Little Tammany

Sprawled across the sidewalk in front of a Kansas City polling place lay the body of William Findley, Negro election worker, blood on his face, a bullet in his brain, spats on his feet.

Slumped in a heap lay Lee Flacy, deputy sheriff, pumped full of buckshot. To his bride of a fortnight went news of her widowhood by radio: "A shooting at 5824 Swope Parkway--Lee Flacy killed--."

A mortal head wound crumpled Larry Cappo, sleek little gangster, onetime prizefighter, night-club headwaiter, in the back of a wrecked sedan.

Few doors away Pascal Oldham, 78, hardware merchant, was locking up his store when he turned to see a car flash by, to hear guns crackle. A stray bullet drilled clean through his head. Hours later he died in a hospital.

Slugged and beaten with blackjacks, brass knuckles, gun-butts and baseball bats were a housewife, a Kansas City Star newshawk, a candidate for the City Council, a chauffeur, a policeman, and five other persons.

Such was last week's score in Kansas City's municipal election. When blackjacks were pocketed and votes were counted, Kansas Citizens knew the worst: The Fusion attempt to break the rule of Boss Thomas Joseph ("Big Tom") Pendergast's Democratic machine had failed. Re-elected by a 59,566 plurality was Boss-backed Mayor Bryce Byram Smith, a mild-mannered baking company official in his spare time. Defeated was Dr. Albert Ross Hill, 64, anti-Boss Democrat, onetime (1908-20) president of the University of Missouri, holder of a dozen college degrees and author of The Epistemological Function of the "Thing in Itself" in Kant's Philosophy.

Thus ended Kansas City's hope of a municipal New Deal, as represented by the Citizens-Fusion ticket put forth by the National Youth Movement. Founded a year ago by a small group of young, public-spirited citizens, the National Youth Movement aimed to depose the Pendergast machine as Tammany had been deposed in New York and the Vare machine in Philadelphia.

For all its defeat the Citizens-Fusion party could look with some pride on the past, some hope to the future. It had won two of the nine seats in the City Council. With no Seabury as Grand Inquisitor, with no LaGuardia to dramatize the issue, it had managed to present to the electorate these facts and allegations: Twenty-five members of the police department have criminal records, and the acting chief had served a term in the penitentiary; burglary insurance rates are the highest of any city in the country; Conrad Mann, president of the Chamber of Commerce and good friend of Herbert Hoover, was saved from serving five months in a Federal House of Detention on a lottery conviction by a pardon from President Roosevelt (TIME, Nov. 27).

Other charges: 1) Sworn affidavits testified to 8,000 "ghost" voters; 2) gambling and vice are wide open in Kansas City; 3) it is notorious as a hangout for the criminal riff-raff of the Midwest; 4) Desperado Harvey Bailey was arrested while playing on one of the city's best golf courses; 5) Verne Miller had played in a foursome with Police Director E. C. Reppert shortly before he machine-gunned to death four State and Federal officers in Kansas City's Union Station plaza last June;* 6) the $200,000 payoff in the Urschel kidnapping case took place on a Kansas City boulevard; 7) City Manager Henry F. McElroy's daughter Mary was kidnapped almost from under his nose last July and ransomed for $30,000 (TIME, July 24, et seq.).

Leader of the National Youth Movement is Joseph C. Fennelly, 29, native of Kansas City, educated at the University of Virginia, vice president of a paint company. Tall, slender, blond, an expert golfer, he is married, has one son. Germ of the movement was born five years ago when five young businessmen who knew nothing of government or politics sat around a fireside in Fennelly's home discussing the local situation. The young men of Cincinnati had cleaned up their city. Why could the young men of Kansas City not do the same? Then & there they decided ''that boss control would remain as long as the young men and women sat quietly at home and allowed the bosses to rule." Out they went to build up ''a fighting organization of younger men and women to whip the bosses in Kansas City." Thousands of members were enrolled and a State charter obtained.

Average age of the Youth Movement leaders is about 30. Its organization is permanent and hopes to become nationwide. Slogan of the party in the last campaign was: "Give the charter a chance," based on the fact that Kansas City's charter, adopted in 1926, was designed to create a non-partisan local government, but failed to do so. Termed "young radicals" by the opposition, the Citizens-Fusionists were charged with being a mask for the Republican party seeking to work against President Roosevelt. For its campaign slogans the Pendergast machine took: ''A vote for us is a vote for Roosevelt," and "Stand by the President."

Little Tammany is not so little. Founded in 1898 by the late Jim Pendergast, oldtime saloonkeeper, its control stretches from the Governor at Jefferson City to the policeman on the corner. Jim Pendergast's memory is kept green by a bronze statue with cherubs at his feet, commemorating his civic virtue. Upon Brother Tom, who looks like a Nast cartoon of Bossism personified, has devolved the more important duty of preserving the organization. His control of Kansas City and Jackson County is undisputed. Every county officer is obligated to him, virtually every State officer owes his job to Pendergast support, and he personally lifted Governor Guy Brasfield Park from an obscure rural judgeship to the State House in 1933. Boss Pendergast finds politics "good business," supports a string of racehorses with his profits.

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.

Softspoken, never given to profanity, he is a teetotaler, plays neither golf nor cards, accepts no invitations to banquets, luncheons, conventions. His success he attributes to friends among the poor. Annually at Christmas he feeds 5,000 Democrats' mouths. Always he carries a pocketful of 25-c- pieces which he hands out to Kansas City bums who are useful on Election Day. Rich and full of honors, he lives in a fashionable $100,000 mansion which burglars once robbed of $150,000 worth of loot including 480 pairs of silk stockings from his daughter Marceline's trousseau. Again & again he says: "I'm just an ordinary fellow who was able to keep his word."

*Four days after Election Director of Police Reppert resigned under fire, told newshawks: "I have no apologies to make. . . . Statistics will prove crime has been reduced 45%."

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