Political Party Machines of the 1920S and 1930S: Tom Pendergast and the Kansas City Democratic Machine

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Political Party Machines of the 1920S and 1930S: Tom Pendergast and the Kansas City Democratic Machine Political Party Machines of the 1920s and 1930s: Tom Pendergast and The Kansas City Democratic Machine. BY JOHN S. MATLIN. A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Department of American and Canadian Studies, School of Historical Studies, University of Birmingham. September, 2009. Table of Contents. Page No. Acknowledgments. 3. Abstract. 5. Introduction. 6. Chapter 1. A Brief History of American Local Government until the end of the Nineteenth Century. 37. Chapter 2. The Fall and Rise of Political Party Machines in the Progressive Era. 51. Chapter 3. Theories of Political Party Machines and Their Core Elements. 81. Chapter 4. “Bossism”: The Need for Strong Leadership. 107. Chapter 5. Patronage: The Boss’s Political Capital and Private Profit. 128. Chapter 6. Challengers to the Machine: Rabbi Mayerberg, The Charter League and Fusion Movement. 145. Chapter 7. Challenges from the Press. The Self-Appointed Role of Newspapers as Moral Watchdogs. 164. Chapter 8. Corruption: Machines and Elections. 193. Chapter 9. Corruption: Machine Business, Organized Crime and the Downfall of Tom Pendergast. 219. Chapter 10. Political Party Machines: Pragmatism and Ethics. 251. Conclusion. 264. Bibliography. 277. 2 Acknowledgments It is a rare privilege to commence university life after retirement from a professional career. At the age of 58, I enrolled at Brunel University on an American Studies course, assuming that I would learn little that I did not already know. My legal life had taken me to many of the states of America numerous times over the previous forty years. My four years at Brunel as an undergraduate and post-graduate opened my eyes about the United States in a way I had not thought possible. I shall always be grateful to my teachers there. During my three doctoral years at University of Birmingham, I have received much encouragement from the members of the American & Canadian Studies Department and Office, especially at those times when I wanted to end the torture. I want to pay special thanks and tribute to my supervisor, Dr Helen Laville, whose sound advice, good humour, sensible attitude and excellent editing has kept me focused and whose belief in my ability to finish a worthwhile thesis often exceeded mine. In America, I received enormous help from my journalist friends and acquaintances, including Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post, John Farmer of The New Jersey Star-Ledger, Ralph Schulz of McGraw Hill and Lori Sturdevant of The Minneapolis Star Tribune. The staff at Western Historical Manuscripts, University of Missouri, Columbia, especially Mary Beth Brown, and Jeremy Drouin, the Special Collections Librarian at The Kansas City Public Library, were patient and kind with a comparative novice as he plodded his way through numerous newspapers and archives. I thank the former for enabling me to reproduce some cartoons from The St. Louis Post-Despatch. I am particularly delighted to have the opportunity to thank and praise a very special librarian, Sue Schuermann, of the University of Missouri, 3 Columbia, whose support and ability to find useful, obscure sources with enormous speed has been invaluable. To my American family, especially Professor Susan Kiefer, Ann McCaughan and Jim Durbin, and the many American and British friends who have helped, put up with and been bored by me during the doctoral experience, I give my apologies as well as my thanks. I am particularly grateful to my erstwhile law colleague and good friend, Richard Pearlman, for his eagle and legal eye. My daughters, Jessica and Susanna, have shown remarkable patience and understanding during those periods of myopia which afflict one who travels this road and I thank them too. Last, but by no means least, I pay tribute to my wife, Linda, who has been champion, cheerleader and supporter during my fledgling academic career and whose close editing of my writing has made me better than I could ever have hoped to be. John Matlin. Pinner, Middlesex. September, 2009. 4 Abstract This thesis is a study of American local government in the 1920s and 1930s and the role played by political party machines. It reviews the growth of overtly corrupt machines after the end of the Civil War, the struggle by the Progressives to reform city halls throughout America at the turn of the twentieth century and the rise of second phase machines at the end of the First World War. It analyses the core elements of machines, especially centralization of power, manipulation of incentives, leadership and “bossism”, and use of patronage. Throughout it emphasises that first and foremost, machines were small monopoly businesses whose vast profits, derived from improper and corrupt use of government levers, were allocated among a small group of senior players. Using the Kansas City Democratic machine of the infamous Tom Pendergast as a case study, it examines