TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/48elect/48elect.007

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                                  <                            =            ╚September 27, 1948

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Mowing 'Em Down



     Alben Barkley saw Harry Truman off at the station. "Mow 'em
down, Harry," Alben advised. "I'm going to fight hard. I'm going
to give them hell," promised the President. "You ought not to say
'hell,'" daughter Margaret admonished her father. Senator Barkley
suggested: "It is going to be a victorious trip." Said Harry
Truman briskly: "Yes, sir. It is going to be a V-T."

     Waving goodbye from the platform of his spic & span railway
car, hitched on to a string of 16 other railway cars, Harry
Truman rolled out of Washington on his 9,000-mile coast to coast
tour.

     The People v. the Interests. The train hurtled across
Pennsylvania, pausing at Pittsburgh. At Crestline, Ohio, the
President told 1,500 railway workers and families that he was
"saddened and shocked" by the death of Count Bernadotte. The
train slid into the Englewood yards where a herd of Chicago
politicians climbed aboard. It was 3 a.m. Cook County
Commissioner Arthur X. Elrod boomed disappointedly: "The big
wheel's asleep." But Mr. Truman got out of bed for a chat with
Cook County Boss Jade Arvey. Then the train rolled on into Iowa.

     At Davenport, Iowa City, Oxford and Grinnell, Harry Truman
stepped out on the rear platform, with Margaret beside him, to
give them hell. "Them" was the Republicans. "The issue is the
people against the special interests," he said. Proof? "All you
need to do is review the record of this Republican 80th
Congress."

     At the Widow Agg's. The crowds cheered him. Newsmen were
nonplussed. They had spent most of their time on the train
speculating on the extent of Mr. Truman's defeat in November. All
across Republican Iowa large crowds turned out to see him. The
crowds were friendly, a good deal of the cheering was
enthusiastic.

     At Dexter, 40 miles from Des Moines, the President left the
train. In a 37-auto motorcade he traveled to the Widow Lois Agg's
160-acre farm. There he delivered the week's major assault on the
enemy.

     Some 100,000 farmers from Iowa, Illinois and Missouri had
gathered at the Widow Agg's to witness a national plowing
contest. While Bess Truman, who had come up from Independence,
fixed a big red carnation in her husband's buttonhole and the
farmers grinned appreciatively, Harry Truman arrayed himself on a
platform on a little knoll. He was delighted with the speech
which Clark Clifford had written for him. Figuratively he bared
his fangs. As violently as he could, he mowed 'em down.

     "Gluttons of Privilege." "It is terribly dangerous to let
any one group get too much power in the Government," he cried. He
meant the "Wall St. reactionaries" who were in power in the '20s
and whose policies, he said, had ended in the 1929 crash and
subsequent disaster for the farmers.

     "These gluttons of privilege are now putting up fabulous
sums of money to elect a Republican administration . . . that
will listen to the gluttons of privilege first and the people not
at all . . .

     "The Republicans are telling farmers that the high cost of
manufactured good on the farm is due to this Government's labor
policy. That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick. 'If you
can't convince them, confuse them.'" The farm audience laughed
knowingly.

     "How many times do you have to be hit on the head before you
find out what's hitting you?" demanded Mr. Truman, standing on
Mrs. Agg's knoll in the middle of prosperous Iowa. "It's about
time that the people of America realized what the Republicans
have been doing to them . . .

     "These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They
are cunning men . . . This Republican Congress has already stuck
a pitchfork in the farmer's back . . . What they have taken away
from you thus far would be only a appetizer for the economic
tapeworm of big business . . . The question is: Are you going to
let another Republican blight wipe out your prosperity?"

     Afterwards the President ate a chicken dinner in a tent with
Iowa's Republican Governor Blue (recently) rejected by his party
for another term), watched the plowmen's contests, said goodbye
to the "ten acres of people" who were there, and drove back to
Des Moines. The curbs were lined with citizens. he waved to an
estimated 50,000 before he boarded his train, rolled on westward
with Bess, Margaret, advisers, politicos, and nonplussed newsmen.

_______________________________________________________________
DEMOCRATS
Acres of Folks

     As the "Presidential Special!" rolled back to Washington,
its cargo of frazzled newsmen were frankly horrified at Harry
Truman's endless cheerfulness and energy. Despite a sore throat
and his 64 years he leaped out of bed at 5 every morning,
apparently unable to wait for another exhausting day.

     One morning an aide caught him in the act of taking a brisk,
two-mile walk. Between breakfast and midnight that day, Harry
Truman traveled 500 miles by train, 141 by automobile and bus,
made 11 speeches in 15 different towns, changed his clothes eight
times and met 250 politicians, labor leaders and civic
dignitaries.

     Triumphant Discussion. At Neosho, Mo., he couldn't resist
giving the home folks a triumphant discussion of his travels. "I
started out at Des Moines, at a plowing contest," said ex-Plowboy
Harry Truman, "and there were just about ten acres of people in
front of the stand where I spoke . . . I went to Denver and there
were 100,000 people . . . went on down the Denver and Rio Grande
Railroad and over to Salt Lake City . . .

     "We had that meeting in the Mormon Tabernacle. It holds
11,000 people and there were about 12,500 at the place, and when
I got through with them I don't think there was a Republican in
Utah but what didn't feel like he wanted to vote the Democratic
ticket."

     At Reno, the President had spoken "to an acre and a half of
people." In Los Angeles he had addressed "30,000 people in
Gilmore Stadium and they seemed highly interested." He said,
further: "The governor of Texas met me (in El Paso) and we went
across Texas, and I must have seen a million people in Texas."

     As he headed home the President seemed to get folksier &
folksier at every stop. In Ardmore, Okla., he yanked open a
horse's mouth and stared at the animal's teeth. "Six years old,"
he cried. "Correct," said the horse's owner. At Lexington, in
Kentucky's bluegrass country, he compared himself to the wonder
horse, Citation, in predicting a homestretch victory. At
Shelbyville, Ky., he talked about his ancestry: "My grandfather
Truman ran off with Mary Jane Holmes and was married here in
Shelbyville and lived . . . out here west of town . . ."

     The Homely Approach. Though he also continued his vehement
attacks on the 80th Congress, and damned the National Association
of Manufacturers, the homely approach set the tone for almost
everything the President did last week. The crowds in the border
states loved it.

     He had his critics. Said Socialist Candidate Norman Thomas,
who has taken part in six campaigns: "You can carry this business
of being just one of the folks too far." But the President seemed
to believe that victory lay in carrying it farther. When he got
back to Washington at week's end, he had traveled 8,300 miles,
made 140 speeches and estimated that he had seen 3,000,000
people.

     He planned to stay in the capital only four days. This week,
despite competition from the World Series, he would set out on a
new tour of Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and upstate New
York. Said he: "People are beginning to wake up to the fact that
this is a crusade . . . I've only just begun to fight."