The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-04-08

Cne Garner Democrats can
 He is Lloyd c. Stark, governor of Missouri, but if you are familiar with the Stark Delicious" apple which his father developed, you may have heard more of him as a nurseryman than as a politician.
 On the political side, however, Lloyd Stark is now one of the foremost governors in the Middle West, and it is significant that he got that way by a campaign closely paralleling Dewey's. Where Dewey stormed the walls of Tam many, Democratic stronghold of New York, Governor Stark took on the famous Pendergast machine in Kansas City. And he has made that machine look even more sick and bedraggled than the Tam many tiger.
 FRANTIC PENDERGAST
 A lot of national significance surrounds the moves of Governor Stark and his foes, one of the most important being the visit which Jim Pendergast, nephew of venerable Boss Tom Pendergast, laid to Washington at the end of last month.
 Not many people knew 1t, but Jim Pendergast was ready to deliver Missouri's delegates at the 1940 Democratic Convention to a New Deal candidate, if Roosevelt, in turn, would call off the d0gs-the dobs being the horde of G-men and income tax sleuths that has copverged upon Kansas City, all sicced on the Pendergast machine by Cover nor Stark of Missouri.
 It so happens that Roosevelt is more anxious to win control of the Democratic Conventoin in 1940 than to get almost any other thing in life-not for himself, but to nominate New Dealer. So he is not throwing away dele gates.
 COLD SHOULDER
 However, Jim Pendergast and Otto "Oney" Higgins, Kansas City police chief who also went to Washington, travelled up and down Pennsylvania avenue, ringing doorbells, and the nearest they ever got to the Great White Throne was Jim Farley. Moreover, no one around the throne would see them.
 Attorney General Murphy, who had sent the G-men to Kansas City, remained cold and aloof. Henry Morgenthau, in charge of the income tax sleuths, was equal ly so. The Kansas City boys got absolutely nowhere.
 Moral to this incident is two- fold:
 l. The Roosevelt administration
 is friendly to Stark, already is
 aware of his potentialities as a
 dark horse compromise between
 the two branches of the Dem-
 ocratic party.
 ?. Roosevelt is cutting loose from
 powerful local machines such
 as Tammany in New York, Pen- dergast in Kansas City, and Cur
 ley in Boston.
 This is an important departure. For Roosevelt's victories in 1892 and 1886 were built in part upon the Farley technique of getting the support of, say, Boss Hague in Jersey City at election time, then staring righteously away from Jersey City elections. STARK vS BOSS TOM
 Governor Stark's fight with Tom Pendergast began with a quarrel over the reappointment of R. E. OMalley, head of the state in- surance department and a staunch Pendergast man. Stark refused to take orders from the Kansas City boss, issued an ultimatum that he was running his own ad- ministration, and fired OMalley. The fight was on.
 Stark has now disclosed an unsav0ry $447 ,000 insurance slush fund with which O'MaIley and Pendergast were entangled, and the subsequent story, which grows more Itrid day by day, has rocked the state.
 During the fight, Judge Allen c. Southern instituted a grand jury investigation of gambling houses in Kansas City. and seized gambling equipment operating un- der the noses of Police Chief Hig- gins and the Pendergasts. Follow ing this, gambling operators were