Conversation we will take your calls, tweets and facebook questions. Watch in depth whip cornyn west and Robert George live today from noon to 3 p. M. Eastern on booktv on cspan2. Welcome to kansas city, missouri, on booktv locator on eastern banks banks of the Missouri River this one small Frontier Town went on to establish itself help of a booming livestock and railroad industry. As the city grew immigrants flocked to find work. Without of our spectrum Cable Partners for the next hour and 15 as well as for cities history and literary community. We say it the oldest continual Retail Operation west of the economy be in the whole world. But its kind of our community center, one of the corner Neighborhood Grocery stores where people are extending credit in the neighborhood come and people came here for generations and its now the same thing, people come here to gossip and compared notes and help and kids and all those things come as so its like a small town Crossroads Store in ireland. In this sense than in kansas city we are along the river and so it creates this river bottomland for a lot of the irish immigrants first is because it is inexpensive and eventually they worked their way up the hill to the top of the blast sent so physically they moved to and it also came with the social ladder at the same time. Both geographically and socially. In the 1850s, and just a little muddy Riverfront Community of storehouses and shanties in shawnee indians and half breeds and a lot of french traders, but it was tiny little the priests that was assigned to this area, he called it his parish and he likened it to a small european kingdom they went to 300 miles one way in 150 miles another way. When he started a church on the hill, he was part of the Civic Community in 1850s trying to expand the city. When you have 150foot busts along the river, the little shelf at the time in order to expand you have to go through the lines and so he put out put out a call and put advertisements in boston and new york in the irish papers in the advertised for laborers, and skilled tradesmen to come to kansas city and pay your fair to come here and guarantee you a job in a place to live to hope that the streets and those guys made a dollar a day to card the streets, sometimes 80 feet deep through these blogs then that was the genesis of the irish population in kansas city, which hundreds of immigrants responded from baltimore, boston come along the coast. The irish came to kansas city in 1850s and there were hundreds of them. Mostly male, women followed, but they were brought here for the very simple reason to wield the pick and shuttle. They dug cisterns, foundations for buildings, latrine, stone masons, kansas city is built on limestone. There are caverns underneath where we sit right now, underground caves carved out of the limestone now used for storage and office space. You will see the foundation of homes and walls primarily irish stonemasons who built that in Union Station to the basement of my house. And we were a stockyard separately on an eastern europeans came and they are cutting throats of cattle and putting them on the railroad and a guy driving the train was irish could the guy or the guy or leave the train was irish. It is those kinds of jobs they brought the irish to kansas city and really they built the city. The American Protective Association proclinton, ios and irish antiimmigrant sort of crew because irish were coming across the country settling in on this railroad jobs in those kinds of things and before you know that they were taking a repulsive clinton, iowa and most places in the midwest and there is pushed back then that the errors population was burgeoning to kansas city. The 1870s there was 10 was irish born and so there was conflicts, violence and killing and deputies and local irish populations, healers essentially and that was in the 90s and then as we grew, into world war i the pending house was established. His parents were from ireland and he came from a big family of brothers and sisters. When he came here come the work in iron works in kansas city and it is true he liked to gamble on the horses and he won a bet on a horse named climax and what does climax and with those leniency opened a saloon in a boarding house in the west bottoms along the shantytowns in boarding houses and train station and all that and did very well. He was considered a very positive sort of guy, and on his sky. He held a lot of the old immigrants monday in a saloon, use kind of their baker because he didnt trust banks. He was the one to take young men with the encouragement of their parents to take the pledge to quit drinking. He was very hugely popular and he was encouraged to run as a city councilman and the one and he continued to win until he died in 1914. He built up a trust among the poorer especially because he did it the oldfashioned way. Todays politicians from the things he could never deliver coming it delivered with cold when you needed it. Sounds an grand parents and grandsons and granddaughters of immigrants who said he paid for the funerals of their Little Brothers and sisters when he died young of all the diseases in different maladies that 30s. Unlike his brother, tom had more for resources embedding to take him down a path to tax evasion and issues that sent him to prison and the political dynasty crumbled. But it didnt they were accusations of corruption, but you didnt hear of a lot of Violence Associated with the irish political structure. The patronage was rampant, but by the same token week is something they need. Not just platitudes, but jobs, poll, funds when the tragedy occurred in the family. It was built on benevolent thin