ABSTRACT
The Executive Budget had resulted from a bipartisan crusade first launched by Charles Evans Hughes, but it immensely enhanced the power of a Democratic Governor in a State where Democrats seldom controlled the Legislature, and it proportionally truncated the power of the rural Republicans who conventionally controlled the committees. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt's challenging task to pilot the first such budget through a grimly reluctant Legislature. He had closed his forging operation on Inauguration Day, telling his staff that it was much too dangerous to copy a Governor's signature, and he sent the more difficult letters back for Roosevelt's personal attention on the basis of his own penciled suggestions. Shocking evidence of the impact of miserable crowding, the lack of work programs, the poorly trained and poorly paid guards. Roosevelt tended himself to blame the compulsory life term for fourth offenders, which Caleb Baumes had pushed through the Legislature.
