Harry Truman (18 page)

In Washington, my father did his utmost to get some help from the Roosevelt Administration. He went to see Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, who had numerous employees in Missouri and was highly regarded by farmers and others in the rural parts of the state. Ickes coldly informed him he supported Governor Stark. Over at the White House, Dad did his best to get through to the President and warn him Stark was wrecking the Democratic Party in the state of Missouri. He told him enough about Stark’s political style to lower considerably the warmth of the President’s letters to the governor.

By April 1940, FDR was telling my father that personally he would like to see him reelected. The President said he would see what he could do about persuading Stark to abandon the race. Charles Edison had recently resigned as Secretary of the Navy, and a few days after this April meeting between Dad and FDR, Stark called at the White House, and the President reportedly offered him Edison’s job. But Stark refused and later issued a statement denying the offer had been made. All told, the net result of this tough inside politicking was not too encouraging for my father. But he could console himself that he had eliminated the possibility of a Roosevelt endorsement for Stark.

Back in Missouri, Truman supporters from Jackson County were working out another political maneuver. Several of Dad’s good friends, such as Tom Evans, owner of Radio Station KCMO, went to Maurice Milligan and urged that gentleman to enter the race. They pointed out that Governor Stark was taking all the credit for putting Tom Pendergast in jail, when the real work had been done by Milligan and his assistants and the other federal investigators. Milligan already resented Stark’s grab for all the glory, and when he saw some of Harry Truman’s best friends urging him to run, he decided the senator was only going to make a token race. Why shouldn’t the real slayer of the Pendergast dragon become senator? Milligan asked himself. So, to Dad’s great but carefully restrained glee, Milligan entered the race on March 28.

In Washington, my father turned his attention to another source of potential help - labor. Reminding union chiefs of the support he had given their cause in his Senate votes, he asked them to come to his aid now. Multimillionaire Stark had shown himself no great friend of the laboring man while governor. Toward the end of May, Dad’s call for help received an enormously heartwarming response. Twenty-one railroad brotherhoods informed him they were ready to “go down the line for Truman.” They had 50,000 members in Missouri. Through their intercession, other Missouri labor groups pledged the support of 150,000 more workers.

But it was the railroad men who provided crucial assistance. Truman-for-Senator Clubs were set up in railroad stations throughout Missouri. Even more important was the chance they gave my father to reply to the smears and slanders being printed about him in most of the state’s newspapers. The brotherhoods created a special edition of their weekly newspaper,
Labor.
It was crammed with endorsements from labor leaders and other influential Missourians. The chaplain of the Missouri American Legion, Reverend Father M. F. Wogan, endorsed Senator Truman. Frank J. Murphy, secretary-treasurer of the state Federation of Labor, rated him “100 percent perfect” on social and labor questions during his Senate years. President William Green of the AFL applauded Senator Truman’s “very favorable record.” Dr. William T. Tompkins, president of the National Colored Democratic Association, was listed as general chairman of the Negro Division of the Truman Campaign Committee. He was a Kansas City man, incidentally, and a personal friend.

Most impressive, however, was the gallery of senators who contributed long enthusiastic statements in praise of my father. Alben Barkley of Kentucky, Robert F. Wagner of New York, James F. Byrnes of South Carolina were on the front page, and on inner pages were Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, Pat Harrison of Mississippi, Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma, Robert Reynolds of North Carolina, Tom Connally of Texas, and Vic Donahey of Ohio. Included in these names were some of the New Deal’s best-known spokesmen in the Senate. Anyone reading this list would certainly get the impression the Roosevelt Administration was backing Harry S. Truman. Lloyd Stark must have shuddered when 500,000 copies of this special edition poured into Missouri. Around the same time, the
Labor Tribune
of St. Louis was blasting the governor for ignoring the needs of Missouri’s workingmen.

