The Path to Power (153 page)

Johnson’s relationship with Rayburn:
Corcoran, Rowe, Fortas.
Practical jokes:
Fortas, Brown.

Recommendations:
Rowe, Hopkins.
“Born old”:
Goldschmidt.

Ickes glad:
Ickes, II, p. 643.
Party for Ickes:
Fortas, Hopkins.
Falling asleep at parties:
Fortas, Elizabeth and James Rowe, Alice Hopkins, Corcoran.

“His native strength”:
Hawthorne, quoted in Schlesinger,
The Age of Jackson
, p. 42

“Has never been specifically authorized” … and legality in question:
House, 75 Cong. 1 Session.
Report No. 885
, May 24, 1937, p. 41.
“Is hereby authorized”:
Act of Aug. 26, 1937, 50 Stat. 850, Sec. 3.

Cash running out:
Herman Brown to Johnson, July 16, 1937, “CRA (1) Financing, PWA,” Box 169, JHP.
Delaying approval:
Brown.
Rumors—and dampening them:
Corcoran.
“Cabinet officers”:
Johnston, “White House Tommy.”
“Give the kid the dam”:
Corcoran.
The refusal abruptly ended:
Page to Burlew, June 29, 1937, Ickes File; Corcoran.

Second appropriation:
(Signature illegible), “Budget officer,” to Hopkins, June 30, 1937; Page to Burlew, June 29, 1937, RG 48.
“At a standstill”:
Davis to Johnson, July 29, 1937, “CRA: Davis, T.H., Box 169, JHP.
Connally attempting; James Roosevelt intervention:
AA
, June 22, 23, 30, July 21, 22, 1937;
AS
, July 23;
Floresville Chronicle-Journal
, July 30, 1937; Johnson to James Roosevelt, Aug. 9, 1937, JHP.

Rotary Club maneuver; reaction:
Bunger’s untitled speech; Bunger; Lee to Johnson, Wirtz to Johnson, Nov. 30, 1937, McDonough to Johnson, Dec. 12, 1937, “#3 (Marshall Ford Dam),” Box 167, JHP; Ferguson, Gideon. Wirtz to Johnson, March 22, 1938, Box 36, LBJA SN. Johnson to Davis (and attachments), Dec. 7, 1937.

Alliance shaky:
See, for example, Wirtz to Johnson, Aug. 12, 17, 1937, Johnson to Wirtz, Aug. 13; Bunger.

Fortas the sharpest weapon:
Johnson knew it. Said a Johnson aide: “Johnson always said Abe Fortas was the smartest guy he ever knew, for sheer brains” (
Los Angeles Times
, April 7, 1982).

Maneuvers to secure high dam:
Bunger, Fortas, Brown, Corcoran, Goldschmidt, Gideon. “Statement of Hon. Lyndon Johnson, A Representative in Congress from the State of Texas,” House of Representatives. 75 Cong. 3 Session. Interior Department Appropriation Bill, 1939. Hearings Before House Appropriations Committee, Vol. 92, pp. 916–17. Page to Ickes, Jan. 3, 1938; Ickes to Burlew, Jan. 11, 1938;
Burlew to Foreman, Feb. 7, 1938; Ickes to Goeth, Feb. 11, 1938; Ickes to Johnson, undated, but appears to be March 1, 1938; Burlew to Johnson, Jan. 17, 1939; Williams to Mansfield, March 9, 1939—all from RG 48, Ickes file. “Contract Between the Lower Colorado River Authority of Texas and the United States Concerning the Operation and Maintenance of Marshall Ford Dam … March 13, 1941”; Bardwell to Johnson, July 5, 1938, JHR Bunger, however, did not escape unscathed for his part in the episode. Johnson quietly moved against him in Washington. “I have talked to the proper authorities here (this is quite confidential),” he wrote, “and I think we can expect a good-bye from our Reclamation friend before long” (Johnson to Wirtz, Dec. 3, 1937, Box 36, LBJA SN); and he was quietly transferred off the project (Ickes to Burlew, Feb. 23, 1938, Ickes File). So effectively did Johnson move in covering his tracks that Bunger told the author that he did not know why he had been transferred but was sure that Johnson, who Bunger was sure was his friend, had nothing to do with it.

Committee of the whole:
Cong. Record
, 75 Cong. 3 Session (March 2, 1938), pp. 2707–9 (Rich actually used the figure $15,000,000 instead of $10,000,000 the second time he mentioned it, but from the context it is apparent that he meant to repeat $10,000,000); McFarlane.
“I felt”:
Boiling.
“The gentleman is correct, yes”:
CR
, p. 2708.
“I had at least 19”:
Johnson to Wirtz March 5, 1938;
Accomplished “the impossible”:
Wirtz to Johnson, March 8, 1938,
“Mighty glad”:
Rayburn to Wirtz, March 9, 1938—all Box 36, LBJA SN.

Interviews:

George R. Brown, Howard R Bunger, Edward A. Clark, Thomas G. Corcoran, D. B. Hardeman, Herman Jones, Frank C. Oltorf, Emmett Shelton, Harold Young.

“Whole world”:
Corcoran.

