Harry S Truman: The Economics Of A Populist President

The Economics of a Populist President

E Ray Canterbery

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9789814541855
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Harry S Truman is best remembered as the President who witnessed the swift arrival of the Cold War in the tumultuous years after World War Two. Little however has been written to show that he was also the populist President who set the political economic course for the United States to win it merely 40 years later.

In this timely biography, E Ray Canterbery captures the spirit of the man, who first and foremost, was a politician who crafted political progams such as the Fair Deal program, full-employment program, New Deal program, reconversion, stabilization, and agriculture progams through the lens of progressiveness. He focuses on Truman's populist economics by charting Truman's early years, the makings of his populist character, his beginnings in Washington, Communism and the Truman Doctrine, the campaign of 1948, the Marshall Plan, the firing of General MacArthur, and the Korean War. While the economic aspects of his term were fundamentally that of war and peace, Canterbery analyses in great depth Truman's economic policies and instruments, such as the Employment Act of 1946 and the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) — results of Truman's presidency that other authors of books on Truman have largely ignored.

Harry S Truman: The Economics of a Populist President shows how Truman should be remembered: As a progressive politician whose populist policies rank him among the “near great” Presidents in the tradition of William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.

Contents:

• Introduction
• The Early Years
• The Political Making of a Populist
• Mr Truman Goes to Washington
• The Economics of War and Peace
• The Employment Act of 1946 and the President's Council of Economic Advisers
• Communism and the Truman Doctrine
• The Populist Campaign of 1948
• The Marshall Plan
• Truman's Defining Test: The Korean War
• Afterward

Readership: Economic historians, researchers, students and members of the public who are interested in American history and the early origins of the Cold War.

Chapter 1

The Early Years

Harry S. Truman was a product of a frontier city with deep roots in an agrarian culture. To be exact, he came out of what was also then the frontier of the United States. Both had a lot to do with growing up to be a populist. Soon, Harry would encounter three presidential hopefuls who happened to be progressive populists, or at least, populists. First, we will consider the ground upon which the early Trumans would grow their crops.

On the Old Frontier with the Early Trumans

In 1841 the westernmost part of Missouri was the “extreme frontier” of the United States. In a migration that had begun twenty years earlier, a great many people came to Missouri from Kentucky. In the summer of 1846 Anderson Truman came in from that state. His people were English and Scotch-Irish and farmers as far back as anyone knew. Anderson was slight, gentle, soft-spoken, 30 years old, and without prospects. Still, Mary Jane Holmes had seen enough in him to defy her mother and marry him. Mother Holmes thought Mary Jane had married beneath her station because the Trumans owned no slaves.

Here began the overland trails to Santa Fe, California, and Oregon. Jackson County was the threshold, the jumping-off point to the dry grasslands reaching all the way to the Rockies. Independence was the queen city of the trails and the country’s first western boom-town. Truman and others were to go on to found nearby Kansas City. In the 1840s the permanent population of Independence was about 700, but on any given spring day two or three thousand would be milling about at Jackson Square. The Kentuckians came mostly for the land, the high, rolling fertile open country of Jackson, with its clear springs and two rivers, the Little Blue and the Blue, both flowing out of Kansas Territory. Here the Prairie grass was high and green. Wildflowers, wild herbs — meadow rose, turtlehead, snakeroot, wolfberry, thimbleweed — grew in fragrant abundance on the prairie.

Six to eight yoke of oxen could plow through the sod, something horses could not do. But beneath the hard crust, the dark prairie loam could be two to six feet deep. In places along the river bottoms, it was 20 feet deep. The rich and beautiful upland in the vicinity of Independence was often called the “garden spot” of the Far West.

The climate was one of extremes. Temperatures could rise or fall 50 degrees in a matter of hours. Summers were either too dry or too wet and either way were nearly always broiling hot. In winter came the awful cold, often too cold to work. On this frontier, few expected things to go easily, least of all a farmer.

Across the line in Kansas, the old issue of slavery was building to a terrible climax that was to affect the lives and outlook of nearly everyone in Jackson. To many in western Missouri the Civil War began not in 1851 with the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, but in 1854, when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, leaving to the residents of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska the decision of whether to allow slavery. Following the Missouri Compromise of 1820–1821, Missouri had come into the Union as a slave state. Some 50,000 slaves were held along Missouri’s western border. In Jackson County alone there were more than 3,000, and their owners dreaded the prospect of a free territory so close, to which a slave might escape. For the owner, his slave was very often his most valuable possession. For years before the Civil War began in the East, the terrible Border War — civil war in every sense — raged all up and down the Missouri-Kansas line and continued until the surrender at Appomattox. The wounds of some nine years of war in Missouri were a long time healing.