My father was only starting to go to work on Governor Stark. On June 15, at Sedalia, in the center of the state, he kicked off his campaign with a superbly organized rally. Senator Lewis Schwellenbach of Washington was on hand to tell Missourians what his fellow senators thought of their friend Harry S. Truman. On the platform were representatives of Missouri’s Democratic Party from all parts of the state. Mamma Truman had a front row seat, sizing up politicians with her usual unerring eye. The little courthouse was decorated with huge pictures of Senator Truman and the candidate of the St. Louis Democrats for governor, Larry McDaniel. I sat on the platform with Mother. At sixteen, I was able to feel for the first time the essential excitement of American politics - the struggle to reach those people “out there” with ideas and emotions that will put them on your side.

The crowd was big, over 4,000, and very friendly. This was all the more impressive because the day before, Paris had surrendered to the Germans, and most people in Missouri, and in the rest of the country, were glued to their radios, listening to the greatest crisis of the century.

My father’s talk that day sounded all the themes he was to underscore throughout his campaign. He pointed to what the Roosevelt Administration had achieved for the laboring man; he talked about the defense program, for which he had voted and fought in the Senate. Events were now proving it to be vital to the nation’s salvation. Above all, he talked about the Democratic Party’s efforts to achieve equal opportunity for all Americans. By this, he made it clear, he also meant black Americans: “I believe in the brotherhood of man, not merely the brotherhood of white men but the brotherhood of all men before the law. . . . In giving the Negro the rights which are theirs we are only acting in accord with our ideals of a true democracy. . . . The majority of our Negro people find but cold comfort in shanties and tenements. Surely, as free men, they are entitled to something better than this. . . . It is our duty to see that the Negroes in our locality have increased opportunities to exercise their privilege as free men.”

With these words, my father was saying what he truly believed. In his years as county judge, he had done his utmost to place a fair proportion of black men on the public works payroll. This appeal to black voters also exploited a large chink in Governor Stark’s armor. In October 1939, the United Negro Democrats of Missouri had condemned the governor and refused to back him for United States senator. They accused him of wholesale dismissal of blacks from public office and castigated his support of a bill in the Missouri Legislature, which purported to create separate but equal graduate school and professional facilities at Lincoln University. In reality, the bill was a crude attempt to subvert a U.S. Supreme Court decision which declared the state was denying blacks their constitutional rights by refusing them admission to the law school and other graduate schools at the University of Missouri. There were 250,000 black voters in Missouri, and it was soon evident they too were going down the line for Harry Truman.

Much has been made by many of my father’s biographers of a cartoon published by the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
portraying two big trucks, one labeled “Stark for Senator,” the other labeled “Milligan for Senator,” meeting head on. Scurrying between their wheels was a tiny little truck labeled “Truman for Senator.” The caption read, “No place for a kiddie car.” Actually, the cartoon is only one more proof that newspaper editors (with certain exceptions) are poor political prophets. By now Milligan was far behind, a poor third in the race. The Truman campaign was building momentum every day. Stark was still in the lead, but my father was confident he was going to win - every bit as confident as he would be in 1948.

Just as in 1948, he based his confidence on a shrewd assessment not only of his own resources and his determination to get the facts to the public, but also on the deficiencies and weaknesses of his opponent. He knew, for instance, that a sizable number of people disliked Lloyd Stark’s arrogance. When the governor approached his car, he demanded a military salute from his chauffeur. Whenever he appeared in public, a staff of uniformed Missouri state colonels made him look like a dictator. My father also knew, from his inside contacts with Missouri Democrats, that the governor, the supposed reformer of the state, was “putting the lug” (to use Missouri terminology) on state employees to contribute to his campaign fund. He had done this during the 1938 fight to elect his candidate to the State Supreme Court, and it had caused intense resentment throughout the state. Everyone making more than $60 a month had to kick in 5 percent of his annual salary.

My father reported these facts to his good friend Senator Guy M. Gillette, chairman of the Senate committee to investigate senatorial campaigns. On June 20, 1940, Senator Gillette released a report of his investigation. It was a Sunday punch to Lloyd Stark’s reformer image. “There is abundance of evidence to prove that many employees were indirectly coerced into contributing, although they may not be in sympathy with the candidacy of Governor Stark for the U.S. Senate,” Senator Gillette said. He later issued a detailed report, citing the names of the governor’s assistants who did the arm-twisting, and statements of employees who said they had contributed against their wills.