built on selfinterest. But by the same token, when he came into the era of prohibition from the stakes got higher and higher in terms of the underworld if you will and may think that is really when the irish started losing their grip on the political system was probably in the depression, even though that is at the highest because you provide jobs and whatnot. They were losing it on the other entering prohibition because again this takes were so high for sugar for bootleg whiskeys that is really when the italian element began to take over that part of device in the city and may think the irish back away from the violence in that era. We might have put our cousin and her second husband and his cousin on the payroll at the county courthouse, but we were killing, shooting people at the polls that we were earning cars in that kind of thing. I dont want to denigrate the tieins, but the mafia influence came in to kansas city, which everybody knows, you look at the segue right into the italian civilian control and so i think the irish didnt help quite a pension for force. To get a perspective on all of this is the abolition of kansas city. They are still misunderstood by most people who fly over it and they think its its horses and buggies and callous. But it started out with the irish first arrived here, there was like 500 people, half of them were halfbreed indianas, fulbright indianas, africanamericans, french, a melting pot in the sense youre practically melted in the mud because there were no streets right along the river. Steve rhodes of clay and it smelled. You know, people were dirty. And to build out is that couric on the irish basically helped build this. They put stone down on the streets, build the buildings, put the bricks together, put out the fires come is started and stopped besides, policemen, did all those kinds of things. The irish came into a little hole is not essentially with some shacks and turned it into a city and im very proud of that. Founded in 1873, Kansas City Public Library is the oldest in the area. Come inside with us is to see the collections of Tom Pendergrass consider the political boss of the area. We learn more about his rise to power and impact of the city. He was the political machine of kansas city from control in the team 25 to 1939. But that his older brother who came to kansas city in the teen 80s and i started establishing this machine in the first word of kansas city was in the industrial west down by the river. There is an irish community, African American community, very diverse. A lot of working class people in Jim Pendergrass had saloons and he had 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 that you didnt have to get a formal bank loan and jim were blowing the money, settle in gambling debt, skimming money from illegal activities such as gambling and prostitution and so on and so forth and when he was getting older, his health was failing and his younger brother got started on the machine around the night 200, he was elected and was in charge of streets for a few years a few years and that really made 200 Tom Pendergrass really was in a position to take over the machine by the time june died in the teen allowed in. And a political machine i start 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 been tied into organized crime and other illicit a committees taking bribes and kickbacks in using influence to make sure that your preferred candidates are elected and wants to control the City Government in 1925, the machine had full control of over the city. They had five out of Nine City Council members handpicked, through the city council they 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 mock worry was in charge of the daytoday operations in the city and reformers had hoped the manager would be this professional kind of takes care of business and proper ways, but since he was a pendergrass man, it was very hurt. Whenever they did City Construction projects, not corey would make sure these projects went to companies that were owned by Tom Pendergrass and he owned mostly construction and companies. Basically everything from fuller used to use cement to a ready mix cement co. It was one of his big ones. He had the insurance companies, Liquor Companies of course, which at least officially they change to Beverage Companies during the prohibition of the time. So all of the city contracts went through mcelroy back to pendergrass to make it the money. There is the circle of money to do so is getting his cuts and people wanted in exchange she gets lots of votes on election days they can pay people to vote. They can hire what they call wort chiller is to go precinct by precinct and intimidate voters from the opposition or bring out their own voters, the election in the team 34, for example, there were four People Killed at the polling site on the way they were able to do this, through power and money as they can get away with it because after four people were killed and 11 were injured, people demanded the governor callout a National Guard and come in and reestablish order in kansas city. Who would do that . , the governor, parked himself was a crony. The power actually went statewide resume team by 1932 when he got elected and they had to close through the state of missouri rep syndication at the Democratic National convention in the 1930s, eventually select determined to be set under from missouri and he was select did in the statewide vote, but at this point, i believe the number whereas khomeini could produce about 70,000 fraudulent ghosts to vote and then he gives an election that is time. This is a sheer number of votes that he could produce out of kansas city that would be