Before his building career, Robert Moses worked to reform civil service by promoting merit-based advancement instead of advancement through political influence.

“It does evolve into that. He does change. But the young Moses, the idealist, who before he's building, is an expert in civil service, technicalities of civil service, and devotes all his energies to trying to reform the civil service and make it, uh, that people get promoted on merit instead of political pull.”