"hefty raises, some as high as 150%" to state workers and teachers. Dewey played a leading role in securing support and funding for the New York State Thruway, which was eventually named in his honor. Dewey also streamlined and consolidated many state agencies to make them more efficient. During the Second World War construction in New York was limited, which allowed Dewey to create a $623 million budget surplus, which he placed into his "Postwar Reconstruction Fund." The fund would eventually create 14,000 new beds in the state's mental health system, provide public housing for 30,000 families, allow for the reforestation of 34 million trees, create a water pollution program, provide slum clearance, and pay for a "model veterans' program." His governorship was also "friendlier by far than his [Democratic] predecessors to the private sector", as Dewey created a state Department of Commerce to "lure new businesses and tourists to the Empire State, ease the shift from wartime boom, and steer small businessmen, in particular, through the maze of federal regulation and restriction." Between 1945 and 1948, 135,000 new businesses were started in New York. Dewey supported the decision of the New York legislature to end state funding for child care centers, which were established during the war. The child care centers allowed mothers to participate in wartime industries. The state was forced to provide funding for local communities that could not obtain money under the Lanham Act. Although working mothers, helped by various civic and social groups, fought to retain funding, federal support for child care facilities was considered temporary and ended on March 1, 1946. New York state aid to child care ended on January 1, 1948. When protesters asked Dewey to keep the child care centers open, he called them "Communists." He also strongly supported the death penalty. During his twelve years as governor, more than ninety people were electrocuted under New York authority. Among these were several of the mob-affiliated hitmen belonging to the murder-for-hire group Murder, Inc., which was headed up by major mob leaders Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Albert Anastasia. Buchalter himself went to the chair in 1944. Presidential campaigns 1940 Dewey sought the 1940 Republican presidential nomination. He was considered the early favorite for the nomination, but his support ebbed in the late spring of 1940 as Nazi Germany invaded its neighbors, and Americans feared being drawn into another European war. Some Republican