Like Old Times

Harry Truman was out to see the people, to be seen by the people, and to put on the act at which he has no current peer.

The occasion was a trip to St. Paul for the 100th anniversary of Minnesota as a territory. Truman ordered the presidential train hitched up, happily climbed aboard his private car, the Ferdinand Magellan. He would make a "nonpolitical, bipartisan speech," he declared with a grin. What was that? Said Truman genially: "It is a speech that throws no bricks at any other political party." Big Bill Boyle, national Democratic chairman, beamed concurrence. "Sure," said Bill. "I'm along to see that he doesn't do anything political." Both were almost overcome with the humor of it.

"Me & Henry Clay . . ." It was like old times. At every operational stop, cheering, pushing crowds gathered around the back platform and local dignitaries clambered aboard. Harry Truman made neighborly small talk. At Cumberland, Md., he recalled that Fort Cumberland was the first milestone on the old National Road. "And I helped lay it out--me and Henry Clay," said Truman playfully.

Frost was still on the grass at Savanna, Ill. (pop. 6,000) when he told 800 early risers: "I hope you don't catch cold. But I suppose you Illinois folks are used to this weather." As the train rolled along the upper Mississippi, he climbed up into the vista-dome car provided by the Burlington Railroad, gazed out at the great river that licked at the roadbed. He cracked that the Mississippi didn't really get big until it was joined by the Missouri.

In the Twin Cities, flanked by Republican Governor Luther Youngdahl and Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey, Truman rolled through 21 miles of streets lined by 400,000 citizens (police estimate). Every school was out; there were bands, color guards, a 21-gun presidential salute. Truman stopped at the Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children, at the centennial exhibit at the historical society, at the College of St. Thomas.

... and Thomas Jefferson. By banquet time, the nonpolitical, bipartisan veneer had worn away. Chortling Harry Truman told the diners: "I have to deliver an address of a bipartisan nature that will be entirely satisfactory to the Democrats of Minnesota." The diners roared.

Later, in the well-packed auditorium, Harry Truman began in his best cracker-barrel manner. The last time he had been in St. Paul (a month before election) "was quite a time," said Truman. "Didn't anybody think I'd be back here addressing you within one year from that Election Day as President of the United States. But here I am!"

Soon President Truman was throwing bricks at his favorite targets--the 80th Congress, the "privileged few," the "vested interests." He recalled that Minnesota had been carved out of Thomas Jefferson's boldly expensive Louisiana Purchase, which he likened to his own plan of expansion: the Fair Deal. Cried Truman: "There are people who contend that these programs will cost too much, just as the reactionaries in Jefferson's day contended that $15 million was too much to pay for a million square miles of new territory. They were wrong in Jefferson's time, and they're just as wrong today.

"I am not too much worried by those who oppose these policies. Between the reactionaries of the extreme left with their talk about revolution and class warfare, and the reactionaries of the extreme right with their hysterical cries of bankruptcy and despair, lies the way of progress."

Empty Cars & High Spirits. Next morning, as the presidential train clicked homeward, the President was up at 5 to confer with Chicago politicos--Boss Jake Arvey, ex-Mayor Ed Kelly, Senator Paul Douglas. Later, at Willard, Ohio, a T-shirted boy in the crowd shouted: "What do you think of Senator Taft?" Truman declined the bait. "I like him very much," said Harry Truman pleasantly.

Through Ohio and western Pennsylvania, the Ferdinand Magellan rolled through the stilled heart of U.S. industry, silenced by the coal and steel strikes. Mile on mile, freight cars stood empty on sidings, smokeless chimneys reared against the slaty sky. Truman slipped off for a nap.

But as his train rolled into Washington's Union Station, Harry Truman was wide awake and in high good spirits: he had proved to himself that the old road show still brought in the crowds.

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