During his term, the City was considering building more subway lines and expanding those that existed. There was a policy debate around expanding the existing Interborough system versus establishing a new TriBorough system and whether the City or private operators would manage the systems. Several folders of correspondence attest to the significance of the matter, which was not resolved during Gaynor’s term.
The South Side Board of Trade, a group of Bath Beach businessmen, sent a lengthy letter supporting construction of the Triborough route and cited Gaynor’s campaign statements in support of building more subway systems. The Mayor responded with a lengthy letter in which he acknowledged support for building subways and disavowed support for the Triborough. “Your notion that I ever made any pledge to build the tri-borough route has not a leg to stand on…. I do not think that you know enough on the subject to say how you would vote if you were in my place… What you do not know about this subway situation would fill a book…”
On November 21, 1910, Gaynor signed a letter he had dictated for assistants to type, addressed to a Mr. Kraft who had questioned a proposed subway expansion. Gaynor posed several questions: “What is the tri-borough route which you mention? Do you know where it runs, how much it would cost and how long it would take to build? Do you know how much available credit the city has to devote to subways? In a word do you know anything on the subject at all? Of course you understand that I have to deal with facts and not with more talk. Begin to think a little yourself, and study the maps, and study the city’s credit, and pay less attention to sensational newspapers. You ought to have opinions of your own if you are an intelligent man.”
Then, as now, elected officials sparred with the media. In Gaynor’s case, the nemesis was The New York Journal owned by Randolph Hearst. In multiple letters he wrote that the correspondent was deceived by evil publications. For example, a January 31, 1911, response to a J. S. Mencken, Esq, he wrote, “Your letter of no date is at hand. You are very grievously misinformed. I am breaking no promise that I ever made with regard to subways. I think you are reading some lying newspaper.”
As a vote neared at the Board of Estimate, the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants’ Association proposed establishing a Citizen’s Committee to review the subway proposals and produce a report that would “assist the public to a clear understanding of the several alternative propositions which are pending, and to crystalize public opinion and sentiment in favor of some definite solution of the problem. The public is intensely interested, but at present is hopelessly confused and uncertain as to what should be done,” wrote the President of the Merchants’ Association to Seth Low. Low had served as the Mayor of both the independent City of Brooklyn and the consolidated City of New York. He was to be the Chair of this committee. Even this seemingly routine event provoked an irascible response from the Mayor. First, he wrote to the associations that he had nor requested the committee be created. “I did not request that it be done. On the contrary, you approached me with the suggestion that it be done and I acquiesced in it.”
During the month of December, 1910, the committee met, reviewed the relevant expert documentation, financial notes and official testimony and issued a summary report at the end of the month. This prompted Mayor Gaynor to send a laudatory thank you letter to former Mayor Low. “ I had not supposed it possible to compress so much work into so short a space of time. The comprehensive character of the reports cannot fail to be of great service to this community and to public officials. That such a body of men should devote days of continuous work to the study of this difficult problem of subways is another proof that we have many among us who have at heart the public weal and comfort above all else.”
And then, as if he couldn’t contain himself, he nitpicked. “I note that you open your report by the statement that the committee was appointed at my request. This is an error. It was done at the request of…. They made the suggestion to me that they would like to proceed to do so, and asked if it would be agreeable to the Mayor. Of course I acquiesced but I am not entitled to the credit of having suggested or requested the appointment of the committee. Let credit go where it belongs.” This was a point he had addressed with Low in early December and somehow it disturbed Gaynor greatly that the committee was attributed to him.
Low, though, was not one to back down. The former mayor replied to Gaynor, “I did not forget, of course, what you said to me in regard to the appointment of the Committee: but, inasmuch as Mr. Hepburn and Mr. Towne in their letter of appointment used the expression that the Committee had been appointed at your request, I thought that it was legitimate to assume that, while the idea had not originated with you the action taken was, nevertheless, at your request. I am hoping that you welcome, rather than otherwise, the opportunity which my letter gave to you to make clear publicly your relation to the matter.”
That seems to have ended the matter. In late January, Mayor Gaynor wrote a note of appreciation to the head of the Merchants’ Association, Henry R. Towne that perfectly illustrates his directness. “I have at last found time to read the report of your special committee on the question of competition of public service corporations and regard it as very able and timely. But what is the use in having men among us who understand things so well, if we elect men to office who do not know the A.B.C. of the matter and throw the whole thing to the winds? How quick such a committee would dispose of the subway matter wisely and well, and without allowing any right or advantage of the city to be lost or thrown away.”
