest, p. 210). And while the railroads dozed under that sheltering arm, the truckers spread their wares.

120. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address delivered at the Dedication of the George Washington Bridge, October 24, 1931.

121. See Smith, Ad Hoc Governments, chapters 1, 2; Walsh, The Public's Business, chapters 2, 4; Sharkansky, Wither the State? Mitchell, Jerry, ed., Public Authorities and Public Policy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992)Google Scholar.