Johnson’s relationship with Herman Brown:
George Brown, Clark, Oltorf. A hater: Herman’s dislike of Roosevelt, at a time when he was asking for contracts from the New Deal, was common knowledge in Austin. When he heard about Herman’s proposal to enlarge the Marshall Ford Dam,
AA
editor Charles Green said: “Don’t you think we’ve got enough dams already? Herman Brown and McKenzie [another contractor] spend all their time cussing Roosevelt. Why, if it wasn’t for Roosevelt where would we all be?” [Lee to Johnson, Nov. 30, 1937, “#3 Marshall Ford Dam,” Box 167, JHP]. Also Young, Hardeman.
“Watch out”:
Oltorf.

Housing Authority dispute:
Harold Young interview; confirmed by Clark, Brown’s attorney on housing matters, and attorney Sim Gideon.

Lid was off:
Bunger.
Working closely:
See, for example, Herman Brown to Johnson, Aug. 3, 1937, Jan. 15, 1938; Johnson to Herman Brown, Aug. 9, 1937, Jan. 7, 1938 (with enclosures), Jan. 30, March 10, 1938; White to Duke, Oct. 18, 1937; McKenzie to Johnson, Jan. 24, 1938; Johnson to George Brown, Dec. 2, 1937, Jan. 30, March 10, 1938; George Brown to Johnson, Nov. 29, 1937, Jan. 17, 1938—all from Boxes 12, 13, LBJA SN.
“It is needless”:
Johnson to Herman Brown, April 18, 1939, Box 13, LBJA SN.
“Finally got together”:
George Brown to Johnson, May 27, 1939, Box 12, LBJA SN.
CONFIDENTIAL:
Johnson to George Brown, Aug. 11, 1939, Box 12, LBJA SN.
“You get”:
George Brown.
“Full weight”:
Clark.

The story of Lyndon Johnson’s relationship with Alice Glass and Charles Marsh was told to the author by Alice’s sister, Mary Louise Glass Young; by Alice’s best friend, Alice Hopkins; and by two of Alice’s confidants and friends, Frank C. Oltorf and Harold H. Young (who later married her sister). Additional details were furnished by Alice’s daughter, Diana Marsh, and by Welly Hopkins. Another source for information on the relationship asked not to be quoted by name. Alice and Welly Hopkins were kind enough, because Longlea has been closed to the public by its new owners, to take the author to it over a back road and to show him around the estate, pointing out where various scenes had occurred.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library: Section I, Plate 1, 2 (top), 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14 (top); Section II, 1, 2, (top), 3, 4, 6 (top), 7 (top), 8, 9, 10 (bottom), 14, 15; Section III, 1, 3, 5 (bottom), 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16

Campaign material from the LBJ Library, photographs by Zigy Kaluzny: II, 12–13; MI, 13 (center)

LBJ National Historic Park, Johnson City: Section I, 5

Barker Texas History Center: II, 6 (bottom); III, 5 (top)

Austin–Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library: II, 7 (bottom) C00472); III, 8 (C01657)

Texas State Library Archives: III, 12 (middle, bottom)

Southwest Texas State University: I, 12, 14 (bottom left)

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, photo by Maurice Constant: III, 4 (bottom)

Life
magazine: III, 4 (top), Myron Davis (1942), © 1968 Time Inc.; III, 12 (top), Francis Miller, © 1941 Time Inc.

Washington Post:
III, 6 (bottom)

Photo by Arnold Genthe, courtesy Mr. and Mrs. Welly Hopkins: III, 2 (bottom left)

Photos courtesy Mary Louise Young: III, 2 (top and bottom right)

Photo courtesy Senator Lloyd Bentsen: II, 5

Photo by Chalmers Marving, courtesy Frank Oltorf: II, 11

Photo by Hessler Studio, courtesy Dale Miller: II, 2 (bottom)

Photos courtesy Wilton Woods: I, 16

Robert A. Caro was graduated from Princeton University, was for six years an award-winning investigative reporter for Newsday, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

To create
The Power Broker
, Caro spent seven years tracing and talking with hundreds of men and women who worked with, for, or against Robert Moses, and examining mountains of files never before opened to the public.
The Power Broker
won both the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that “exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist.” It was chosen by Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

To research
The Years of Lyndon Johnson
, Mr. Caro and his wife, Ina, moved from his native New York City to the Texas Hill Country and then to Washington, D.C., to live in the locales in which Johnson grew up and in which he built, while still young, his first political machines. He has spent years examining documents at the Johnson Library in Austin and interviewing men and women connected with Johnson’s life, many of whom had never before been interviewed. The first volume of the Johnson work,
The Path to Power
, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for the best nonfiction work of 1982. The second volume,
Means of Ascent
, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1990. In preparation for writing
Master of the Senate
, the third volume, Caro immersed himself in the world of the United States Senate, spending week after week in the gallery, in committee rooms, in the Senate Office Building, and interviewing hundreds of people, from pages and cloakroom clerks to senators and administrative aides.
Master of the Senate
won the 2002 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Pulitzer Prize in Biography.

Among the numerous other awards Mr. Caro has won are the H. L. Mencken Award, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

His website is
www.robertcaro.com
.

V
INTAGE
B
OOKS
E
DITION
, M
ARCH
1990

Copyright © 1981, 1982 by Robert A. Caro, Inc
.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.

Portions of this book have appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly
.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Caro, Robert A.
The years of Lyndon Johnson.
Bibliography: v. 1, p.
Includes index.

Contents: v. 1. The path to power.
1. Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908–1973.
2. Presidents—United States—Bibliography.
3. United States—Politics and government—1945-
I. Title.

E
847.
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34 1984  973.923.092′4[
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]    89-40608
eISBN: 978-0-307-42257-6

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