Evening star., 1950-09-27
Inside Story of Mr. Trunnon's Battles

believing the Soviet chief also would live
up to agreements.
And it was to Tom that the debt
ridden 42-year-od Truman turned in
1926, when new financial miSadventures
in banking and the building and loan
business followed in the wake of po-
litical defeat. This setback was engi->
neered by the Klan and anti-Pendergast
Democrats in 1924, when the Republicans
got the county jobs, and left Mr.. Truman
once more at loose ends in the rambling
frame home in independence.
So it was 1925 that saw the actual
beginning of one of the most fantastic
chapters in American political history,
for before 20 years had gone, Mr.. Truman
States. AS the picture unfolds, strange
Destiny seemed always at work.
Heading into an uncertain middle age,
and with a wife and daughter to care
for, Mr.. Truman wanted support for
county collector an office with salary
which could ease his financial difficulties.
The Pendergast machine had promised
that to another, so the presiding judge
ship of Jackson County was counter
offer. It was accepted.
for Congress, but Pendergast shook his
head.
A year later, Tom Pendergast wanted
a senatorial candidate. Judge Truman
seems to have been an after thought. for
there were at least three others who
presumably might have had the place.
In March, 1885. Harry S. Truman was
sworn in as Missouri's Junior Senator
"The Gentleman from Pendergast."
His record in the county ofice-plus
the amazing vote-getting qualities of the
Pendergast machine, took care of that.
Senator Truman felt the Pendergast
stigma, according to his biographer. and
he particularly resented the attitude of
President Roosevelt, who, he felt, looked
upon him as a PendergaSt messenger
boy. Mr.. Roosevelt, it is recalled, got
fiat rundown after he prevailed upon
Mr.. Pendergast to ask Senator Truman
to vote for Senator Barkley of Kentucky,
in the famous leadership fight with
Senator Harrison of Mississippi The
Kentuckian barely won.
When Tom Pendergast went to prison
for income tax frauds in 1899, the Tru-
man political career seemed at end. Sus-
peeted of favoring the candidacy Of
Gov. Lloyd StarK OF missouri 1or MI.
Truman's place, President Roosevelt Of
fered the latter an appointment to the
Interstate Commerce Commission. The
stubborn Truman turned that down. and
in an upset prophetic of that Of 1948,
scraped by.
Then came the war; the Truman COM
mittee; the ailing Roosevelt's approval of
Mr.. Truman as running mate-and
April IL. 1945.
There have been no new things in
the Truman promises" says Mr.. Daniels
in retrospect. After 16 years and after
five elections, it should have been clear
at midcentury that both the New Deal
and the Fair Deal were not the plans of
Presidents, but the directions Of America.
The New Deal long preceded and sur
vived Franklin Roosevelt. And Harry
Truman, who was described as he came
into Office as the embodiment OF an
ordinary American, emerged in the 1948
campaign as an American spokesman
deemed by the electorate worthy Of an
ancient and continuing cause. That
cause is more the embodiment of the
spirit of the ordinary and extraordinary
American than any one man could be,
even an improbable man from Missouri. y