With three months to go until the bicentennial, we’ll head into the tenth installment of my bicentennial series. Generally, it will cover the period from 1945 to 1961 when the nation will experience a post-war boom and the red scare. The Presidents were Harry Truman (1945-1953) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961). The Governors were Ralph Gates (1945-1949), Harry Schricker (again) (1949-1953), George Craig (1953-1957), and Harold Handley (1957-1961).
Harry S. Truman (the “S.” not standing for anything in particular) was a farm boy from Missouri, born in 1884. After high school, he worked a variety of odd jobs, including time keeper on the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe railway. He apparently slept in hobo camps near the railway at times. He’s the last U.S. President not to have graduated from college. In 1906, he returned to the family farm where he lived until the Great War in 1917. He served in the National Guard from 1905 to 1911 when he was kicked out for bad eyesight. However, he re-joined in 1917 when the U.S. joined the war. During the war, he became acquainted with the nephew of Kansas City political boss, Tom Pendergrast. By the end of the war, Truman had been promoted to captain and commanded an artillery battery.
After the war, Truman was briefly a haberdasher, in business from 1919 until a recession hit in 1921. Debts from that failed business lingered until 1934 when he paid them off with the aid of a political supporter. With the help of the Pendergast machine, Truman was elected to a county position in 1922, lost in the Coolidge wave of 1924, and was elected again in 1926. Also, in 1926, he became president of the National Old Trails Association and, in that capacity, oversaw the dedication of the Madonnas of the Trail along the Old National Road. (Indiana’s is in Glen Miller Park in Richmond, Indiana about ¾ of a mile from where I grew up.)
In 1933, Truman became state director of the Federal Re-Employment program, a New Deal program. This was done at the request of Tom Pendergast and was some political back-scratching for the favorable vote for FDR in Kansas City. This gave Truman some federal connections and an enthusiasm for the New Deal. In 1934, though not Pendergast’s first choice, he was Pendergast’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. He beat out some other Democrats in the primary and then became Senator. The 1940 election would be tougher for Truman, having to overcome the taint from Pendergast’s imprisonment for income tax evasion, but he won close fights in the primary and general for re-election. Truman’s tour of military bases in late 1940 revealed waste and profiteering. He launched investigations which ended up saving the U.S. on the order of $15 billion, gained Truman a national reputation, and helped him shake the reputation as Pendergast’s errand-boy.
In 1944, Democratic leaders were unhappy with Henry Wallace as Roosevelt’s vice-president. When FDR decided to run again, it was not much of a secret that his health was a concern, and those leaders did not want to see Wallace become President. Truman was among the people FDR was agreeable to having on the ticket with him. The pair drubbed the Dewey/Bricker ticket with an electoral vote of 432 to 99. Once he was vice-president, Roosevelt mostly ignored him. He was vice-president for just 82 days when FDR passed away on April 12, 1945.
Within two weeks, Truman learned that the U.S. was working on an atomic bomb. Within a month, Truman had the privilege of presiding over V-E Day, formally accepting the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. The Trinity Test of the A-bomb on July 12, 1945, was successful, and in his diary on July 25, Truman wrote, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”
The Japanese did not accept the terms of surrender given to them with the Potsdam Declaration, and invasion of the mainland was imminent. Rather than sustain the casualties that would be caused by such an invasion, Truman gave the order to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively.
Truman always said that attacking Japan with atomic bombs saved many lives on both sides; military estimates for the invasion of mainland Japan were that it could take a year and result in 250,000 to 500,000 American casualties. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, and Nagasaki three days later, leaving 105,000 dead.
Japan surrendered on August 10.
The post-war transition would be choppy. Truman was determined to reduce government spending on the military quickly. Factories would no longer be producing military supplies at the same time soldiers would be returning home, looking for jobs. Labor and management which had put aside their differences for the war would go back to contending with one another. Congress had been ignored by the executive branch and was looking to exercise its prerogatives.
The end of the war and the release of price controls led to a significant increase in prices. Labor demanded an increase in wages. There was a steel strike in January 1946 involving 800,000 workers. There was a coal strike in April and a rail strike in May. Truman’s response was seen as ineffective. In 1946, Republicans took control of Congress for the first time since 1930. Included in this freshman class were Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. By 1946, 25% of American workers were involved in the labor movement. The strikes of 1946 combined with the Republican control of Congress that year led to the Taft-Hartley Act which limited the power of the unions.
The amendments enacted in Taft–Hartley added a list of prohibited actions, or unfair labor practices, on the part of unions to the NLRA, which had previously only prohibited unfair labor practices committed by employers. The Taft–Hartley Act prohibited jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. It also required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits with the government. Union shops were heavily restricted, and states were allowed to pass right-to-work laws that outlawed closed union shops. Furthermore, the executive branch of the federal government could obtain legal strikebreaking injunctions if an impending or current strike imperiled the national health or safety.
Next time: More Truman, including “The Fair Deal” and sacking MacArthur.
I found this very interesting; you are certainly an early riser!! what a lot of work you put into this blog. Congratulations Doug!! Kind regards. Have you any Irish connections like Thomas Taggart; his ancestors came from Emyvale CoMonaghan Ireland; do you have a soft drink named after him in River Park? I understand there is; what an honour and I would be interested in knowing this bit of information. Hope you can oblige. Go raibh mhait agat. (means Thank You!)