Stress & Strain

At the President's press conference, newsmen were sure they noted a change in Harry Truman. For the first time in his 291 days in the White House, the even-voiced Missourian in the trim, double-breasted brown suit seemed eager to lash out at his critics.

Some Congressmen, he pointed out, opposed his plans to enlarge the White House (TIME, Jan. 21). Such talk was a tempest in a teapot; if some of our good friends want to come down and protest by chaining themselves to a bush or a shrub, it will be entirely satisfactory.

A reporter wanted to know: what was the President's reaction to Ben Fairless' radio speech suggesting a White House conference of management executives? Harry Truman's jaw tightened. His reply was short and sharp: he did not make appointments over the radio or in the press. If industry wanted to come the regular way, the door would be open.

Associates thought they saw an unusual irritation over trifles, an excessive enthusiasm for getting out for an evening of poker.* The man who never wanted to be President was wistfully eager for the vacation cruise off Florida which he had planned for next week.

Grind & Sass. In the worst of the labor pinch, the President had to cut down on his afternoon reducing exercises and grind through long, wearing conferences. Cheerful George Allen took to his bed, and the President lost four valued Administration lieutenants./- The C.I.O.'s young, yeasty United Packinghouse Workers sassed him (see below).

The currents of janissariat politics swirled around his head. Some of his advisers were now, in private, denying any authorship of the hastily made strategies that had gone awry. Typical was a comment one of them made to a newsman: "We've been getting some bad labor advice somewhere--say, what do you think of John Steelman?"

Reconversion Boss John W. Snyder was privately miffed because the President had appointed Allen to the board of the Reconstruction Finance Corp., presumably as a step to the chairmanship. That was the chairmanship Banker Snyder thought he had sewed up for himself. Long-jawed Chester Bowles, stubbornly trying to hold the price line against the pressures of almost everybody else, was at the feuding point with Snyder and wondering how long he could go along.

Discharge Points? Republicans made the best of the bad week at the White House. Said Oregon's smart Senator Wayne Morse: "This Administration shows not only confusion and indecision, but also a lack of intelligent comprehension of the industrial and economic issues." Another GOPster, thinking of Harry Truman's massive 21-point legislative program, quipped: "The President has so many points that he'll soon have enough for discharge as commander in chief."

But many of the people who were speaking most venomously about Truman were Roosevelt-loving left-wingers. This was cheerfully pointed out by the Chicago Tribune's famed Cartoonist Joseph L. Parrish Jr., who made "Party Radical" the biggest bum in his picture.

In this situation, ordinary Democrats were reduced to hoping that they had seen the worst. Said one of the President's best friends in the Senate: "Well, it's better that it should come now than later. This gives him time to work out of the mess, and the public time to forget it by 1948."

This week, as the skies cleared over Labor (see below), the Democrats began to believe themselves. Party morale, like the stockmarket, went sharply up. It looked as if Harry Truman could have his vacation.

*Washington chuckled over a story of one of Harry Truman's nights out--a stag poker party at the Wardman Park Hotel apartment of his chubby, story-telling Adviser George Allen. Somehow the secret of the visit slipped. By the time the President arrived, every man, woman and child in the hotel had been well alerted. A small army of Secret Service men added to the confusion. Said one observer: "A midafternoon parade down Pennsylvania Avenue could have been kept just as quiet."

/- Speechwriter and Adviser Judge Samuel Irving Rosenman, Statistician Isador Lubin, Contract Terminations Director Robert Hinckley, and Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel W. ("Old Dan") Tracy.

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