(See Cover)
In depots and on porches, at crossings and atop boxcars, people gathered in little clots to watch the train roll through. When it stopped in the tank towns of Nebraska and Iowa, in the farming centers of Idaho and Washington, in the mining towns in Montana, the crowds swarmed around the rear platform yelling "Hi, Harry." Harry Truman, President of the U.S. and crack politician, was on tour.
"I am talking to you as your hired man," Harry Truman told them. "I have come out here to tell you just exactly what I am trying to do, and I am telling it to you firsthand so it can't be garbled. There is no way for me to get the truth to you but to come out and tell it to you."
Back in Washington, he had left a party uneasy about the effect of Senator Joe McCarthy's assault on the State Department and slow to come to his Administration's defense, a Democratic Congress that had flatly refused to enact most of his
Fair Deal program. His legislative leaders were rebellious, disgruntled by his failure to consult them, annoyed by his disregard for their views. Congress spent the week ignoring, disregarding or repudiating several of his proposals.
Glowing Vision. But Harry Truman, on tour, radiated confidence and wellbeing. In no position to berate a Congress controlled by his own party, he lumped all opponents of his policy with all the opponents of 17 years of Democratic rule and happily thumped away at them as "reactionaries," "timid men," "calamity howlers" and "greed boys." He wanted, he made it clear, what "the common man" wanted. If he didn't get it, that was not Harry Truman's fault—he was always trying. He was the buoyant salesman of good intentions.
And what he intended was a glowing vision of "prosperity, cooperation, expansion." Harry Truman wanted the best for everybody—workers, businessmen and farmers. Keeping them all prosperous meant more Government services, more welfare programs, more dams, more irrigation canals, an expanding economy.
In his flat, homey, Western Missouri twang, Harry Truman made it all sound as easy as gathering eggs, and about as familiar. Those who raised objections were just old fogies.
Old as the Hills. At one Wyoming whistle stop, he reminded a little crowd that Wyoming was the first state to give the women the right to vote. Said Truman: "Can you imagine what some of the stuffy reactionary Easterners had to say? Listen—listen to this—you will like this, you will want to remember it. The editor of a prominent magazine* published in New York said: 'This unblushing female socialism defies alike the Apostles and the Prophets.' The editor said: 'Nothing could be more anti-biblical than letting women vote.' So you see that the cry of socialism is as old as the hills. They used it against woman suffrage, against the federal reserve, against social security . . . [But] I am going to keep right on working for better houses, better schools . . . and I don't intend to be scared away by anybody who calls that program socialism."