Word: pendergast
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Charles W. Latimer, a boyhood friend of the President's in Independence, Mo., came all the way from his present home in Tampa, Fla., just to shake hands. And there was Bryce B. Smith, longtime (1930-40) mayor of Kansas City under the Boss Pendergast regime...
...back into anonymity. With a war comrade he opened a haberdashery: it failed. He went into politics, became a county judge (an administrative, not a judicial post). He probably would have remained a minor politician except for a lucky break given him by Kansas City's late Boss Pendergast. In 1934, as a fine magisterial whim, Boss Tom made unknown Harry Truman a U.S. Senator. With Pendergast's control of the state, it was as simple as that. In 1940, Senator Truman won reelection, solely because of a party split and not because of his own record...
...limitations. He is frank with himself and his friends in visualizing himself as the ordinary, honest politician grown to stature through patience, hard work and luck. He believes in strict party responsibility, a politician's reward for work done, and complete loyalty to friends. (He never forsook Tom Pendergast, even after Boss Tom had gone to Leavenworth.) He is no theorist. In his Administration there are likely to be few innovations and little experimentation...
Harry Truman recalled the old teachings of Kansas City's now defunct Pendergast machine, which pushed him into big-time politics: never forget a friend or an enemy. When Attorney General Biddle began to consider a fourth-term renomination for Maurice Milligan, U.S. attorney in Kansas City who sent platoons of Pendergast henchmen to jail for vote frauds, Harry Truman balked, told newsmen he preferred a friend in Milligan's place. Pressed for a further reason, the Vice President, who had campaigned for Term IV for Franklin Roosevelt, explained: "[Milligan's] been in office twelve years...
Died. Thomas Joseph Pendergast, 71, most notorious political boss of the century; of heart disease; in Kansas City. Son of a teamster, old "TJ." built a small Democratic ward machine in Kansas City's Italian section into a powerful and corrupt political juggernaut. He ruled Kansas City in its bawdiest, gaudiest era, hired ghost voters by the thousands, bet millions on the ponies, hand-picked Governors and Senators, started Vice President Harry Truman up the political ladder. Heavy-set and heavy-jowled, he was the incarnation of the cartoonists' political boss-especially when he wore...