challenges to machines and the failure of the local press to expose Pendergast’s wrongdoing. It analyses elements of machine corruption, first in the conduct of elections where numerous fraudulent tactics kept machines in power and, second, in the way machines corruptly manipulated local government, often involving organized crime. Finally, the thesis examines the breach of ethics of machine politics, measuring the breaches against the pragmatism of bosses. Numerous larger-than-life characters appear in the thesis from bosses such as Tweed of Tammany Hall infamy, Alonzo “Nuckie” Johnson, Frank Hague and Tom Pendergast, the gangster John Lazia, as well as men who did business with or fought Pendergast, such as future president Harry S. Truman, Missouri U.S. Attorney Maurice Milligan and even Franklin D. Roosevelt. 5 Introduction. From the turn of the twentieth century for almost forty years, the Pendergast brothers dominated Kansas City politics. In 1880, elder brother Jim became a tavern keeper in the commercial, entertainment and industrial West Bottoms district of Kansas City, an area similar in nature to the Bowery in New York. He was elected as a First Ward Democratic committeeman in 1887. Two years later, younger brother Tom Pendergast arrived from St. Joseph, Missouri. Tom worked at various jobs, one of which was as a bouncer in his brother’s tavern. In 1894, Jim secured an appointment for Tom as a deputy constable in a First Ward city court. Soon after, Jim moved Tom into grassroots political work, first as a ward heeler and then precinct captain, as Tom served his apprenticeship in local politics, Kansas City style.1 Tom’s first elected political job was as superintendent of streets, followed by a two year stint as county marshal and later, again, as street superintendent. By 1900, Jim Pendergast had become one of the two acknowledged leaders of the Kansas City Democrats. The other, Joe Shannon, would be a thorn in the side of the Pendergast faction until 1916, when Tom won overall control of the party at local level. In 1910, a year before his death, Jim retired from the City Council and turned his seat over to Tom, who remained an alderman until 1925, by which time he was the undisputed, if unofficial, political leader of Kansas City, a position he held virtually unchallenged until 1939. During this period, Tom Pendergast’s grasp on Kansas City government was absolute. Indeed, Pendergast’s biographers, Lawrence Larsen and Nancy Hulston, have asserted that: “He reigned as a supreme ruler with power flowing from the top down...In actions as well as in fact, Pendergast was…a classic 1 For descriptions of the duties of ward heelers, see Chapter 2, page 67 and Chapter 3, page 88. 6 self-appointed boss.”2 His power within the state became no less great. Congressional candidates for the Missouri legislature were voted by the state at large, not by district. As William Reddig, another Pendergast biographer, observed: “Every Democratic candidate who hoped to be nominated had to have the big Jackson County majority and the Pendergast’s endorsement.”3 Pendergast’s rise to this position of power requires explanation. He had little formal education, no inherited position of wealth and influence and no driving ideological passion. Rather, he was a self-made man, whose grasp of political manipulation and the operation of city government allowed him to establish an iron grip on Kansas City. He learned his political trade from his elder brother, who considered that politics was war in the rough and tumble of elections where forward planning was far more important than political ideology. Younger brother Tom was less combative and more creative than Jim, realising that cutting deals with prospective opponents, and thereby stacking odds in his favour, was a preferable course. From 1916, when Pendergast won overall control of the Kansas City Democrats, he broadened that power by extending his machine into all city wards, even those controlled by Republicans.4 As well as providing welfare to the poor, the Pendergast machine provided services to the middle classes, including the promotion of political clubs, social clubs and even bowling leagues. Pendergast was not an old- time boss of pre-World War I years in the strict sense because “his power came from 2 Lawrence H. Larsen and Nancy J. Hulston. Pendergast. (Columbia, Missouri. 1997. University of Missouri Press.) p.182. 3 William M. Reddig. Tom’s Town. Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend. (Columbia. 1986. University of Missouri Press.) p. 202. 4 For more on the power struggle between Pendergast and rival Joe Shannon, see Chapter 4, pages 116 and 117. 7 serving an extremely broad-based and complex constituency.”5 His system of neighbourhood patronage, whereby both existing and new residents received benefits in the form of facilities, infrastructure, employment opportunities and policing in exchange for the electoral support that was necessary to keep him in power, walked a fine line between efficient provision of services, political opportunism, and outright protectionism.
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