MISSOURI: Vote of Confidence

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State. As the master of a solid bloc of faithful votes. Tom Pendergast has long been the No. 1 Democrat of his State. But in 1932 St. Louis' Bennett Champ Clark went to the Senate without his help and Boss Pendergast has since had to sign a working agreement to claim patronage only in the western half of the State. The truce has lately been strained, to the dis pleasure of Tom Pendergast. First strain came when young Maurice Milligan, whose Brother Jacob was defeated by Pendergast's Harry Truman for the Senate, was appointed U. S. Attorney for the western district of Missouri with Senator Clark's help and began the campaign to clean up the city's voting which culminated in the celebrated indictment of 199 Pendergast heelers for fraud. Then Governor Lloyd Crow Stark, a prosperous nurseryman elected with Pendergast support, unexpectedly rebelled by appointing a new election board of whose four members, Tom Pendergast howled, only one was a "real Democrat." This year, when President Roosevelt reappointed District Attorney Milligan over Harry Truman's lone Senate dissent, many a Missourian concluded that the nation's No. 1 Democrat was promoting a revolutionary realignment in Missouri's Democracy in which Tom Pendergast would definitely take second place.

Although Boss Pendergast announced after the 1936 campaign that active management of his machine would thenceforth rest in the hands of Nephew James Michael Pendergast, he has by no means relinquished his duties as policy maker. Day after last week's election, Democrat Pendergast, after exclaiming that "this is a better tonic than a carload of medicine," indicated that he might be a more stub born obstacle to Democrats Clark and Roosevelt than optimists might think. Having invited reporters into his office for one of his rare interviews, the old boss announced that he was going on the warpath and that his first victim would be faithless Lloyd Crow Stark, should he be a candidate for re-election in 1940.

Roared Boss Tom Pendergast, jabbing the air with his mighty forefinger: "I have never done a thing in my life except support Democratic officials to the best of my ability. I have not received that kind of consideration from Governor Stark. ... If his conscience is clear, I know mine is. I now say let the river take its course."