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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.