Kansas City History Blames Boss Tom For Spanish Flu Pandemic FAIL

Throughout the ages . . . Politics and immigrants have always been the scapegoat for sickness. 

Locals might also appreciate the mention of an old school icon and the old Irish mob if only to more accurately depict how discrimination, prejudices and hateration has always evolved across time . . . 

Check-it: 

“In the time of the flu, Kansas City was divided fifty-fifty between Joe Shannon, who was a Democrat, and Tom Pendergast, who was also a Democrat. They divided up the police department, the health department, the firemen. Everything that was a patronage job, they each got fifty percent. So when the flu starts, they aren’t able to get a good quarantine going.

“Tom Pendergast owns a lot of saloons. When you tell the police you’re going to close down the saloons, they go, ‘I’m not fighting Pendergast, he’s my guy.’ They ignore it. The Metropolitan Street Railway was owned by a big Democratic political leader and he didn’t want to shut down the railway. The more people you have crowded on that railway car, the more money you make. So everything that they tried got sidetracked by the fifty-fifty compromise. We had one of the worst responses in the country.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

How politics set up KC's disastrous Spanish Flu Epidemic | Kansas City Mag

How poisoned politics set up Kansas City's disastrous response to the Spanish flu epidemic back in 1918 by Susan Sykes Berry.