The Last Progressive President

February 1947

In welcoming George C. Marshall as the new Secretary of State, H.A. said, “In almost every nation that has suffered heavily in this war, men and women are desperately trying to alter the old order of things because the old order has brought them poverty, disaster and war… Almost without a battle we have yielded to the Russians the loyalty of millions of workers and peasants because they believe the Russians and not ourselves are their only guarantors against hunger and war. We cannot permit this to go on or we shall find our only allies are the tired men who have lost the faith of their own people.”

Speaking of tired men who have lost the faith of their people, it looks like King George will fall in Greece, as might the government in Turkey. The anti-communist Whiskey Rebels want to send military aid to these regimes; however, the anti-communist, but isolationist, subsection of the Whiskey Rebels do not want any more tax dollars spent on more foreign aid.

H.A. responded that sending military aid to Greece and Turkey would be a down payment on an unlimited expenditure aimed at opposing communist expansion. America, in effect, would be forced to police Russia’s every border. To the Whiskey Rebels there is no regime too reactionary for us to support provided it stands in Russia’s expansionist path. There is no country too remote to serve as the scene of a contest, which may widen until it becomes another world war. He said, humanitarian aid to Greece was needed, but not military aid to a repressive regime. A policy of military aid H.A. said, “is utterly futile. No people can be bought. America cannot afford to spend billions and billions of dollars for unproductive purposes. The world is hungry and insecure, and peoples of all lands demand change. American loans for military purposes won’t stop them. …once America stands for opposition to change, we are lost. America will become the most hated nation in the world.”

H.A. called for action through the U.N. “If the United Nations is untested, let us test it. If the United Nations lacks support, let us support it. If the United Nations is weak, let us strengthen it.”

The way to fight communism, H.A. concluded, was “by what William James called ‘the replacing power of the higher affection.’ In other words, we must give the common man all over the world something better than communism. I believe we have something better than communism here in America.”

January 1947

Okay I’m not paranoid. We found out that J. Edgar Hoover, in his paranoia of “Communist conspiracy,” has made dossiers on everyone connected with H.A. It seems Hoover secretly questions the president’s “Americanism” and he, and everyone associated with him, is suspect. Beware the clean-cut men in gray suits.

H.A. was on Meet the Press and almost every question was, in one way or another, about the infiltration of communists in our society. He simply replied, “If you allow that little thing to dominate your mind, it means that you have become a red-baiter, a person who wants to sic the F.B.I. onto your neighbor; its interferes with everything you want to do.”

However, fear of communist infiltration is growing. Spurred by the Whisky Rebels, Conservative Republicans such as Robert Taft of Ohio and Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, and William Knowland of California allied with racist southern Democrats such as Mississippi’s Senator James O. Eastland and Congressman John Rankin attacked the New Deal as “un-American” and “unconstitutional” and in foreign policy they said that H.A. would allow the Communists to take over the world.

Congress has started investigations to identify and expel communists in the federal government. To facilitate their efforts they sought to establish a Federal Employees Loyalty and Security Program. The program would not allow employees under suspicion to confront their accusers or to know the evidence against them.

H.A. said that Congress was overstepping its bounds. He was the President and he was responsible for government employees. H.A. correctly sees this as means to discourage the best and brightest from staying, or joining, government service to advance the New Deal. H.A. will not allow the New Deal to be stymied.

Again from the sidelines, Truman said he would issue an Executive Order to implement the Congressional program and weed out communists in government. Fortunately, Truman is not the president and innocent employees will not lose their jobs due to red-baiting.

© 2014 Ron Millar

December 1946

Although mid-term election results were bad [see November 1946 entry –AS], this was a good financial year for H.A., he expected his 40 percent ownership of Pioneer Hi-Bred will provide him with $150,000. This compared to his presidential salary of $75,000, Vice President salary of $20,000, and his former Secretary salary of $15,000.

Even with this income, H.A. is notoriously cheap. One of my jobs, before he became President, was to surreptitiously supplement his restaurant tips. As President, this does not come up as often, since he doesn’t need to carry cash or even a wallet, but on occasion still need to reach into my pocket.

