DEMOCRATS: Why They Came Out

It was hard to realize that only four months ago Harry Truman had addressed an auditorium full of empty seats at Omaha. As he walked out on the stage at Philadelphia’s Convention Hall (capacity: 14,000) one night last week, the band pumped out Hail to the Chief, and 12,000 people yelled, whistled, clapped, and yipped out the familiar cry: “Give ’em hell, Harry!”

Whatever hell may be to others, hell to Harry Truman seems to be a world populated by the Republican members of the 80th Congress. The G.O.P., cried Harry, wants to put all the people of the country “in one big company union and run it for the benefit of the National Association of Manufacturers.” The crowd roared. He sniped at Tom Dewey’s theme of unity. “We don’t believe in the unity of slaves . . . or sheep,” he said. In all, he was applauded 24 times during the course of his prepared, half-hour speech.

Badinage. There was no doubting the President’s growing entertainment value. This was demonstrated again & again as he pressed on through last week’s three-day campaign tour. As his train chuffed through eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial towns big, obviously curious crowds turned out to see him.

They applauded when he “gave ’em hell.” They watched with pleased but oddly silly smiles as he exchanged badinage with admirers, received presents, indulged in wisecracks. For all their friendliness, his listeners acted more like a vaudeville audience than a political crowd. They were vastly entertained by Harry’s whipcracks at the Republican elephant. But they did not seem particularly impressed by the import of what they heard; at times they seemed almost to shrug, good-humoredly, at Harry’s more intemperate statements.

In Jersey City, tall, sour-faced Boss Frank Hague (who had once predicted that Truman would lose New Jersey by 300,000 votes) now did his best for Harry. Fireworks spouted like golden fountains and for a mile the crowds were jammed 40 deep. In Albany—Tom Dewey’s home territory—some 10,000 people stood through an early morning downpour to hear him.

Butcher Knife. Then the presidential train began a station-to-station run to Buffalo. Seven thousand people stayed through a violent cloudburst at Auburn, Republican Congressman John Taber’s home town. They cheered lustily as Harry Truman berated Taber for using “a butcher knife and a saber and a meat ax . . . on every forward-looking program . . .” There were more crowds at Schenectady, Amsterdam, Little Falls, Utica, Rome, Oneida, Syracuse, Seneca Falls, Geneva, Rochester, and Buffalo. And there would be great crowds again this week as the President toured the Middle West. Politicos and columnists seemed puzzled by the phenomenon. But the President himself, with a peculiar combination of frankness and naiveté, offered a plausible explanation. Said he in a speech at Batavia, N.Y.: “I think they want to find out whether all this propaganda that has been put out—about the President not being able to do his job—is true or not.”