For Martha Ellen Young — Matt or Mattie, as she was known — life had picked up again three years after the war. Kansas City was growing rapidly and the transcontinental railroad was completed. By 1872 there were seven railroad lines in and out of Kansas City. This marked the end of the steamboat and wagon train era. The social occasions Mattie Young loved best were the dances at home in the front parlors, or at neighboring farms. She was a spirited dancer. One night she met John Truman, son of Anderson Truman, who, since the end of the war, had returned with his family to Jackson Country and taken up farming nearby. At 5 foot 4, John was two inches shorter than Mattie. In any case, they seemed to have known each other for some time before announcing their plans to marry in 1881, by which time Mattie was 29.

Born an Agrarian, Raised to be Fair

Their first child was still-born. John and Mattie’s second child, a boy, was born on May 8, 1884. The baby’s first name was Harry, after his Uncle Harrison. In a quandary over a middle name, Mattie and John were undecided whether to honor her father or his, in the end they compromised with the letter ‘S’. So, Harry S. Truman he would be.

Harry Truman often said in later years that he had the happiest childhood imaginable. His grandfather would take him riding over the countryside in a high-wheeled cart behind a strawberry roan trotting horse. Every day for a week, one summer, they drove six miles to the Belton Fair and sat together in the judges’ stand watching the races and eating striped candy. Harry would also remember a swing under an old elm close to the house and another swing indoors in the front hall used for rainy days. The long porch on the north side of the house made a perfect race track for their red express wagon. The farm was a wonderful place where they went hunting for bird nests and gathered wild strawberries in the prairie grass as tall as they. Also there were herds of cattle, saddle horses, draft horses, mules, sheep, hogs, chickens, ducks and geese. Harry’s father gave him a black Shetland pony and a new saddle. He would let the boy ride beside him as he made his rounds on the farm.

It was a time of security and plenty. Most memorable for Harry was the abundance of food — dried apples, peaches, candy and nuts of all kinds, wonderful cookies, pies, corn pudding, roasting ears in summer. There also was peach butter, apple butter, grape butter, jellies, and preserves. From his Aunt Ada, the boy learned to play euchre. Uncle Harry told amusing stories and taught him a card game called cooncan, a form of gin rummy then more popular than poker. According to Uncle Harry’s recollection, the child liked everybody.

His mother understood him best. She was brighter than anyone and cared most about his well-being. That is what he thought. She taught him to read before he was five. And she took him off to Kansas City for expensive eyeglasses. Small boys with eyeglasses were almost unknown in rural Missouri. In the summer of 1890, the summer his mother bought him his eyeglasses, the family left the farm and moved to Independence, so that Harry could have proper schooling.

When eight-year old Harry S. Truman started school in 1892, he could already read.¹ Harry appears to have liked school from the beginning. He began first grade at the old Noland School. In his Memoirs, the former President wrote, “My first year in school was a happy one. My teacher was Miss Myra Ewing, with whom I became a favorite, as I eventually did with all my teachers.” Second grade was a bad time for him. He developed diphtheria and dropped out of school because the illness left his arms, legs, and throat paralyzed for some months. As a second grader in the classroom of Minnie L. Ward, the records show that he was an excellent student. His first term grades included a 95 in spelling, a 95 in reading, a 92 in writing, a 99 in language, a 99 in numbers and a 95 in deportment.² He liked Miss Minnie Ward, his second-grade teacher. Harry attended summer school with Miss Jennie Clements to “catch up.” In the fall, when the original Columbian School opened, he skipped third grade and went directly to Miss Mamie Dunn’s fourth grade class.³ By his later account — “I do not remember a bad teacher in all my experience.”⁴ Part of this had to do with Harry. He knew how to make them like him. By getting along with people, he found that he could nearly always get what he wanted.

He was an exceptionally alert, good little boy of sunny disposition, who, with glasses that magnified his blue eyes, made him look as bright and interested as could be. By the fourth grade he was reading “everything I could get my hands on — histories and encyclopedias and everything else.”⁵ For his tenth birthday, Harry’s mother gave him a set of four volumes titled Great Men and Famous Women. He counted the moment as one of life’s turning points. He especially liked the volume on Soldiers and Sailors, and dreamed of becoming a great general. Andrew Jackson and Robert E. Lee were his favorite American heroes.

Harry lived in a house full of books. He read the Bible twice through by the time he was 12, three times by 14. He pored over Plutarch’s Lives, and read a set of Shakespeare. Nearby was the Missouri Pacific depot, and Harry was fascinated by trains. At night he would listen for the Kansas-Nebraska Limited, which did not stop in Independence.

He kept to himself more than most boys his age and was often lonely as a child. Caroline Simpson, a black cook and cleaning lady hired by the family, taught Harry to cook. This and other characteristics set him apart from the other boys. He was abnormally neat and clean. Never a fighter, he was not popular like other boys. He was teased because of his glasses. His boyhood friends remembered him as different and serious, not exactly a sissy. With girls of his own age he was so shy he could barely speak. This, despite meeting a blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl named Elizabeth Wallace in the Presbyterian Sunday School class.

