Truman(34)

Even so, safety valve or not, Truman’s draft (‘this frontier diatribe’, as Robert Donovan charitably calls it) cannot be totally shrugged off. It is probable that he wrote it early in the morning rather than late at night. Bourbon was therefore unlikely to have made a contribution to its composition. That makes it the more frightening. It was of course wildly inaccurate. There was no question of miners or railroadmen receiving up to forty times the pay of servicemen. Nor did union   leaders get ‘from five to ten times the net salary of your President’. They were very well paid by British standards. But in the mid-1940s (or for that matter the mid-1980s) they were not on $350-700,000 a year, even leaving aside the benefits in kind of the White House, Camp David and the presidential yacht. Nor, moving on to slightly less factual ground, was ‘effete’ a very appropriate adjective to apply to Lewis or to Truman’s erstwhile friends; his task might have been easier had they been more so. Nor is ‘intestinal fortitude’ a very nice concept. And, while Bridges may well have been a Communist, who were ‘the Russian Senators or Representatives’? This was all language of which McCarthy might have been proud, but might have been too strong for the delicate stomach of the young Nixon (soon to be elected to Congress). It was all very unfortunate. Perhaps Truman can best be considered as being as close as possible to the opposite of Rochester’s view of Charles II,

‘Who never said a foolish thing

Nor ever did a wise one.’

If Truman rarely (in private) wrote a wise word, he was much less inclined in public to do a foolish thing. And that was much better than emulating King Charles.

On the next day, against the background of Truman demanding draft powers from Congress, the railroad strike was settled. It left considerable short-term bitterness. Whitney announced that he would spend all the resources of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainment in fighting Truman’s re-election in 1948. The CIO denounced him as ‘the No 1 strike-breaker’. Sidney Hillman and Harold Ickes added more moderate but at least equally damaging attacks. Mrs Roosevelt wrote privately and wisely: ‘… I hope you realize that there must not be any slip, because of the difficulties of our peace-time situation, into a military way of thinking … I have seen my husband receive much advice from his military advisers and succumb to it every now and then, but the people as a whole do not like it … I hope that now that your anxiety is somewhat lessened you will not insist upon a peacetime draft into the army of strikers. That seems to me a dangerous precedent.’13

Truman received these attacks, warnings and advice with some surface irritation, but in fact he had substantially calmed down on the issue and indeed saw the need to rebuild some bridges. This became easier because May 1946 marked the peak of post-war labour unrest. John L. Lewis was to have another major joust with the government six months later, but his position had become increasingly isolated. The union   leaders as a whole were pushed both into a more defensive position and into a greater need for an alliance with the Democratic Party by the return of a Republican Congress in November. And when it came to 1948, Whitney, so far from throwing all his funds against Truman, strongly supported his re-election.

Truman had made an early contribution to the change of atmosphere by a rapid and bewildering switch of direction almost immediately after the industrial crisis weekend of May 23rd-25th. The draconian draft powers for which he had asked the Congress in his dramatic personal appearance on May 24th were granted by a bemused House of Representatives by a 20 to 1 majority after a token debate. The Senate moved more cautiously. An unlikely combination of Robert Taft and a handful of liberal Democrats blocked precipitate decision. It was a sufficiently ill-considered bill that it could only go through at a rush. Delay was fatal to it. Little more was heard of Truman’s draft powers. The Senate compensated, however, not with the administration but with antiunion   public opinion, by passing the so-called Case Bill, which Representative Francis H. Case of South Dakota had got through the House in February. This measure was not merely anti-strike (it provided for a 60-day cooling-off period), but also hostile to the long-term growth of union   responsibilities; it prohibited for instance the administration by the union  s of health and welfare funds paid for by employers’ contributions.

A major controversy broke out, publicly between the union  s and the employers’ organization, more privately within the administration, as to whether Truman should veto it. On June 11th he did so. His message of reasons struck an entirely different note from that of May 25th. He had lurched back into a position of balance, but his performance on the tight-rope was more breathtaking than elegant.