Katherine Rodriguez

Katherine Rodriguez

Baruch College

Winter 2016

Wagner Speech 1961

Robert Ferdinand Wagner was the 102nd Mayor of New York City. He served his term from 1954-1965. Wagner lived from 1910-1991. He was the son of a famous U.S. Senator, so he grew up in the political eye. Wagner served as a lifelong Democrat and was elected to the Assembly, where he served three terms. He served in the Army during World War II and soon after entered the political field in Manhattan. One of his most memorable speeches remarked his desire for a government of the people, “"government dedicated to the best interest of all people" and extolled the virtue of public service as "among the most noble challenges and among the greatest responsibilities." The following notes provide a synopsis and in depth study of Wagner’s 1961 speech.

Wagner started off his speech with the message that got him elected his first term and continued to reiterate this message throughout the rest of his term. This message is the desire for a better government. Wagner then begins to express all the positive chances the year brought about for New York City. The middle-income segment is growing, private enterprises have been sustained, there have been a high level of investment in new buildings, and retail sales have been strong. From there, Wagner addresses the specifics of each of these positive changes.

His first component, a middle-income city, involved the appraisal of New York City as the only city where the middle- and upper-income groups are larger than the poor-income group. Construction went on to describe the changes and expansion of city projects. The Business of Government described the various employment sectors within the city, the budget, and described the city’s finances as being “safe.” The following component hit on city-state relations where he expressed his long- and short-term goals about the city’s improvement and connection with the state government. Charter revision would allow public hearings to take place where citizens would be able to express their viewpoints and submit suggestions.

As I continued to read the speech, I found it interesting how Wagner had a specific section for ethics in government. He was able to speak about himself as the mayor and how he believes he has ethically run the city. He went on to express his desire to lead a clean mayoral term, how he will not tolerate the slightest corruption. In fact, it is at this point where the speech takes a more personal tone. Prior to this point in the speech, Wagner maintained a straightforward and very monotone speech. He listed the occurrences in the past year with no feeling or emotion. Yet, the tone slightly changed when he began to discuss ethics in government. His tone became defensive.

The speech progresses to the topic of information services, Wagner explains the importance of the people knowing what their government is doing at all times and the government must be open to knew ideas. I found this component of the speech to be the most outstanding. It is very rare when we hear a political figure talk about the importance of good practice, “One of the basic requirements of good municipal operation is the identification of the people with their government. From the beginning, this administration has not only shown willingness to listen to the suggestions of community groups concerning matters of policy and practice, but has actively solicited the aid of these groups.” That part of his speech demonstrates the ethos of Wagner, how he was a man of the people, and further resonated with his overall mission.

As the speech continued, Wagner made sure to include upcoming events for the year, the housing projects in the works and a zoning resolution. He wanted to continue expanding the school system and increase the city’s annual budget for education. By ending his speech with the goals for 1961, I believe Wagner is paving way for a completion of his goals as mayor. He wants to revise the mistakes and expand the city even further. Although Wagner does not state God or the Bible, he does provide reference to the Constitution and state charters. The tone of his speech ends with hope for the future and prosperity to come.

As previously stated Mayor Wagner saw himself as a politician of the people. Currently, he was working to finish the Lincoln Center development, the World’s Fair at Flushing Meadow, the early start of the Shea Stadium, the World Trade Center for Downtown Manhattan and the expansion of the expressway systems in Manhattan. The city remained in tack during the economic turmoil of the 1960s.

The speech was delivered during the inaugural ceremony in front of the members of the city council. Wagner demonstrated the goals he worked during the year 1960 and the year to come, 1961. He wanted to invoke the changes occurring within the city, as well as the state. For this speech specifically, he did not include any changes occurring within the United States as a whole. Upon doing research on Wagner’s speech, I could not find any drastic reaction of the press and the public to the speech. From my research it did not appear as if there were any drastic reactions to it. However I did find information in regards to Kennedy’s 1960 speech in Concourse Plaza Hotel, Bronx, New York where President John F. Kennedy spoke about his longtime friend and colleague in high regard. It appears that Wagner was thought about in high esteem. There was no direct speechwriter from my research that worked on the speech. I did find some speechwriters whom wrote for Kennedy during the time period.

In the passage, “To continue the rebuilding of the City, our massive attack on the slums, and an enlargement of the total number of dwellings for all income levels, with the strongest efforts concentrated on more housing units for middle-income families,” Wagner talks about the desire to build more housing for this middle-income group. Just like Wagner prided in this group expanding, he also needed to provide housing for them. During this time period, the city began expanding housing to the outskirts areas like hells kitchen, upper Manhattan and elsewhere. During this time period, there was movement to expand the housing authority in the city.

