By Robert H. Ferrell
No component of the political occupation of Harry S. Truman used to be extra fraught with drama than his courting with Thomas J. Pendergast. in a single in their earliest conferences, the 2 males have been momentarily at odds after Truman, who used to be then presiding pass judgement on of Jackson County, gave a $400,000 highway agreement to a building corporation in South Dakota, and Pendergast, the boss of Kansas urban, wasn't more than happy approximately it. He had another individual in brain for the agreement. Their organization therefore had its disagreements, yet their universal curiosity in politics used to be sufficient to set up an enduring relationship.In 1934, after contemplating fourteen different males, Pendergast subsidized Truman for the Senate. even though Truman had frequently cooperated with Pendergast on patronage concerns, he had by no means concerned himself within the illegalities that might finally smash the Pendergast computer. in truth, Truman had no notion how deeply the Boss had engaged in corruption in his own affairs, in addition to in handling the govt. of Kansas urban. whilst the Boss was once despatched to Leavenworth for tax evasion in 1939, Truman used to be astonished.Despite Truman's honesty, his courting with Pendergast virtually prompted his defeat through the Missouri senatorial basic in August 1940. the most challenger for Truman's Senate seat was once the formidable governor of Missouri, Lloyd C. Stark, who after destroying Truman's sponsor, the Pendergast computer, denounced Truman as "the Pendergast senator." at the back of the governor was once President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Stark grew to become opposed to Truman. Roosevelt sought after Missouri's electoral votes in his approaching bid for a 3rd time period, and he believed that Stark may possibly provide them to him.Because of the stigma of Truman's Pendergast connection, the 1940 Democratic basic used to be the tightest election in his whole political profession. He received by way of fewer than 8 thousand votes. In Truman and Pendergast, Robert H. Ferrell masterfully offers Truman's fight to maintain his Senate seat with out the help of Pendergast and regardless of Stark's enlistment of Roosevelt opposed to him. Ferrell exhibits that Truman gained the election in his standard fashion—going on to the folks, conversing in truth and prefer one in all them.
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A few days later he was convinced that Clark and Pendergast were together, against Stark and the president. In a letter of November 1, 1937, the governor asked him and his wife to stay at the governor’s mansion at the first opportunity. ”12 38 / Truman and Pendergast During these distractions—his indifferent if not hostile reception in Washington, the uneasy relationship with the governor—there was another development, this time in Kansas City, where horrendous vote frauds during the November election of 1936 had come into view.
The Republican candidate for governor in 1936, Jesse W. Barrett, analyzed the reason for his defeat by Stark: I see my total vote has gone to 772,000. No Republican ever got that much before except Caulfield. He received 784,000 and we called it a great landslide. Hyde was elected by 720,000. Sam Baker’s vote was only 640,000, yet it was sufficient to elect. 15 The reason for overexertion by the machine in 1936 was probably the absence of Pendergast until mid-September, because of a heart attack suffered the second day of the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia, which opened on June 23.
There even was a habeas corpus committee, which cared for members of the organization arrested for some alleged violation of the law that was only a device to get them off the streets during campaigns. Until home rule came in for the city police department in 1932, the police were under the control of whoever was governor in Jefferson City; throughout the 1920s and down to Collapse of the Machine / 39 the installation of Governor Park in 1933, Missouri’s governors were Republicans. During the early period of the machine and in the 1920s there undoubtedly was some cheating at the polls.
