With the help of our spectrum Cable Partners well explore the citys history and literary community, beginning with author pat oneill on the history of irish immigrants and how they helped build kansas city in what it is today. One of my Favorite Places in the whole cold is browns market run by john and john mcclain and cary brown. And they start the business in the late 1880s. Irish style. The oldest continual Retail Operation in west of the mississippi, maybe in the whole world. But browns is kind of our community center. One of those great Little CornerNeighborhood Grocery stores where people are extended credit in the neighborhood, people came here for generations, and its now kind of the same thing. People come here just to gossip and compare notes notes and head kids. So, its a much like a small town Crossroads Store in ireland. The title of the book, from the bottom up, its in the sense that in kansas city, were along the rivers, and the Missouri River in the kansas river and it creates this river bottom land where a lot of the eye issue immigrants first lived because it was inexpensive and lived in shanties along the river. Eventually worked their way up the hill to the bluff, top of the bluffs, and so physically they moved up and also came up the social ladder at the same time. So from the bottom up just kind of means both geographically and socially. In the 1850s kansas city was a muddy little riverfront community, storehouses and shanties and shawn eindians and half breeds and a lot of french traders, and but a tiny hundreds of souls. The priest that was assigned to this area, actually had a he traversed an area called it his parish and likened to a small european kingdom. Went for 300miles one way and 150 miles another way. When he settled in scans city party and the church on the hill he was part of the Civic Community that was trying to expand the estimate when you have 150foot bluffs along the river you cant agent shelf of a town in order to expand the town you have to go through the limestone bluffs. So he put out a call, father donnelly, put out a call and put advertisements in boston and new york and the irish papers, and he advertised for laborers, and skilled tradesmen to come to kansas city. Theyd pay your fare and guarantee a job and place to live to help cut the streets. They made like a dollar a day to carve these streets, sometimes 80foot deep through the bluffs. That was the genesis of the irish population in kansas city, which hundreds of immigrants responded, mostly from baltimore, boston, new york, along the coast. The irish that dime kansas city in 1850s there were hubs of them. They were mostly male, women followed, kids followed, but they were brought here for the very simple reason, to wield the pick and shovel and cut the straights they but, cisterns, foundations for buildings, latrines, they put up brick, put up stone, stonemasons. They put kansas city is built on limestone, there are caverns where we sit right now, underground caves carved out of the limestone, now used for storage and office space. The irish that would book around the see and see the foundations of homes and walls, primarily irish stone masons who built that. From Union Station to Liberty Memorial to the basement of my house. We were stockyards, a major stockyard operation so they were cutting the throats of cattle, cutting them into steaks and putting them on the railroad, and the guy driving the train was irish, the guy oiling the train was irish. Those kinds of jobs that brought the irish to kansas city, and really they built the city. The American Protective Association, which i out of clinton, iowa, was a very ian irish, antiimmigrant sort of group because irish were coming across the country and settling in on the railroad jobs and those kinds of something, and and before you knew i they were taking on the city halls of clinton, iowa, and place inside the midwest. There was pushback then, but the irish population was burgeoning. By 1870 almost ten percent of the population was irish born, so they were able to there were conflicts, some violence, killings between the American Protective Association deputies, and local eye wish politicians that were ward healers, and that was in the 1890s, and then as we grew past the century mark and coming into world war i, thats when the penter gast dynasty was established. Jim pen at the gast. His parents were from ireland carriages from a big family of brothers and sisters and work as in ironworks in kansas city, and the store is it is true he liked to gamble on the horses. And he won a bet on a horse named climax, and with those wings he open a saloon and a boring house on the west bottoms where the irish lived, along the river, among the shanty houses and boarding houses and the train station, and did very well. He was considered a up, very positive sort of guy, very honest guy, he held a lot of the old immigrants money in their saloon, he was their banker because they didnt trust banks. He wanted to take young men in and deencouragement of their parents to take the pledge and quit drinking. He was hugely poplar . He upon encouraged to run as alderman, city councilman, and he won and continued to win, until the until he tied in 1914. He built up a trust among the poor, especially, because he did it the oldfashioned way. Todays politicians promise platitudes and these just things they can never deliver. He delivered with coal when you needed it. Talked to immigrant sons and grandparents and grandsons and granddaughters of immigrants who said he paid fortune road. Their Little Brothers and sisters when they died young, all the diseases and all the different malady that would take young lives in the early 1900s and he would deliver coal to people who were freezing in the