Harry Truman Read Online Free PDF

President.
    In Oklahoma City on September 28, the cash shortage struck again. We found that we did not have enough money to get the train out of the station. Once more, Governor Roy J. Turner was the miracle man. He convened a fundraising party aboard the train and raised enough cash to pay for the rest of that tour.
    None of this in the least fazed or, as far as I could see, even momentarily discouraged my father. He was absolutely and totally convinced that he was on his way to victory, and he let other people worry about the details. What I like to think of as his finest unknown or private moment came on October 11, 1948, when one of the White House aides jumped off the train and bought the latest issue of Newsweek. The magazine had polled fifty veteran political writers around the country. Huge black type announced the results: FIFTY POLITICAL EXPERTS UNANIMOUSLY PREDICT A DEWEY VICTORY. Morale visibly sagged all around us. Dad stared at the magazine for a moment and then grinned. “Oh well,” he said, “those damn fellows - they’re always wrong anyway. Forget it, boys, and let’s get on with the job.”
    Sometimes nature itself seemed to be against us. The first major speech of the fall campaign came at Dexter, Iowa, at the National Plowing Contest. It was a hot, humid September day. The plowing plus the feet of 75,000 farmers and their families stirred up a huge cloud of choking dust, which simply hung there between the sky and the earth, as dust clouds are wont to do in the Midwest. Ignoring the dirty air and the heat, Dad gave a rousing, scorching speech, which almost tore his throat apart. For at least a week, Dr. Wallace Graham, his personal physician, had to spray his throat before every speech. Dad was the only man on the train who was surprised by this particular bit of damage.
    His attitude is visible in his comment on his throat to his sister Mary: “Dr. Graham just sprayed, mopped and caused me to gargle bad tasting liquids until the throat gave up and got well.”
    The big speeches were extravaganzas in which all of us -except my father, I suppose - felt almost superfluous. Big crowds have an almost numbing effect. It’s like being swallowed in a maelstrom of roaring voices, waving hands, and swirling faces. For all of us - and I know this included Dad - the whistle-stops were the heart of the trip. A President can always fly to Detroit, or Denver, or Los Angeles to make a major speech. But he can’t get to Pocatello, Idaho; Clarksburg, West Virginia; or Davis, Oklahoma - at least he is not likely to go there - unless he’s whistle-stopping.
    The whistle-stop routine seldom varied. As we pulled into the station bands would blare “Hail to the Chief” and the “Missouri Waltz.” Dad, usually accompanied by three or four local politicians, would step out on the back platform of the train, and they would present him with a gift - a basket of corn, a bucket of apples, or some item of local manufacture. Then one of the local politicians would introduce the President, and Dad would give a brief fighting speech, plugging the local candidate, and asking the people for their support. But the heart of these little talks was a local reference, sometimes supplied by Dad spontaneously, more often by careful advance research on the part of the staff.
    Whenever possible, my father preferred to say something that he knew or felt personally. He told his listeners in Clarksburg: “I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for Clarksburg. I have been a student of the War Between the States, and I remember that Stonewall Jackson was born here in Clarksburg.” At Hammond, Indiana, where many of the tanks for our World War II armies were produced, he drew on his knowledge of our war effort, which he had scrutinized intensively, as head of the Truman Committee in the Senate. “Our armies all over the world were grateful for the high quality of work you turned out,” he told the crowd. This was authentic. It was not