A second passage reiterated the expanse of school buildings in the NYC area, “Since 1954 the City has built 124 new schools, and modernized or expanded 64 others. In addition to maintaining our school building effort, the Board of Education is engaged in experiments, financed in part by the Ford Foundation, to discover new forms of school construction. These may include prefabricated schools, temporary buildings to be erected on one site, later transferred to another site, the combination of a school and an office building, schools with “clusters” of classrooms, schools with bubble roofs, schools making use of new materials and many other innovations.” This passage reiterates the expanse of the NYC school buildings during this time period there was an expanse of immigrants within the NYC area and city. An expansion of Puerto Ricans entered the city and further altered the student population. A third passage that added to this further was when Mayor Wagner added, “The “open enrollment” policy has been extended to the first and second grades. This policy permits pupils from predominantly Negro and Puerto Rican schools to travel out of their neighborhoods to schools in other parts of the City. Some 95 schools are engaged in this enlightened project.” Students had to attend other schools in different districts due to the low number of school buildings located in low-income areas. For this reason there was an expansion of school buses to transport students to different districts within the city. To add on to this aspect of the speech, Mayor Wagner sought to recruit qualified teachers to educate the diverse students in New York City.

A fourth passage in the speech that requires explanation to understand involves the section of Wagner’s speech to expand the services for the elderly. “A 50 percent increase in the number of foster homes available for the aged; Extension of mental health consultation services in nursing homes, homes for the aged, and day centers; Expansion of the number of apartments especially designed for the aged, both at the low and middle-income levels. We have taken specific steps to implement this program. $800,000 is provided in the 1961-62 Expense Budget for further expansion of the day center program and for increasing the number of foster homes for the aged,” this statement is in direct correlation to the large addition of baby boomers that added to the population of New York City from the time period after World War I. These veterans began to mature and grow into old age, for this reason there was a need for an expansion of elderly services within the city and elderly care centers.

A fifth aspect to the speech involves an expansion of the New York City railway system to include the outskirts of the city, “I have recommended to the Governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut the creation of an effective tri-state transportation agency. I feel this is necessary if we are ever to deal with our regional transportation difficulties on other than a bits-and-pieces basis.” This statement correlates to the number of trains within the city and the needed expansion of the transportation system as a whole. There were trains within the city during this time period, however, there needed to be an added expansion of trains going to the outskirts of the city. This included Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. A lot of NYC employees chose to live outside the city due to the increase of NYC mortgage and rent. For this reason a large portion of employees came from outside states. This passage paves the way for the following question, which involves the people and places mentioned in the speech. The people mentioned in the speech involved these state governors. Their significance was to further add to the expansion of transportation services outside the district. There was need to add these politicians since they are also involved in this expansion.

A quote from the speech that resonated and continued to express the overall message of the speech is the following, “ Now I wish to turn to another matter, and to repeat to you, and to all who work for the City of New York, what I have said before on this subject:As long as I am Mayor, honesty, integrity and clean government will be the guideposts upon which I insist, in every operation, no matter how big or how small. In a government as large as ours, here will be an occasional slip by an unethical public employee, but the fact that it is occasional does not mean it is condoned or ignored.” This aspect of the speech is relevant since Wagner wanted to do away with city corruption and change the feel of the city’s once perverted government. He paves the way for this statement and continues to express it throughout his speech. He wants everyone to understand that the city is for the people and of the people.

Two key terms in the speech are “better government” which involves the mission of Mayor Wagner to have a government focused on the people and allowing more involvement of the NYC population. “We are-and will continue to be ruthless in attacking the bribe, the payoff, the gratuity and the conflict of interest,” is a second key term which further demonstrates Wagner’s desire to create an environment focused on bringing down unethical conduct.

If you would like to know further information about Mayor Wagner, you can obtain information from the following website:

This website provides a great resource for learning more about Wagner’s life. You can obtain further information from this Mayor at the following website as well:

The following books also provide great resource for information on Mayor Wagner:

• Morris, Charles R.The cost of good intentions: New York City and the liberal experiment, 1960-1975(1981).
• Sayre, Wallace S. and Herbert Kaufman,Governing New York City: Politics in the Metropolis(1965) 782pp
• Taylor, Clarence. "Robert Wagner, Milton Galamison and the Challenge to New York City Liberalism."Afro-Americans in New York Life and History(2007) 31#2 pp: 121.
• Flanagan, Richard M.Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City's Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger(Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Citations:

“The Sixties: Moments in Time.” PBS. Web. 17 Jan 2015.

“Elected Mayors of New York City.” Web. 17 Jan 2015.

John F. Kennedy Speeches. Presidential Library and Museum. Web. 17 Jan 2015.