tallied and they were official whether they were real or not. He had the power to do this and he had plenty. Affiliates could win Elections Come at even without stuffing ballot boxes. They give people jobs. They build infrastructure throughout the city. They had rowed. If you walk around the city today, you can see the courthouse there. Municipal auditorium, 31932, on top of the world, sending delegates to the Democratic National convention, senator is, governor of missouri, and pendergast and selfguided gambling addiction, specifically horse racing. So at some point he racked up several hundred thousand dollars and thats the Great Depression era dollars. Several hundred thousand dollars of gambling that 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, and make team 37, eight, he got involved in insurance kickback scheme and actually the scheme, its not clear whether he broke the law with this scheme or not. Im not a lawyer so i cant explain that. Were he ran into trouble as he didnt report for income and tax on his tax returns. Pendergast was nothing by at this point and he died, natural causes. Truman came to his funeral. So he just became Vice President , came to the funeral of Tom Pendergast, during wartime, but a military plane, big controversy, and a week later, roosevelt died in truman was president of the United States. So truman could never completely distanced himself from his background to machine. And he owned it. He said that he always kept his word and he wasnt going to abandon his friend. So what we are trying to do is complicate that history and ive done a little bit of that in this interview, but we are building a website that will include currently we have about 9500 scans, mothers people of britain back then. Court cases on voter fraud and other crimes had been interact to website that will combine the original documents with new scholarship. So we reached out in 2015 to meet Team Different professors who were busy and professionals or historians who produce fulllength articles that they would go on the book. Theres some new ideas and their foreign new topics that just havent been explored in any depth before this. Were taking website versions before this coming cure to public audiences and these will go on the website. Everything will be linked together. When youre reading the essay, you can click and see the documents support the research. You can read the court case that the 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 website. It will look Something Like this. When the graphics are finished. We had eight or nine different categories of topics that we are covering. Theres machine politics, organized crime and reform, economic boom and discovery, kansas city jazz, prohibition, labor and industry, race relations, communities and neighborhoods, womens rights. Weve bitten off a lot obviously, but the scope is focusing on pendergast in the machine and then exploring all of the implications of machine will in kansas city, especially than it did 20 since 30s where they were at their peak. So when we look at jazz, we are mostly interested in jazz from the good of the machine. How did the machine enable a culture of nightclubs and people called it the wideopen town at the time that kansas city was the original sin city before vegas basically. So we are looking at that aspect however things ties together. It makes sense to do this digital platform. You can do a lot of things on a website that you cant do on a book. We are developing word maps. It is using google, showing the words hell be able to click to see the first word and that is where Tom Pendergast came from. That is where they got their start. He can see the other machines and to build a go back to the document and be able to go from documents, essays, back to maps, timelines. We might be able to create mind maps that shows connections within to visualize. It is really difficult to do any of that in his book in an interactive way that is an immersive experience and this gives people the opportunities to learn about the time. Or cspan city tours continues on booktv. Up next, devin fergus on wealth inequality in the u. S. As he talks about his book from the land of the free, hidden cost and decline of the american middle class. Pigment rendered very good provided is basically what in effect a fee is. For much of the recent history 20th century, we start is covering in administrative costs, specified admin is treated cost. So you go in there is a price for what you have to pay for them but the drivers license to cover the cost with nominal revenue or profit, but increasingly fees have been used to as a form of profit straight and thats the material difference i say in the recent development. No longer to cover revenue cost expenses, but its a form of revenue profit for government and the private sector. We see it really take off in the 1970s company can 80s. You may also hear about fees and hotel fees. My research and face looks fairly different because primarily in the Consumer Financial industry and rises fees in three areas which are central to upper mobility in america housing to education, employment from home, to school, to work, transportation. So these sort areas of upward mobility of postwar america, we also see incredible rises fees and financial expense to in those areas. Thats a student loan. Then again, talking about fees, but fees are part of a larger expense for the Student Loans. Theres tax to that, delinquency fees coming of pale date, but hes designed to pay tuition and i think in the u. K. They call it tuition fees because that is what it is. It is a tuition fee at that cost. For the average student on fire, they, 28, 30,000 in