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sister Mary on August 18 because he hadn’t written to her, Dad explained:
    My writing hand doesn’t work as well as it used. Signing documents and memos at the rate of 600 to a thousand a day has worn down my control to some extent. But I do as best I can.
    Most of the time, Dad was philosophical about it. On September 2 he told his sister:
    I’ve had as usual a very hectic week, seeing customers [his word for White House visitors], writing speeches, signing documents and making decisions, national and international. But there’s no use crying about it. I’m here and the job has to be done.
    Then, in the teeth of statements from pollsters and pundits that he did not have a chance, he calmly prophesied victory:
    It looks now like another four years of slavery. I’d be much better off personally if we lose the election but I fear that the country would go to hell and I have to try to prevent that.
    The Republicans may have supplied us with plenty of political ammunition, but one thing they did not supply was that equally vital ingredient for political campaigns -money. For a while, it did not look as if the Democrats were going to do very much in that department either. The lack of money in the party war chest was literally terrifying. Not until September 14, three days before we started our first major campaign tour, did the Democrats even have a finance chairman. Colonel Louis A. Johnson, former Assistant Secretary of War, took on the thankless job and proceeded to accomplish miracles.
    The first major crisis came on Labor Day, when we went to Detroit to make the traditional kickoff speech in Cadillac Square. Typically, Dad managed to convert it into a mini-whistle-stop tour going up and back, beginning with speeches in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at 8:15 a.m., and ending with another rear platform performance in Toledo, Ohio, at 11:55 p.m. Everywhere, people were astonished by the crowds - there were 25,000 in Republican Grand Rapids in spite of a heavy downpour. But the speech in Cadillac Square was the heart of the trip. It was aimed at working men, not just in Detroit but throughout the United States on a national radio hookup. On Saturday morning Oscar Chapman, who was handling the advance planning for the campaign, was coolly informed by radio network executives that they wanted to see the $50,000 fee by the end of the day or they were going to cancel the Monday broadcast. The local Detroit labor unions did not have that much cash on hand, and only a frantic appeal by Chapman to Governor Roy J. Turner of Oklahoma raised the money from wealthy Democrats in that state. Thus, Dad was able to go ahead with a speech that galvanized numerous lukewarm labor leaders, such as AFL president William Green, CIO president Philip Murray, and Teamsters’ president Daniel Tobin - three who had been conspicuously absent from the Democratic National Convention.
    There were times when my father had to step in and do his own fundraising. In mid-September, as we were packing to board the campaign train for our first national swing, party treasurer Louis Johnson called a group of wealthy Democrats to the White House and Dad got up on a chair in the Red Room to inform them that if they did not come through with $25,000, the “Truman Special” would not get beyond Pittsburgh. Two men immediately pledged $10,000, and that is how we got rolling.
    More than once, Howard McGrath, the Democratic Party chairman, or Jack Redding, the publicity director, carried $25,000 or $30,000 in cash to broadcasting studios, to pay for radio time. While candidate Dewey was delivering long, exquisitely polished radio addresses without an iota of trouble, my father was frequently cut off in mid-sentence because the radio networks would not allow him to speak a single second beyond the paid-for time. Louis Johnson became philosophic about this harassment. He decided it was actually helping Dad because people were annoyed by such insulting treatment of the