PAF9199
Professor David Hoffman
Notes on a NYC State of the City Speech-1955 Wagner
Nianhong (Fiona) Long
Robert F. Wagner, who was the Mayor of New York City from year 1954 to 1965, was considered one of the most liberal mayors in New York City. During Wagner’s first term, the city had faced a complicated and radical environment, such as the increasing crime rate, racial protest and labor force protest. Under such circumstance, Wagner had made progress on improving the labor force system, public school system and public housing authority (YourDictionary, 2016). One of his achievements was cooperating with local labor force movements in public to acknowledge the public how working-class were struggled for justice and equal opportunity. Historian Joshua Freeman also commented on Mayor Wagner’s dedication on city labor’s movement to fight for a higher living standard and job security, which to eliminate the discriminatory hiring (Taylor, 2011). Moreover, in response to the civil rights protest, Wagner had made series policies on different eras to protect the low-income families, the community civil rights and to provide equality opportunities in public housing and school system (Taylor, 2011). That was a time where everyone was sharing the same resource. The speech which was given by Wagner in 1955 in the public did a great job in highlighting the current issues and proposing with solution plans. I will first analyze the speech content and arrangement. Later I will focus on the background and the given historical events to further explore the speech.
This speech actually reminds the Communication class in my very first semester. I remembered we have several sessions that covered the public hearing and voting process, which involves formal speech that was given by city council in the Town Hall meetings. Since the audience for this speech is the president and members of the council, it applies professional tone with concise language. It is a documentary piece and similar to the annual fiscal report. Unlike Lincoln’s and King’s speech, which their audiences are constantly appealed by the excitement that runs along the lines, or seen those vivid images which created by the archetypal metaphor. Overall, this speech tries to use facts and experiences to support author’s plan for city development in next step.
The speech starts off with a goal that author tries to achieve via his speech, which is to “building better government.” It has divided into eleven sessions: community participation, housing and redevelopment, traffic, education, sanitation system, crime, juvenile delinquency and correction, municipal management, workforce, development plan for metro areas, and last, the plan for future. In order to make the sections flow smoothly, author has make contrasts and connections in between the topics. Every section has follow the same structures, which starts with a look on the current situation, then move to the problem that we are facing, and talk about the solution for such issue at the end. The whole speech has given its audiences a full review on city’s development in the past year, while listed all the problems/issues and solution plans at the same time. I think the most outstanding quality of this speech is you cannot find any redundant words or sentences. The speech is concise and straight forward that enables the audiences get the ideas right away.
A year before Wagner gave this speech, the increasing crime rate was one of major concerns. According to New York Times, a report written by Police Commissioner Adam indicated that another high record of crime rate which “111,274 felonies, a rise of 2.3 percent over 1953,” and the major group that arrested was teenager group whose ages were ranged from 16 to 21 (New York Times, 1954). As the crime rate issue, we can see that Wagner did adjust this issue in his speech, and also promised for reducing the crime rate to 16.5 % in the next year. However, he did not talk much about the major reasons for the high crime rate in the 1954. Wagner tried to use numbers and figures to get audiences’ support for his plans, where funded programs that aimed to help protect the community and the minority groups. The other issue that he covered in the speech was how to keep the city clean. As Harrison Salisbury wrote in New York Times, the city was filthy and dirty after dumping million dollars in Sanitation Department, and he also called for “a bigger cleaning force” to act on this problem before it created any further health issues in the public (Salisbury, 1954). Wagner did a light touch on this issue, without dived into the core factors on the current broken Sanitation Department.
By simply looking at the length of each section in the speech, we can tell Wagner had put a strong focus on proposing policies on the education system, housing authority, and labor market. In 1954, even though the Supreme Court had declared school segregation unconstitutional, racial segregation in New York City was still quite persisted in the school system. However, Wagner did not talk about this segregation part at all but with a different focus on the growing population and shortage of school facilities. The whole section for education sounds more like a ceremonial piece to memorize all the success he gained in the past. Wagner also delivered his message about future plans for the higher education system, where he did build up several city colleges in the next couple years (CUNY, 2016). Unfortunately, I could not find any public reaction to this speech. I think the reason being was this speech was not published to the media and like other annual reports, people could not care less. However, some activists did against and criticize Wagner’s policy on racial discrimination within the school system. They even arranged meeting with Wagner to push for school integration and parent participation in school policy (Back, 2016).