winter. And so those kinds of things, in return for votes. He built this gigantic political dynasty in kansas city, comparable to curley in boston or to hogue in philadelphia, and that lasted up until the 30s. And unlike his brother, big jim, tom had more of a penchant for race horses and betting, and in fact it took him down the path into really tax evasion and all kinds of issues that sent him to prison eventually, and then the political dynasty crumbled. That political dynasty there was accusations of corruption but you didnt hear of a lot of violence associate with the irish political structure. There was patronage was rampant, and giving people something they needed, not just latitude but giving them jobs, giving them coal, giving them funds when the tragedy occurred in the family. So, it was built on benevolence and, yes, built on selfinterest. But by the same token, when you people and the era of prohibition, the stakes got higher and higher in terms of the underworld, if you will, and i think thats really when the irish started to lose their grip on the political system, was probably in the depression, even though that was their at the highest because they were providing jobs and whatnot, but when they were losing on the other end during prohibition, because the stakes were so high for sugar, for bootlegged whiskeys, that thats really when the italian element began to take over that part of the vice in the city, and thati think the irish backed away from the violence of that ear remark might have but our cousin and our second cousin and his cousin on the payroll at the county courthouse but we werent killing shooting people at the polls and werent burning cars and that kind of thing. Not to dont want to denigrate the italians but the mafia influence came into kansas city, which Everybody Knows became a major, major, really you look at the irish political structure, the irish didnt have quite the penchant for force to get a perspective on this, the evolution of kansas city. People think kansas city is horses and buggies and cows, but Kansas City Started out when the irish first arrived here, there was like 500 people, half of them were halfbreens, fullbreed red indians, africanamericans, french, a melting pot, and melting in the sense you were practically melting in the mud because there are were no streets, right along the river, steep roads in clay, and it smelled. It was people were dirty, people were it was to build out of that core, the irish basically helped build this, put stone down on the streets, built the buildings, put the bricks together, put out the fires, started and stopped the fights as policemen. We did those kind of things. The irish came into a little bowl of mud, essentially, with some shacks, and turned it into a city, and im very proud of that. Foundered in 1873, the Kansas City Public Library is the Oldest Library system in the area. Come inside with us as we see the special collections of tom bendergast. Well more than about his rise to power and impact on the city. He the political machine got the start from toms older brother, Jim Pendergast, who came to kansas . I 1880s and got started establishing this machine and the first ward of conditions city in the industrial west bottom, down by the river. There were many theres an irish community, africanamerican community, very diverse. A lot of working class people. And Jim Pendergast had saloons and he had he went basically precinct to precinct, building this machine that was based on favors. Basically. Helping people get jobs in exchange for votes, helping people through giving them loans you didnt have to get a formal bank loan, and jim would loan the money, settle gambling debts, skimming money off of the top of illegal activities such as gambling and prostitution and so on. And when Jim Pendergast was getting older, his health was failing, and his younger brother, Tom Pendergast, good at started in the machine around the 1900s. He was elect city alderman and was in charge of streets for a few years in the early 1900s. And Tom Pendergast really was in a position to take over the machine by the time that jim died in 1911. And a political machine, its basically i started to describe it with the act of doing favors in exchange for votes. When you boil it down to its base elements, thats what it amounted to. Its being tied into organized crime and other elicit activities, taking bribes and kickbacks. And using influence to make sure that your preferred candidates are elected, and then once you control the city government, by 1925, the pendergast machine had full control over the city, they had five out of Nine City Council members were handpicked by Tom Pendergast. Through the City Council Day appointed Henry Mcelroy, city manager, and the city manager position was really more powerful than any other position in kansas city at the time, and so Henry Mcelroy is manager, was in charge of the daytoday operations of the city, and reformers hoped the manage were be this professional, kind of just takes care of business in proper ways, but since he was pander gasts man, it was very improper, and whenever they did City Construction projects, mcelroy would make sure that the contracts wend to companies that were owned by Tom Pendergast, and pendergast owned mostly construction companies. There was basically everything from quarries to cement to there was a redimix, that company is one of his big ones. He had insurance companies. He had liquor companies, of course, which at least officially they changed to Beverage Companies during prohibition at the time, and so all of these city contracts went through mcelroy to back to pendergast, and the gets the money. So theres this circle of money that piepowder gast is always getting his cuts and the moon would