Harry was surrounded by women. There were his mother, Caroline Simpson, his teachers, and Grandma Young, who came often to visit. He got along with them well, kidding and telling stories. Though he was “his mother’s son,” Harry and his father had much in common. Small and compact, like a jockey, John, the father, had a weathered, sunburned face and crow’s feet that gave a hint of a smile around his eyes. He was touchy about his size; he would explode at the least affront, and fight like a buzz saw. Still, he was good-natured ordinarily. Like many other men of the times, John had a strong, sentimental veneration of women. Considered a liberal in religion, he raised his children to have faith in themselves and their potentialities.

A piano in the parlor had become part of the good life in America, a sign of prosperity. Though piano lessons were for the young women of the household, Harry took to it wholeheartedly, made progress and gained approval of his parents. He had regular lessons with Florence Burrus, who lived next door. Harry remembered these years like those on the farm, as nothing but wonderful times.

Besides the women, national holidays and politics provided what little excitement there was from one year to the next. A memorable day for young Harry Truman came with Grover Cleveland’s second victory, in 1892. He was eight years old. It would be 20 years before Democrats could celebrate another presidential victory, that of Woodrow Wilson.

Formal High School Education in the Shadows of the “Old South”

As he started high school, friendships took on a new importance. He still had no best pal among the boys. His only really close friends were his girl cousins Ethel and Nellie Noland, who were as good-natured and well read as he, interested in everything, not at all vain, and devoted to him. The Noland sisters knew how much Harry secretly cared for Elizabeth Wallace, who was in his class. If he succeeded in carrying her books to school and back home for her, it was a big day. She stood out in class, always dressed in the latest thing, and was a natural allround athlete. Elizabeth was popular and was his ideal.

Harry attended superb schools in a small city of many schools. In addition to Woodland College for Women, there was Presbyterian College also for women, and St. Mary’s Academy for girls. Independence was a town of culture that supported two bookstores. Moreover, it was only a ten-mile ride by trolley to Kansas City. Yet the pervading atmosphere was southern — antebellum Old South. Handkerchiefs were waved whenever the band played “Dixie,” and the United Daughters of the Confederacy thrived. There were formal parties in which Jesse James’s brother Frank often appeared, causing great excitement. In high school, one of Harry’s favorite teachers, Ardelia G. Hardin (later, Mrs Palmer), who taught Latin, would describe how her father had been hit three times during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg and left for dead. The summer of 1901, the year Harry finished Independence High School, the newspaper declared on its editorial page how the community need not be surprised if there was a Negro lynching in Independence.

Knowledge gathering was not confined to school. From Sunday School and his own reading of the Bible, Harry knew many passages by heart. At home he was taught to say what you mean, mean what you say, and keep your word. Never forget a friend. Never get too big for your britches.

And there was part-time work. At age 14, while still in high school, Harry went to work at J. H. Clinton’s drugstore. Harry’s first paying job was to come in each weekday morning at 5:30 to open up the place, sweep the sidewalk, mop the floor, wipe the counters, and do as much overall dusting and cleaning as possible before 7:00 am when Mr Clinton came down and it was time for Harry to leave for school. Early in the morning the good church members and Anti-Saloon Leaguers would come for their morning drink behind the prescription case at ten cents an ounce. They were hypocrites. Far better, Harry thought, were the tough old birds around town who bought a proper drink in a real saloon whenever they wished, regardless of appearances.

Harry grew dutifully, conspicuously studious, spending long afternoons in the town library. He and Charlie Ross vowed to read all of the books there, encyclopedias included. According to Mrs Palmer, “I believe he even read the Encyclopedia Britannica.”⁶ Harry liked Mark Twain and Franklin’s Autobiography. He also read Sir Walter Scott because Scott was Elizabeth Wallace’s favorite author. Ethel Noland remembered, “I don’t know anybody in the world that ever read as much or as constantly as he did. He was what you call a book worm.”⁷

History became a passion. He read through a shelf of standard works on ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. He seemed to have a real feel for history. His list of heroes lengthened to include Hannibal, Cincinnatus, Scipio, Cyrus the Great, and Gustavus Adolphus, the seventeenth-century Swedish king.⁸ While other boys at the time venerated Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison, he considered the great men to be great generals. Truman had a long-standing inte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Early Years
• Chapter 2 The Political Making of a Populist
• Chapter 3 Mr Truman Goes to Washington
• Chapter 4 The Economics of War and Peace
• Chapter 5 The Employment Act of 1946 and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers
• Chapter 6 Communism and The Truman Doctrine
• Chapter 7 The Populist Campaign of 1948
• Chapter 8 The Marshall Plan
• Chapter 9 Truman’s Defining Test: The Korean War
• Chapter 10 Afterward
• Index