In the middle of July, everyone interrupted the primary campaign to journey to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. Here Lloyd Stark made another blunder - as Dad expected that he would. With FDR quickly nominated for a third term, the only office in contention was the vice presidency. Although Stark had declared only a few days before the convention that there was “nothing to this talk about my being a candidate for vice president,” he could not resist making a try for the job. He sent bushels of his family’s Delicious apples (to this day I don’t like them - Mcintosh taste better) to dozens of influential delegates, opened a headquarters, and organized a demonstration on the floor of the convention, waving “Roosevelt and Stark” banners. Then came word from on high that the President’s choice was Henry A. Wallace. A chastened Stark hastily withdrew, but not before Bennett Clark sank a barb into his posterior. “A man can’t withdraw from a race he was never in,” Senator Clark gibed. To complete the governor’s humiliation, Senator Clark ordered the Missouri delegation to vote for Speaker of the House William B. Bankhead for vice president.

Governor Stark’s antics in Chicago were awfully difficult to explain in Missouri. His supporters tried hard. The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
tut-tutted, waffled in all directions, and finally gave its senatorial candidate an editorial slap on the wrist: “The Governor has taken a gamble - and a not too dignified one.”

Back to Missouri went the candidates, to slug it out for the rest of the campaign. My father maintained his usual back-breaking schedule, ignoring the heat, making ten and twelve speeches a day up and down the state. Milligan and Stark continued to denounce him as a tool of Pendergast, and the newspapers maintained the same silly chorus. All the time Dad had in his files a letter from Stark which could have settled the campaign the moment he released it. It was an effusive thank you, which Stark had written to my father for introducing him to Pendergast and persuading Boss Tom to endorse Stark for governor. But Dad’s conscience would not permit him to release it. It was a personal letter between him and Lloyd Stark when they were friends, and he believed letters between friends were confidential, even after they became political enemies.

The best answer to the Pendergast smear was an endorsement from FDR, and as the campaign roared to a climax, Dad made one last try to get it. The chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers wired the White House on July 28, demanding a statement from the President. On July 30, he got the following reply from Steve Early: “The President asks me to explain to you personally that while Senator Truman is an old and trusted friend, the President’s invariable practice has been not to take part in primary contests.”

Thanks to his friends in the Senate, my father got the next best thing to a presidential endorsement - the presence of FDR’s majority leader, Senator Alben Barkley, who came out to St. Louis to speak for him. Although Alben in the flesh no doubt impressed many voters, the meeting itself was a political disaster. The St. Louis Democratic organization was backing Stark, and only 300 people turned out to hear Senator Barkley and Carl Hatch of New Mexico. The meeting was held in the Municipal Auditorium Opera House and the 300 listeners looked pretty forlorn in an auditorium with a capacity of 3,500. The
Post-Dispatch
had great fun describing the “monster Truman rally.”

It was the sort of news that could sink a campaign. There was now only one week left before primary day. But Lloyd Stark came to our rescue once more. He suddenly announced the Truman campaign was operating with an immense slush fund supplied by Boss Tom Pendergast. This struck Truman headquarters, where deficit financing was now the vogue, as hilarious. My father promptly wired Senator Gillette, denying the charge and asking him to demand evidence from Stark. The senator from Iowa immediately telegraphed the governor, asking him for proof. None, of course, was forthcoming, and Gillette, on the very eve of primary day, issued a statement saying, “In fairness to Senator Truman and before the primary polls open, the public should know of the sending of this telegram and the Governor’s failure to acknowledge it.”

At the same time, Bennett Clark made a dramatic entry into the race. Personally, Senator Clark leaned toward Maurice Milligan, but he was so far behind by now it would have been political idiocy to endorse him. My father was the only man who could stop Stark from taking over the Democratic Party in Missouri. But Senator Clark seesawed about coming out for Dad. First he said he would vote for Truman but would not campaign for him. Finally, several of Dad’s Senate friends pointed out Dad had campaigned for him in 1938, and it was gross ingratitude, among other things, for him to sit on his hands.