Worries & Murmurs

The President, coming up out of his cellar now that the MacArthur storm seemed to be blowing over, found another thunderhead on the horizon. The Sand Congress was away behind in its work, and since it is a Democratic Congress, he hesitated to call it "do-nothing." Yet all the Administration's complicated and vital price-control machinery was about to expire on June 30, and Congress was dawdling and balking at its renewal.

To stir up Congress, Harry Truman decided to stir up the homefolks. Earnestly facing a battery of microphones and television cameras one night last week, he accused an old enemy, the National Association of Manufacturers, and unidentified "beef lobbyists" of trying to scuttle wage-price controls. Unless the people banded together to defeat these "special interests," he warned, prices would go "through the roof," the nation's economy would be wrecked and Russia would "win the world to totalitarianism without firing a shot."

Worst to Come. "Prices look steadier now than at any time since September," he said. "This makes some people think the worst is over. But... the full force of inflationary pressure is still to come. Controls are absolutely necessary for at least the next two years, no matter what happens in Korea." Congressmen had told him that "consumers were not making themselves heard. Well, I told them I represented the consumers."

Then he waited for the avalanche of telegrams which usually follows such a speech, hoping-that they would stir Congress to action. By week's end the telegrams began trickling in. Congress would take some stirring. The banking committees of both houses had held six weeks of hearings, heard more than a hundred witnesses, and had barely gotten down to writing a bill. They showed little sympathy for the President's request for authority to stiffen rent controls and to tighten credit. Likeliest action: a last-minute 30-to-60-day extension of the present law.

The President had tried every which way to prod Congress. At least four times within the past month, he secretly invited small groups of congressional leaders to drop by Blair House in the evening for pep talks. The meetings all followed the same pattern. Guests arrived about 8 o'clock, were greeted cordially by the President, got a highball, and were drawn into a few hours' discussion led by the President. Among the guests were such Administration stalwarts as Connecticut's McMahon and Minnesota's Humphrey, but there were also a few unpredictable Democrats ranging from Florida's freshman Senator Smathers on the right to New York's Congressman Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. on the left.

The President's manner was relaxed and his talk unrehearsed, but always he upheld his Administration's foreign policy, reviewed "successes" in Greece, Turkey, Berlin and Korea. He rehashed the MacArthur story, explained ruefully how he thought his differences with MacArthur had been patched up at Wake, was at his most emphatic when he declared his Administration had kept the U.S. out of war for the time being. He ended by asking his guests to support his leadership. On one occasion, inviting guests to shoot questions at him, he said: You can give me hell, if you want to--I'm. used to getting hell.

Plans for '52. Only once during the week did he make one of his cryptic references to 1952. Standing on the steps to the White House rose garden and beaming down on a delegation of clean-scrubbed 4-H farm boys & girls, ex-Plowboy Truman told his grinning audience that a farm was a wonderful place. "I hope to go back to the farm some day," he said, "some people are in a hurry for me to go back, but I'm not going back as fast as they may want me to . . ."

And just once during the week did his temper get the best of him in public. Addressing the Highway Safety Conference, he deplored the high casualty rate on U.S. highways, then departed from his prepared speech for an intemperate ad lib. Said he: "We have been attempting to stop an act of aggression in Korea for the last year. The total casualties for the whole operation have been less than 80,000 . . . and that means every kind of death and injury that could take place in that operation. That is on the mind and tongue of every citizen. But right here at home we kill and permanently injure 1,035,000 people and there is no outcry by the sabotage press, no misstatement by the columnists, or the congressional demagogues.

And I wonder why . . . Now, that is an opportunity for every one of those fellows to pick on the Administration."

Instead of an outcry, Harry Truman's invitation was greeted by an embarrassed murmur at the bad taste in lumping together the Korean dead, traffic dead and partisan politics all in one petulant outburst.

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