Word: crumped
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...population (approx. 375,000). Memphis was the world's greatest cotton market, the hub of ten railroads, three airlines, and a big and busy river port. It had boomed during the war, and it was booming still. Better yet, it was running just the way Edward Hull Crump-the most absolute political boss in the U.S.-wanted...
...Carnival Week, as in any week, the most spectacular figure in Memphis was still 71-year-old Mister Crump. When he passed, in a gleaming new Chrysler, sidewalk idlers gawked as if they had spied the Mad Mullah of Tud, nose ring and all, cracking pecans on the Hope Diamond. Ed Crump did not ignore them. As he rode on casual journeys through his domain he watched the pavements as sharply as a kingfisher hunting shiners; his pink face lighted at the first sign of recognition. If people turned, he snatched a wide-brimmed grey hat from his ear-long...
...defects-park grass which needed cutting or a building which needed paint-and scribbled manifestoes on a pad at his side. But the city boasted amazingly clean streets, dozens of parks and playgrounds, fine schools, libraries, one of the finest zoos in the U.S., a fairgrounds, an E. H. Crump Stadium, good hospitals, good health...
...virtue of Crump's irascibility toward the "interests," it owned its own power, gas, water systems. The streetcar company had been slugged into kicking through with 6% of its gross receipts. Utility rates and taxes were...
...Memphis, once the toughest town along the Mississippi, there were no prostitutes, gamblers, policy games or gunmen. Crump had simply banished them. Beale Street Negroes could damage each other only by exercising some ingenuity. Crump's cops shook them down nightly for pistols, Arkansas toothpicks,* clubs, brass knucks, razors and ice picks. There was virtually no grafting-Crump forbade it. Officials who took money for themselves (as opposed to accepting contributions from liquor stores, business houses, jukebox and pinball operators for the Crump machine) were prosecuted...