Word: pendergasts
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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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...
Then the Narcotics division announced some facts: Tom Pendergast's town traded in $12,000,000 worth of narcotics a year, served a vast territory. Most surprising fact: that healthy, husky Texas is a dopey State. Rated next to Kansas City as consuming centres were Galveston, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston. Nor is this because of the Mexican population. Texas has oil. Prostitutes follow oil workers. Dope goes with prostitutes. Most Texas addicts are Anglo-Saxons, some are children...
Last week Tom Pendergast's Police Director Otto Higgins resigned, wept at having to leave "the best police department in the country." While Kansas City wondered whether Tom Pendergast's machine was cracking up, Mayor Smith & Co. made a great to-do about closing gambling dens, putting clothes on dancers...