Word: pendergast
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Last week the civic muck of Kansas City, Mo., was stirred and roiled. How rich and black its muck could be, Kansas City had just learned from the indictment of Boss Tom Pendergast, charged with taking $315,000 in boodle and failing to pay U. S. income taxes thereon. What followed was more surprising: the boss's machine set out to prove to Kansas City that pure hearts can beat beneath mucky vests...
...McElroy lawn was doing. Boss Tom himself ordered his councilmen to fall in with Mayor Smith. Object: to convince the Missouri Legislature that Kansas City could disinfect itself without further aid from Governor Lloyd C. Stark, who favors a bill to give the State control of the Pendergast police department...
Among Kansas City's sundry vices has been the biggest dope trade in any U. S. city. U. S. Narcotics Commissioner Harry Jacob Anslinger suddenly appeared in Kansas City, where his men have been quietly tracking dope merchants for nearly two years, and last week they arrested a Pendergast policeman, a Pendergast ward heeler, five lesser characters...
Governor Stark quarreled with Boss Pendergast in 1937 over the reappointment of R. Emmet O'Malley, State superintendent of insurance. All Missouri had wondered about a great insurance rate fight, which Mr. O'Malley settled in 1935. Insurance companies had jacked up their rates on fire and windstorms. Some $9,500,000 in increased premium collections were impounded by the courts when the policyholders protested. Mr. O'Malley's settlement returned 20% of the money to policyholders, 50% to the companies; the other 30% was to defray litigation costs. What the grand jury believed last week...
...Maurice Milligan it was sweet revenge, because Boss Pendergast tried to block his reappointment as U. S. District Attorney last year. For everyone ever connected with Boss Pendergast it was a stinker. The indictment blackened some clouds already hanging dark over the Boss ever since Missouri Circuit Judge Allen C. Southern began to root out gambling and vice in Pendergastland (TIME, Feb. 6). The Boss had known the blow-off was coming: last month his nephew Jim Pendergast and Police Chief Otto Higgins tramped up & down Washington trying to find some one to call off Maurice Milligan...