The Republic in a Top Hat

As the last days of the old Administration ticked away, Washington got set for a costly carnival to welcome in the new. Bunting curled around Pennsylvania Avenue lampposts from the White House to Capitol Hill. From nearly every store window beamed the twin pictures of Alben Barkley and Harry Truman. Expecting nearly a million elbowing visitors this week, a 1,300-member committee toiled feverishly to make the four-day show the biggest, most expensive Presidential Inauguration in history. After all, it was the nearest thing the U.S. had to a coronation, a rare chance for the republic's leaders to turn out in top hats.

Only the privileged would see the formal ceremonies on the Capitol steps, conducted before an $80,000 grandstand erected by the 80th Congress, in anticipation of a Republican President. But there were some 80 other special events, from a Hollywood variety show to the formal Inaugural Ball in the National Guard Armory. There would be a 7-mile-long parade, with 40 floats, 30 bands, a steam calliope, thousands of marching troops and civilians, an air umbrella of 650 military aircraft.

Coffee, 15-c-. The prices were an indication of the times. Some 47,000 grandstand seats along the parade route were sold out--at $2 to $10 a throw. Street concessionaires posted their price lists: coffee, 15-c-; hot dogs, 20-c-. Washington hotels had been booked solid for months--some at triple the normal rate--and clamorous visitors were begging for sleeping space as far away as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Affecting to be a little embarrassed by all the ceremony, Harry Truman quietly waited the day which would bring him into the presidency in his own right. He worked on his inaugural address, admired his wife's and daughter's new clothes (a black-and-grey silk for Bess Truman, red gabardine for Margaret), answered his own invitation to the ceremonies with a little gag: "Weather permitting, I hope to be present. HST."*

New Faces. For him, it was a week of beginnings and endings. He posed with his official family for the last Cabinet picture of his first Administration, giving the public one of its infrequent looks at men like Donaldson, Brannan and Sawyer. Of the men grouped around Truman, only one was a holdover from Franklin Roosevelt's regime. He was Defense Secretary James Forrestal, and he was on his way out.

One important face was missing from the picture: the stern, lined face of George Catlett Marshall (departing Under Secretary Robert Lovett stood in for him). Truman had already taken his leave of Marshall, in characteristic fashion. Ducking out from the White House after lunch one day last week, he flew down to Pinehurst, N.C. for a chatty visit with Marshall, who did not know he was coming. "I needed to see the Secretary of State," said the President, "so I went to see him."

As much as any single event, the loss of George Marshall marked for Harry Truman and the U.S. the transition from something old to something new.

*On his 1941 invitation Franklin Roosevelt scrawled a similar note to Military Aide "Pa" Watson: "Tell them I will go if I can arrange it. FDR."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.