Word: pendergasts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...similar charges, of great magnitude, were being pressed in Kansas City against an even greater overlord than Tammany's Jimmy Hines. Three days after Mr. Murphy's visit, the Kansas City sensation was sprung: U. S. District Attorney Maurice M. Milligan obtained the indictment of Thomas J. Pendergast, a senior U. S. Democratic boss. Charge: Cheating the U. S. of income taxes...
Ordinarily, FBI operatives do not enter income tax cases until the Treasury's T-men (internal revenue secret agents) have finished their work. Supposition was that the FBI stepped in early on Boss Pendergast's case because he is not only old (66) but sick. The Administration had to hurry, to be sure and match Tom Dewey's Hines sensation with an even greater prosecution...
Credit for tipping President Roosevelt off personally on the case against Boss Pendergast was given to Missouri's Governor Lloyd C. Stark, handsome, 53-year-old Democrat of military background and bearing, famed for the apples ("Stark's Delicious") which his father raised before him. For alert Governor Stark a Presidential trial balloon promptly went up last week in the famed "Washington Merry-Go-Round" (syndicated column by Drew Pearson & Robert S. Allen...
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...