Even Money

With patient good humor Harry Truman repeated a familiar little scene over & over again. Seated at his desk in the Oval Room he scrawled a few letters of the presidential signature, picked up another pen, squiggled on, changed pens again. When he finished he handed them to the beaming group clustered around him while cameras recorded the ceremony.

By week's end the President had signed into law more than 50 bills pouring in from a homeward-bound Congress. Some of them, like the bills for the domestic control of atomic energy and for U.S. participation in UNESCO, were of first importance. At least one--the much-needed bill for congressional reorganization--was a welcome surprise to the U.S. people as well as the President. Others were out-&-out pork-barreling.

Along with the bills he signed, the President sent back 15 others with a veto. Among them: the Tidelands Oil Bill, renouncing federal claims to oil beyond the low-water mark, an issue the President thought the Supreme Court should decide.

There was no letup. The President kept his eye on the calendar, and the date of his reckoning with his sworn political foe, Congressman Roger Slaughter, up for renomination in the Missouri primary this week. But there was a mountain of work to move before Politician Truman could go off electioneering.

The Creamy Jacket. In the midst of his domestic labors, he ran head-on into the tough, touchy Palestine problem. With rare irritation, Harry Truman informed a delegation of anxious Congressmen that he had no time to discuss the matter with them. He had too much else on his mind.

Only twice did the President change out of his working clothes for an evening away from his workbaskets. At a dinner of Democratic Senators celebrating loyal Alben Barkley's ninth year as Majority Leader, the President mixed praise for the job Barkley had done in pushing the Administration's legislative program with a hopeful hint that Congress would get around to passing the rest of it at its next session.

Three nights later he used the A.A.F.'s 39th anniversary dinner as a sounding board for foreign listeners. Rising up in the Hotel Statler's glittering ballroom in a cream-colored jacket, he gave a brief earnest of the U.S. postwar intent: "The U.S. wants no power, territory or reparations. All it wants is a just peace."

But most of the time the President was sticking grimly to his office, charging like a bulldozer into the bank of administrative odds & ends which still barred the way to Missouri.

Mountain to Molehill. Out of the White House tumbled a torrent of major & minor appointments: Assistant Secretary of State Will Clayton to the newly created post of Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs; Kentucky newspaper editor and onetime governor Keen Johnson to be the first Under Secretary of Labor; seven other new diplomats, judges, administrative aides.

To the Senate went a routine treaty establishing formal relations between the U.S. and the new republic of the Philippines. To Cabinet officers, all federal departments and agencies, went strongly worded messages, ordering a cutback of at least $2.2 billion in Government spending as a brake against inflation and the looming budget deficit.

Under the President's steady assault the mountain of unfinished business melted to a molehill. At week's end he drew a deep breath, climbed aboard the Sacred Cow, just back from Paris, and headed west to cast his vote as Citizen Harry Truman.

That vote could not directly affect Roger Slaughter. He was not running from Harry Truman's district. But with it would go all the prestige of the presidential office. In a single, considered statement ("If he's right, I'm wrong") the President had repudiated Congressman Slaughter, had thrown the whole weight of his personal and political backing behind Candidate Enos Axtell. A rebuff for the President in his own state would be a bruising setback.

Picnic & Politics. But no worries showed on Harry Truman's face. When the big plane landed at Grandview the crowd noticed only that the President seemed a little more tired than usual.

Almost immediately the presidential party left the airport for a short visit with the President's 93-year-old mother, feeling much better after her recovery from a summer cold. Then they drove the 17 miles to Independence, where 300 of Harry Truman's old friends were assembled on the lawn of the old frame house.

It was the kind of weekend the President loved. That afternoon there was a picnic for Bess Truman's mother, Mrs. David W. Wallace; the next day a formal birthday dinner in her honor. Harry Truman got a rare opportunity to drive his own car when he went over to visit his mother again, accompanied only by a secret service agent.

But despite Press Secretary Charlie Ross's protestations, the President's own careful silence, no one missed the political implications. One of the first men the President spoke to as he arrived in Independence was Kansas City Boss Jim Pendergast (nephew of the notorious Tom), who had reluctantly broken an old political alliance to back the President's candidate.

On the eve of the primary, political wiseacres were still trying to size up the President's gamble. Congressman Roger Slaughter still had most of the chips. But in Kansas City a pair of bookies and self-styled election experts named Gold Tooth Maxie and Cozy Dolan put their heads together, issued the track odds: even money, take your pick.

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