Truman(11)

Altogether, during this period, Pendergast did not do much for Truman. Perhaps he was more resentful of Truman’s stubbornness about the contracts than the latter realized. In the summer of 1932 there was a further irritant for Truman. He went to Chicago as part of the Missouri delegation to the Democratic Convention. He was for Roosevelt. But Pendergast was playing a more complicated game. He persuaded James A. Farley, Roosevelt’s man of business before the election, his Postmaster-General after it, and ultimately his dedicated enemy, that he wanted to see Roosevelt nominated. Probably he was realistically for Roosevelt. At the same time he was nostalgically committed to the candidature of James Reed, an old-style Missouri ex-senator, who had nominated Speaker Champ Clark against Woodrow Wilson as long ago as the Baltimore Convention of 1912. He kept Reed in until the third ballot, when he got him 27½ votes, and then did not so much deliver to Roosevelt the Missouri delegation, which had never been unanimous, as let it slip away to him. Truman had to vote for Reed. Worse still, he had to applaud a post-nomination speech of his which opposed every tenet of the New Deal, and would have seemed backward looking if delivered in 1900.

In spite of this 1932 was a good year for Pendergast. He got his second candidate for Governor elected. The re-districting had not gone through, so all the Missouri candidates for the House of Representatives had to run on a state list, which involved making their obeisance to the controller of the Kansas City vote. His only setback was that Bennett Clark, the former Speaker’s son, was elected Senator against his wishes. Pendergast’s disintegration did not come until later: in 1934 he was seized with a continuing and destructive gambling fever; in 1936 he stuffed the ballot box of Kansas City with false votes on a scale that was unacceptable even in that wide-open town; in that same year his bull-like body suddenly collapsed in New York; in 1939 he was indicted and gaoled.

Truman could sustain the personal vicissitudes of 1932 with reasonable equanimity. As a partisan Democrat and instinctive if not doctrinaire New Dealer, he rejoiced in his party’s great national victory. He still had two years of his term to run, and he had his courthouse project to bring to fruition. And, a year later, he got a part time Federal appointment as Re-employment Director for Missouri, under Harry Hopkins.

1934 was necessarily to be the test year for him. He was 50 that May. He could not run for a third term as County Judge, even had he wished to do so. By early 1935 he would either have to return to one of his precarious business enterprises or find some other, preferably higher, political office. Although he always attached great importance to not looking eager for his own political advancement, there is no doubt about which alternative he wanted. But he could not command it. Whether another door was to be opened to him depended upon Pendergast.

There was a very grand door available. It was the Democratic nomination for the second Missouri seat in the US Senate. The Republican incumbent, Roscoe Patterson, was up for re-election. With the Roosevelt tide running so strongly across the nation there was not likely to be much difficulty about beating him. Pendergast’s problem was the balance of Democratic power in Missouri. Bennett Clark of St Louis was installed in the other seat at least until 1938. In February 1934 Clark announced that he was supporting Congressman Jacob L. Milligan, of a rural county, to be his companion on Capitol Hill. Another congressman, John J. Cochran of St Louis itself, was also in the race. Neither was acceptable to Pendergast. They would have broken a rough convention that Missouri should have one senator from the Kansas City area. More important, they would have relegated him and his machine to a manifestly secondary position in the politics of the state. He had to beat Cochran and Milligan, and Cochran at least was a formidable challenger. This has led Truman apologists to claim that Pendergast needed Truman in this election at least as much as Truman needed Pendergast. Unfortunately for this theory, Pendergast did not appear to feel the need. He tried three other candidates before, as late as May, he came round to Truman. He then offered him the nomination and the promise of wholehearted backing. Truman hesitated for a day or so, partly because he did not wish to appear too available, and partly because he feared that he did not command the money for a hard-fought primary. But there is no doubt that he greatly welcomed the opportunity.

He campaigned with vigour, but with small resources and decreasing enjoyment. His expenses amounted to $12,280. $1,400 came from the Pendergast family. There were a few other substantial donations, mostly from very respectable sources. There were debts of just over $3,000 at the end. Truman’s disaffection stemmed from the increasing attacks upon him as a tool of Pendergast. Milligan claimed that in Washington Truman would get ‘calluses on his ears listening on the long distance telephone to his boss’. The head of the Missouri farmers’ organization called him a ‘bellhop’. The St Louis Post-Dispatch stated retrospectively: ‘County Judge Truman is the nominee of the Democratic Party for the United States Senate because Tom Pendergast willed it so.’ Part of the trouble was that Pendergast was alleged (although Truman always refused to believe it) to have injudiciously boasted that he had decided to send his ‘office boy’ to the Senate. The jibe stuck.