As I mentioned in the beginning, this annual report speech was a piece for reporting the plan/programs progress of city planning. All the points and assumptions that Wagner had made in this report are pretty straight forward to the audiences. What Wagner used the most were facts and numbers to persuade his audiences that his plans did work for New York City. He listed all the good things could happen after implanting his solutions in each system, and used the good outcomes to call for corporations among the government agencies. I have picked a couple references in the text, which I think additional explanations will be helpful to the audiences:
“Not only is this a healthy practice in a democracy, but experience demonstrates its practical value.”
In this statement, the message that Wagner tried to deliver was to have the government agencies to evaluate people’s opinion from the community. Democracy can only be valuated via practicing people who receive the services.
“I say this with a sense of humility, for our success has inevitably been less than complete.”
This statement which Wagner made in the closing part of the speech, I think it will be another statement that he emphasized the achievements that he had gained in the past year, though he could have much more get done by in the next year. Although he used the word “humility,” after listening all the progress and plans for the city, Wagner wanted to be rewarded by the public.
As for people and places, Wagner did not specify any group or people in his speech. He did not make any statement or speak up for any minority either. But he did mention in the beginning when he talked about the community voice, “people are governed with their consent is too often overlooked in practice, and those chosen to govern sometimes incline to ignore the views and desires of the community.” (Wagner, 1955) But I do not think that people was signified for any other meaning at this point. For places, Wagner did list a couple sites and building, such as the Bay View Houses, Cathay Houses, Chinatown, Third Avenue El, Brooklyn Bridge, etc. But looking the whole statements where these place are mentioned, I could not see any special significance among these places. These places were simply used as a reference to Wagner’s projects on housing section and education system.
Overall, after a long analysis on Wagner speech, we can tell that Wagner were good at use facts and numbers to make his plans sound more workable among the audiences. He knew the fact that to get things done, he need to get support from public. And to get government agencies work together to bring out the plans, public’s voice was important. Thus, Wagner first tried to get public’s support, once he gained the trust from public, which he could imply them to the government agencies.
Key Terms
Facts
Numbers
Harmony
Community
Better government
Biography:
This biography is one of the few I found online. It gives a brief look at Wagner’s whole career. I am quite surprised that not many publish articles wrote about Wagner
Book:
“Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City's Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger”
No free version available online but by looking at its abstract, I think it covers the entire years when Wagner served as Mayor in New York City.
Work Cited
Back, Adina. The Harlem Nine and New York City’s School Desegregation Battles. The College of Wooster. Web. 17 Jan. 2016
<http://africanamericanhistorysp2014.voices.wooster.edu/files/2014/03/Adina_Back_Exposing_the_Whole_Segregation_Myth3.pdf>
By, HARRISON S. "City Wages Constant Battle to Keep Streets Litter-Free." New York Times (1923-Current file): 1. Dec 06 1954. ProQuest. Web. 17 Jan. 2016 .
"MAYOR DEDICATES HOUSING TO FATHER." New York Times (1923-Current file): 19. Nov 06 1954. ProQuest. Web. 17 Jan. 2016 .
"Robert Ferdinand Wagner Jr." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2016. <
Taylor, Clarence., and Project Muse. Civil Rights in New York City from World War II to the Giuliani Era. 1st ed. New York: Fordham UP, 2011. Print. UPCC Book Collections on Project MUSE.
"THE CITY'S CRIME RISE." New York Times (1923-Current file): 30. May 03 1955. ProQuest. Web. 17 Jan. 2016 .
"University History." The City University of New York. Web. 17 January 2016. <http://www1.cuny.edu/sites/6/about/administration/chancellor/university-history/>.