Word: pendergasts
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...bosses who can stand and deliver a State election as Boies Penrose in Pennsylvania or Tom Taggart in Indiana did in their day. Last week a primary showed that Missouri could still lay claim to such an oldtime boss in the person of "Big Tom" Pendergast, master of Kansas City and mixer of most of that city's concrete...
Murdered. John Lazia, 37, North Side Italian political boss of Kansas City, a ranking lieutenant of Missouri Democratic Boss Thomas Joseph ("Big Tom") Pendergast; by two unidentified men wielding a machine-gun and a shotgun; in Kansas City. Lazia's underworld activities were chiefly characterized by his attempts to prevent major crimes and keep outside gunmen from Kansas City. His followers planned a $40,000 funeral...
After three years at the University of Kansas, Herbert Pettey quit to take a job in the ready-mixed concrete company of Democratic Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City, Mo. Later he worked for MGM pictures and Radio Corp. of America. During the 1932 campaign, Mr. Pettey managed the radio work for the Democratic National Committee. When the Democrats came into power grateful Chairman Farley made him secretary to the Radio Commission. In addition, the Herald Tribune reported, with a letter from "General" Farley to prove it, Secretary Pettey, while drawing Federal pay, retained his job as No. 1 radio...
...Kansas City, where a reform movement to oust Boss Thomas Joseph Pendergast from city control was defeated fortnight ago in a mayoral election accompanied by wholesale sluggings and four fatal shootings (TIME, April 9), a bullet whizzed into the dining room of lanky, white-haired City Manager Henry F. McElroy, 68. Manager McElroy, in the adjoining sun room, was uninjured. Next clay his 26-year-old Daughter Mary, for whose release he paid $30,000 when she was kidnapped last May, was summoned to the telephone. A voice barked: "We never miss the second time...
Mercilessly caricatured in hostile newspapers, Boss Pendergast does not mind, but when reporters quote him as saying "I seen," he rages. Educated at St. Mary's College, Kansas, he is proud of his English, makes occasional errors which he quickly corrects. A huge, hearty man (232 lb.), he is 61, has thin hair almost white. A wholesale liquor dealer before Prohibition, he now runs a ready-mixed concrete business which local contractors wisely patronize. In his shabby little office he dispenses patronage three days a week...