Fortunately, H.A. is generous to labor in the big picture.

H.A. used the full force of his office to mediate labor disputes and helped prevent strikes. His efforts helped ensure that wages did not fall as the labor force increased with the returning service men and women. He did this through the public bully pulpit of shaming big business in their efforts to reduce wages and through private meetings explaining the importance of big business to work with his administration to ensure the continuance of lucrative government contracts, fair business regulation, and open markets overseas. Strikes still occurred but I believe our efforts greatly limited the number of strikes and shortened their duration. For those recalcitrant big businesses, unidentified members of our administration hinted that we were considering using the administration’s authority under the Smith-Connally Act of 1947, passed over FDR’s veto, to seize plants closed by labor disputes. Since the law was designed to weaken organized labor, our opponents howled that this would be an illegal nationalizing of industry. H.A. has not had to use this option, but the threat has been powerful.

This month, we created a Committee on Civil Rights to provide recommendation on how to eliminate, or at least reduce, racial discrimination in government. H.A. wants the government to serve all Americans and to ensure that it does he knows that government must be made up of all Americans. Once these recommendations are made, I hope that H.A. will expand the focus of this committee. The Whiskey Rebels attacked the formation of the committee in their normal hysteria that promoting civil rights is a communist plot to divide and destroy America.

November 1946

The mid-term elections were a disaster for H.A. and the progressive Democrats. The Republicans two-word slogan “Had Enough?” captured the mood of the nation. The slogan was also modified to include “Had enough strikes?” and “Had enough communism?” Senator Robert Taft of Ohio accused the president of seeking a Congress “dominated by a policy of appeasing the Russians abroad and of fostering Communism at home.” The Archbishop of New York, Francis Cardinal Spellman wrote an article prior to the election saying “only the bat-blind can fail to be aware of the Communist invasion of our country.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce widely distributed a report entitled “Communist Infiltration in the United States.”

The voters gave the Republicans control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928. The Republicans now have a 58-seat majority in the House (246 to 188 -AS) and a six-seat edge in the Senate. However, the actual loss for H.A. is even higher when you consider that the vast majority of the Southern delegation is also hostile to H.A. Many Republican elected officials are talking of leaving the Democratic Party to be more closely associated with the Whiskey Rebel controlled Republicans. I guess their hatred of Communists exceeds their hatred of the party of Lincoln. Two rabid anti-communists are going to be taking seats in Congress. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and Representative Richard Nixon of California both of whom obtained their seats by smearing their opponents as pinkos and communists. Nixon defeated Congressman Jerry Voorhis by linking him to the “Moscow-CIO PAC-Henry Wallace line.”

H.A. responded by saying that “As a result of this election, the Democratic Party will either become more progressive or it will die. I do not expect it to die.” He added, “The American people have rejected, as they will always reject, a Democratic Party that is not militantly progressive… Of course, we need organization. The primary effort of progressives may be to rebuild the Democratic Party as a liberal party.”

In response the red-baiting of the Republicans, conservative Democrats and Whiskey Rebels, H.A. said, “We shall hold firmly to the American theme of peace, prosperity and freedom and shall repel all the attacks of the plutocrats and monopolists who will try to brand us as reds. If it is traitorous to believe in peace, we are traitors. If it is communistic to believe in prosperity for all, we are communists. If it is red-baiting to fight for free speech and real freedom of the press, we are red-baiters. If it is un-American to believe in freedom from monopolistic dictation, we are un-American. I say that we are more American than the neo-Fascists who attack us. I say on with the fight.”

In response to subsequent attacks, H.A. said, “Those who put hatred of Russia first in all their feelings and actions do not believe in peace. We shall never be against anything simply because Russia is for it. Neither shall we ever be for anything simply because Russia is for it. We shall hold firmly to the American theme of peace, prosperity and freedom.”

Needless to say the Whiskey Rebels and other opponents used this language to confirm their rhetoric of fear and hate. To further drum up the fears of Communism, J. Edgar Hoover at a speech before the American Legion charged that at least 100,000 Communists were loose in the nation’s schools, colleges, churches, newspapers, movie studios, and radio stations.

