THE RIGHT ANSWERS.(mail)

Q. What kind of an organization was the Pendergast "machine" when it backed Harry Truman for office? Was there ever any doubt that Truman was part of the machine?

-L.A., McKeesport, Pa.

A. Archetypal machine politician Tom Pendergast, who ran Kansas City with a proverbial iron hand, aided Harry Truman's political rise at virtually every step. The machine's official name was the Jackson Democratic Club, and Truman served as its vice president for more than 20 years and even continued to pay dues from the White House.

Truman remained loyal to the boss. Indeed, when Harry's maneuverings couldn't halt the indictment of Pendergast for income-tax evasion in 1939, the then-U.S. Senator from Missouri expressed his sorrow and said, "I will not desert a ship that is sinking." Shortly thereafter, Pendergast pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

Truman did not deny his long connection to the Pendergast gang. As he bragged to the AF of L in Kansas City, when he was running for national office in 1944: "I am a Jackson County organization Democrat and proud of it! That is the way I got to be a county judge, a senator and the candidate for Vice President."

The machine was involved in more than politics. It also owed much of its success to an underworld boss named John Lazia, who employed such enforcers as the notorious Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd. The machine also owed much, wrote longtime reporter Gene Powell, "to organized vice; to gang killings and gang coercion of businessmen; to padded registration lists; to commercialized prostitution; to the corruption of police departments and other law officials; to organized gambling - all of which made up Tom's 'practical business of politics.'"

While Truman personally "may never have taken a single dime of the county's money," said Powell in Tom's Boy Harry (1948), "he did see that Tom's companies got the county contracts. While Harry may never have taken a cent of the red money from commercialized prostitution, he never protested when such money was spent to elect him. While Harry may never have aided in the padding of registration lists, he accepted gladly the results of such padding to gain the nomination as United States Senator."