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.W.L.Brandon ofPoplar Bluff.Brandon was a physician, an old Truman friend, buthis support did not mean a great deal because Poplar Bluff was asmall place and heavily Republican the chairman of the Republicanstate committee, Grover Dalton, lived in Poplar Bluff.Other vicechairmen were Delmar Dail of Marceline, Philip Groves of Neosho,Sterling McCarty of Caruthersville, Mortimer Levy of Moberly, andFrank Monroe of Sedalia (with whom Truman stayed overnightwhen asked to run for the Senate in 1934).The committee set up divisions, with Mrs.Henry Clay Chiles ofLexington heading the Women s Division; the former Mary Bostianwas a classmate of the senator at Independence High School, in theclass of 1901.C.L.Blanton, Sr., owner of the Sikeston Standard, one ofthe half dozen friendly newspapers in the state, headed the PublicityCommittee.Tom Evans took over the Radio Division, as befitted hisco-ownership of the Kansas City station, KCMO.Tom Van Sant, abanker from Fulton, was chairman of the misnamed Budget Commit-tee, for money never was budgeted there was never enough.VanSant referred to himself as Mr.Average Voter and helped Truman bytalking to him that way, for he was shrewd in guessing what outstatevoters wanted.Roy W.Harper of Caruthersville headed the StateOffice Committee, a catch-all betokening an effort to raise moneyfrom officeholders.Dr.William J.Thompkins, recorder of deeds for the District ofColumbia  by presidential nomination, was named general chair-man of the Negro Division.Truman had obtained the office forThompkins, and it was a leading source of jobs in the federal govern-ment.Thompkins was president of the National Colored DemocraticAssociation, and during the campaign traveled Missouri in the sen-ator s behalf.The senator s campaign headquarters boasted three offices.FredCanfil, who had been Truman s speech-deliverer during the cam-paign in 1934, was put in charge of the Kansas City office.It was notmuch of a place, for the Jackson Democratic Club was still operatingand would give Truman what votes it could, not many because ofvirtual abolition of ghost voting and local disgust with excesses ofthe machine; Aylward had been astonished by the machine s actionsOrganizing and Campaigning / 87and was running a separate slate.Canfil s principal task was to findspeaking engagements for the senator.That probably was enoughfor Fred, a big bull of a man whom people he came in contact withusually thought was strange or odd.A friend, Easley, said he had a dog-like devotion for Truman but could think of little else to sayfor him.An enemy described him as  a very articulate individual.I don t think he missed a chance to do a lot of talking when theoccasion presented itself. 13State headquarters, which was a nominal description, was at 313South Ohio in Sedalia.It was established in April 1940 when Trumaninstalled there one of his four Senate secretaries, Catherine Bixler.Inthose days there was no law against using the office staff on personaltasks such as campaigns.State headquarters was in an old storebuilding that had been unoccupied for more than a year.Messall, whose title was  campaign manager, was in charge inSedalia.A slight, long-faced man with yellow hair, who years beforehad come to Missouri from western Kansas with his mother, he wasnot entrusted with much.One explanation for his small part in the or-ganization was that John Snyder disliked him.Another of Truman scampaign assistants disliked him because the assistant was  JohnSnyder s boy. At the end of the primary Truman came to believe hewas taking money.Soon after the November election Messall leftthe senator to open a public relations office in Washington.Andso he was  plowed under. Truman told Easley that  Now, we regoing to have Vic to set up an outstate office and we ll have allour campaign literature and everything in Sedalia.Vic don t knowanybody in St.Louis and he ll run that office there in Sedalia. 14 Afterthe initial rally of the campaign, held in Sedalia, the Sedalia officelapsed into unimportance, with Messall and his assistant, Catherine,doing envelopes, sending out literature.The third headquarters office was in St.Louis.Clarence Turley,present at the January meeting, gave the senator half a floor of theAmbassador Building for use as headquarters.It allowed more roomthan the other two locations.It housed a volunteer, the local lawyerDavid Berenstein, who took the title of director general.Just what hedid for the campaign was not very clear.He was retiring presidentof the Zionist Organization of St.Louis, and may have raised a littlemoney.He spoke well, although what speeches he made and whatthey produced was uncertain.He organized Truman for Senator88 / Truman and Pendergastclubs in St.Louis wards, or so he said; such a task would havebeen difficult, perhaps impossible, and in any event the result wasunrecorded.With one exception, a good idea he had along the way, hecontributed no more to the campaign than did Canfil in Kansas Cityand Messall in Sedalia.Truman believed that like Messall he tookmoney, and after the campaign he too vanished from the senator shorizons.15Surveying the Truman organization behind the facade, there wasa near chaotic arrangement.Nor was there enough money to make up for organizational delin-quencies.Seeking some financial basis for the campaign, Trumanupon return to Washington after the Missouri meetings discoveredthat Messall it must have been Vic s responsibility had failed tokeep a record of people whom the senator assisted in problems thatcame up, problems he represented as senator.The list would havebeen a basis for asking for contributions.Another shock was Truman s inability to find a chairman of thefinance committee, which he resolved in a barely acceptable way.The chairman needed to have a title, and at last he went to a manhe had met in the army in 1917, Harry H.Vaughan, and who likeSnyder was a reserve colonel of field artillery and could be listed asColonel Vaughan.Unfortunately, the colonel knew almost nothingabout Missouri: at the time he was out of the state, in Illinois, sellingloose-leaf book equipment.A surviving piece of stationery showshim employed by the Heinn Company of Milwaukee,  originatorsof the loose-leaf system of cataloging, and carried his name as  H.H.Vaughan, district manager. He was broke, and told Truman his bankbalance was  about $3.25. Truman said that was all right, for peoplewould like him.16 Appointed, he proved likable.Vaughan was the best person Truman could get.Pudgy, round-faced, he gave the impression of being disorganized, which he was.One Truman supporter described him as slap-happy, attemptingforty things at once, and insinuated he did not finish many.17 Butduring a campaign that did not possess an overload of confidence,he was a good man to have around; he had a joke, printable or not,for every occasion.Collecting money in 1940 probably was easier than collecting itearlier in the midst of the Great Depression, but the economy wasbarely moving upward and money was scarce, not least for a losingOrganizing and Campaigning / 89cause.Vaughan measured his responsibilities years later and said, This was a Woolworth campaign if you ever saw one. 18 Altogether,donations reached $20,750.78.The cost of soliciting the money was$2,862.91, fourteen cents on the dollar, an acceptable figure.But themoney raised was not nearly sufficient, considering that Aylward in1934, with assistance of Pendergast, raised $35,000.At the end of theTruman campaign in 1940 there was a deficit of $3,685.89.Truman sfriends made post-campaign contributions and the senator assumedthe remainder [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]