H.A. had dealt with this type of fear mongering before. Texas Congressman Martin Dies, an ultra-conservative and chairman of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, wrote a letter to H.A. on March 28, 1942, which he gave to reporters the next day, charging that “at least thirty-five high government officials employed by the Board of Economic Warfare have public records which show affiliations with front organizations of the Community Party.” H.A. hit back immediately and strongly. In a four-page rebuttal H.A. accused Dies of seeking “to inflame the public mind by a malicious distortion of the facts.” Citing the need for unity in our war effort, H.A. said, “the doubts and anger which this and similar statements of Mr. Dies tend to arouse in the public mind might as well come from [Nazi propagandist Joseph -AS] Goebbels himself as far as their practical effect is concerned.” The newspapers, and the public, saw this as yet another attempt by Dies to promote himself at the expense of others and then sided with the Vice President.

This election is a clear indication that public option is turning away from H.A. I hope he can stem the tide and return the electorate to the sanity of progressive Democrats. Also, I hope H.A. sees that it is time to fire that fascist Hoover!

October 1946

H.A. gave a speech in Madison Square Garden that is giving him grief from both the Left and Right. The Left boo’d and hiss’d when he said, “We may not like what Russia is doing in Eastern Europe. Her type of land reform, industrial expropriation, and suppression of basic liberties offends the great majority of the people of the United States.” And the vast majority of people attending were of the Left.

The Right attacked him for appeasing the Russians and interference with States Rights – read Jim Crow and segregation for saying, “During the past year or so, the significance of peace has been increased immeasurably by the atom bomb, guided missiles, and airplanes which soon will travel as fast as sound. Make no mistake about it – another war would hurt the United States many times as much as the last war… He who trusts in the atom bomb will sooner or later perish by the atom bomb – or something worse. I say this as one who steadfastly backed preparedness throughout the thirties. We have no use for namby-pamby pacifism. But we must realize that modern inventions have now made peace the most enticing thing in the world – and we should be willing to pay the price for peace… The price for peace – for us and for every nation in the world – is the price of giving up prejudice, hatred, fear and ignorance… Hatred breeds hatred. The doctrine of racial superiority produces a desire to get even on the part of its victims. If we are to work for peace in the rest of the world, we here in the United States must eliminate racism from our unions, our business organizations, our educational institutions, and our employment practices. Merit alone must be the measure of men.”

H.A. closed by saying that peace was the “basic issue” facing voters in the coming mid-term elections and in the presidential election two years from now. “How we meet this issue will determine whether we will live not in ‘one world’ or ‘two worlds’ – but whether we live at all.”

A New York Times reporter [James Haggerty -AS] asked if the boos and hisses surprised him. H.A. said, “It was to be expected. I was following a straight American line.”

On a happier note, Jean [Wallace’s daughter -AS] was married this month.

September 1946

President Avila Camacho asked H.A. to attend ceremonies marking the end of his six-year term. The two presidents were on friendly terms since H.A. visit in 1940 [see November 1944 entry -AS]. The highlight of this trip for H.A. was visiting the international experiment station founded by the Rockefeller Foundation at H.A.’s suggestion. We met Norman Borlaug and H.A. “was amazed to see corn that would go more than seventy bushels to the acre.”

On the 17^th, Truman made a speech in New York calling for a confrontational containment policy with the Soviet Union. H.A. was furious with Truman. Truman thought he had the President’s support for the speech because he had given him a foreign policy memorandum in late July (apparently several cabinet members had produced memos following a cabinet meeting focused on foreign affairs). Truman had also met with H.A. for 15 minutes earlier in the day of the speech. H.A. told me Truman’s tone of the speech was to be that the U.S. did not have a special friendship with Britain the Soviets or any nation. We want to see a peaceful world with all nations working together on an equal basis. H.A. thought Truman was on board with the administration’s foreign policy, and was quite surprised by Truman’s support of Britain’s imperialist policies and his fear of the Soviet Union.

On the 20^th, H.A. spent two hours with Truman to try to either convince him to make no further foreign policy statements or to accept the Administration’s position. Truman refused so he was fired.

August 1946

Not yet transcribed. -AS