National Affairs: Four Men in a Boat

Back from Missouri, Harry Truman was soon aboard the Presidential yacht Williamsburg for a four-day cruise down the Potomac and in Chesapeake Bay. This was not the poker-and piano-playing sort of outing the President likes. The President was hard at work.

Two disappointments weighed heavy on Harry Truman: 1) Congressional inaction on the whole program of Government planning-for-prosperity which he had inherited from Franklin Roosevelt; 2) labor’s bitter criticism of the fact-finding, cooling-off proposal which he had hoped would end the current wave of strikes and threatened strikes.

Harry Truman apparently thought that both Congress and labor had let him down. Like the late Franklin Roosevelt, he now decided to take his troubles and his desires right to the people over the heads of Congress and the pressure groups. This week he would make a fireside chat, follow it up with his State of the Union speech to Congress.

To help plot the policies and polish the phrases of the two speeches, the President took with him three men who have had much to do with his domestic program: 49-year-old Samuel Irving Rosenman, 45-year-old John Roy Steelman, and 49-year-old George Edward Allen.

To most Americans the names of at least two of the Skipper’s three mates meant little. (Sam Rosenman was well known as F.D.R.’s wordsmith.) But, in influence, they were among the most important people in the U.S. Along with grey, cautious Leslie L. Biffle, Secretary of the Senate, and tightlipped, banker-minded Reconversion Director John W. Snyder, they are the men closest to Harry Truman, those he considers to be his true-blue loyals.

Arkansas-born John Steelman, sociologist and practical conciliator, is a comparative newcomer to high presidential councils. A once potent influence in the Labor Department, he had been called on from time to time by Franklin Roosevelt. But Steelman has become much closer to F.D.R.’s successor. He attends the “Kitchen Cabinet’s” daily 9 a.m. meetings with the President, is in a better position to advise him than Labor Secretary Lewis Schwellenbach. It was significant that Steelman, not Lew Schwellenbach, went on the boat ride.

Handy Man. Of the three, the least known to the U.S. public is Mississippi-born George Allen. In Harry Truman’s official family, but not of it, he holds no U.S. job, draws no Government salary. But no one, unless it is Jimmy Byrnes talking foreign policy, sees more of the President. No one—unless it is Les Biffle, who does not often get to the White House—is a more intimate confidant. George Allen is urbane and companionable, has a fund of funny stories which Harry Truman likes to hear. While others may be busy with official chores, ever-ready George Allen is always at the President’s beck & call. When Harry Truman takes an afternoon dip in the White House pool, Allen usually splashes around with him.

More & more the President has let George do more & more important tasks—from prodding the Democratic leadership in Congress to masterminding Administration projects. The Allen hand has been in many of the President’s recommendations to Congress. Few Truman statements or speeches reach the mimeograph machine without Allen’s O.K. Lately, to the vexation of Democratic National Committeemen, Allen has been consulted more & more on appointments to important posts.

Allen, who is a vice president of the Home Insurance Co. (reportedly at $50,000 a year), got chummy with Harry Truman when he traveled with him in the 1944 campaign. Allen was then secretary of the Democratic National Committee. He was one of the first to whom Harry Truman turned after Franklin Roosevelt’s death. Allen knew intimately many men whom the new President hardly knew at all, such as Harry Hopkins and Sam Rosenman.

George Allen has inevitably made powerful enemies. He has lately been the target of quiet attacks by men high in Democratic councils. So far they have been unable to throw at him anything more damaging than the fact that they do not like him. And Harry Truman obviously does.