Truman(8)

He also had fairly immediate political prospects. The outfitters had not only been a fluctuatingly successful sales outlet. It had in addition been a great political talking shop, particularly for demobilized veterans. Truman loved veterans. ‘My whole political career is based on my war service and war associates,’ he said with a little exaggeration 25 years later. Of course he could not love them all, not even those from Battery D, or the 129th Field Artillery. Some of them were Republicans, and this produced an awkward conflict of loyalties. But in 1920, for the only time in his life he crossed over party lines and voted for a Major Miles (of the 129th) as County Marshal. A few others of the battery played him false, either politically or financially, and his sense of shock and betrayal then made him unforgiving. But in general army reunion   companionship was exactly to his taste. He always supported ‘the bonus’.6 It was one of the few issues on which he went against Roosevelt in the 1930s. The American Legion Convention in Kansas City in October 1921 was a brief uplift during his decline to insolvency.

Amongst the intermediate ring of his army acquaintanceships was Lieutenant James M. Pendergast. He was the son of Michael J. Pendergast, who was an older but less dynamic brother of Thomas J. Pendergast, one of the legendary city bosses of American politics in the first 40 years of this century. In 1911 Tom Pendergast had inherited from the eldest brother of the three, ‘Alderman Jim’, a traditional, poor neighbourhood, immigrant-based machine in the riverside areas of West Bottoms and North End. Within a few years he had extended this domain to include the new southern suburbs of Kansas City, as well as the more rural area to the east, and was endeavouring to control the state, although he was always subject to competition from St Louis, which was a bigger city.

Truman’s relations in the early days were primarily with Mike Pendergast rather than with the ‘Big Boss’, Tom. He knew him better (through his son, the lieutenant). He liked him more. (‘I loved him as I did my own daddy’, he is recorded by Margaret Truman as saying after Mike Pendergast’s death in 1929.) And while Truman’s political arena was confined to the rural part of Jackson County, Mike was to him the more relevant figure. ‘Tom didn’t like the country,’ he laconically and convincingly explained.

Later his relations with the greater Pendergast became a crucial and fluctuating factor in his career. He never ‘loved him like his daddy,’ but he was his awkward client. He could not have secured his Senate seat without him. He lived honestly and therefore uncomfortably alongside him, his reputation suffering as a result. As Vice-President, he insisted on flying 1000 miles to his funeral, after Tom Pendergast had collapsed into disgrace and a jail sentence.

But in 1922 it was Mike Pendergast who helped him to win the nomination for Eastern Judge. This mandarin-like title concealed a moderately significant executive local office. Its holder was in no sense a judge: he had no judicial functions; he was the elected assistant administrator of the eastern district of Jackson County; together with the Western Judge, he worked under the Presiding Judge who covered the whole county. The western district was Kansas City. The eastern part was Independence, Grandview, and five other small communities. Truman therefore fought his first election very much on his own doorstep. But it was certainly not a ‘front-porch’ campaign. He attempted to speak everywhere, but was frustrated not by the hostility of his audiences but his own tongue-tiedness.

There is complete agreement that he was at this stage an appalling speaker. At least it gave him the habit of never talking for more than 20 minutes, which he retained throughout his subsequent campaigns. He had the other advantages of a good local reputation and the enthusiastic support of the thick concentration of his army companions (the intensely local nature of the unit giving him a base which the dispersal policy of World War II would have made impossible). A claque from Battery D called for ‘three cheers for Captain Harry’ whenever his oratory broke down. And he had Mike Pendergast, who endorsed him enthusiastically for the office. ‘Now I’m going to tell you who you are going to be for for county judge’, Truman later recalled his saying to a Democratic Club meeting. ‘It’s Harry Truman. He’s got a fine war record. He comes from a fine family. He’ll make a fine judge.’3

Even so, Truman won with difficulty. The Democrats were split into two factions, mysteriously named Goats and Rabbits. Truman was an hereditary Goat. So were the Pendergasts, although the division pre-dated their sway. But the Rabbits were quite strong and made a determined attempt to get a local banker named Montgomery nominated. The Ku Klux Klan presented an additional complication. They began to erupt into Missouri at this stage, and torches were burnt near Grandview. Truman was at first inclined to join them, and offered a $10 subscription (the extent of their intolerance had not fully surfaced) but his Battery D loyalty came to his rescue. He was asked to give an assurance that, if elected, he would never give a job to a Catholic. That would have excluded 90% of his beloved associates. He firmly refused. The $10 were returned. That was the end of his flirtation with the Klan, but not of his embroilment with it.