get their custs and in exchange he gets votes. On election days they can pay people to vote. They can bill date vote for the opposition or bring out their own voters the election of 1934, for example, there were four People Killed at the polling sites by pendergasts ward healers, and the way they were able to do this through power and money is they can get away with it because, after four people were killed and 11 injured, people demand that the governor call out the National Guard and come in and reestablish order in kansas city. Well, who would do that . The governor of missouri, guy park. Well, park himself was a pendergast crony. So the power went statewide by the 19 by 1932, when he got guy park elected. And they had influence for the state of missouri, representation at the Democratic National convention, in the 1930s, pendergast eventually selected truman to be senator from missouri. He was elected in a statewide vote, and but at this point, through pendergasts i believe the that he could produce about 70,000 fraudulent or ghost votes in any given election at this time. So theres the sheer number of votes that he could produce out of kansas city that we be tallied and they were official, whether they were real or not. He had the power to do this, and he had plenty of support. Pendergasts machine affiliates could win elections, even without stuffing ballot boxes, because they gave people jobs. They built infrastructure throughout the city. They had roads. They had if you look walk around the city today, you can see this courthouse still there, municipal auditorium, 10,000 seats. Still there. By 1932, on top of the world. Sending delegates to Democratic National convention. He had senators, governor of missouri, a big portion of the state legislature, and pendergast himself had a gambling addiction, specifically horse racing. So, at some point he racked inseveral hundred thousand dollars in bets thats 1930s Great Depression era dollars, several hundred thousand dollars gambling debts, and he needed to raise even more money than his corrupt machine could raise to pay off these gambling debts. Eventually in the late 30s, 1937 or 38 he got involved in insurance kickback scheme, and actually the scheme, its not clear whether he broke the law with the scheme itself. Im not a lawyer so i cant explain that. Where he ran into trouble is he didnt report the income to the irs for income tax on his tax returns. So, just like alka opinion, al condition capone it was the irs that caught up with pendergast and he was indicted in 1939 and went to jail in leavenworth, at the federal penitentiary. Pendergast was nothing by this opinion, by 1945, and pendergast died of natural causes. Truman came to this funeral. Truman, who just became Vice President , came to the funeral of Tom Pendergast during wartime, on a military plane. A big controversy. And weeks later, roosevelt died, and truman was president of the United States. So truman could never completely distance himself from his background with the machine, and he owned it. He said that pendergast always kept his word, and he wasnt going to abandon his friend. So what were trying to do is complicate that history and ive done a little bit of that in this interview, but we are building a web site that will include currently we have 9,500 scans of original documents. We have photographs, letters that people have written to one another back then. I mentioned the court cases that unveiled voter fraud and other crime. And its an interactive web site that will combine the original documents with new scholarship so we have we reached out in 2015 to 18 different professors, who were either museum professional or historians, who have produced fulllength articles that they would go on a book theres some new ideas in there or new topics that just havent been explored in any kind of depth before this. Were taking web site versions of those, a little shorter, gordon to the public audiences, and those will go on the web site. Everything is going he linked together so when youre reading the essay you can click and see the documents that support the research. You can go read the court case that put pendergast in jail, and its not as dry as a Typical Court case might sound when you think about everything going on at the time. So we are basically those are the elements of the web site. It will look Something Like this when the graphics are finished. We have eight or nine different categories of topics were covering. So theres machine politics, organized crime and reform, economic doom, depression, recovery, kansas city jazz, prohibition, labor and industry, Race Relations, communities and neighborhoods, womens rights. Weve got an awful lot, obviously, but the scope is focusing on pendergast and the machine, and then exploring all of the implications of machine rule in kansas city, especially in the 1920s and 30s at their peak. So when we look at georgia, were mostly interested in jazz from the perspective of the machine, how did the machine enable a culture of nightclubs and people called it the wideopen town at the time. Kansas city was the original sin city before vegas, basically. So, were looking at that as aspect. How everything ties together. Makes sense to do this digital platform. You can do a lot of things on a web site you cant do in a book. Were developing ward maps. Its using google, showing the wards. You can click and see the first ward and thats where Tom Pendergast came from. Thats where they got their start. And you can see the other machine bosses, and be able to click and good back to the documents and be able to go from documents to essays, back to maps. Theres a timeline. We might be able to create some kind of line maps that shows connection us within the machines to visual