Truman by Roy Jenkins Page A

non-existent. For the next two theywere infrequent, strident and often ill-judged. They were populist in tone and a little out of date, William Jennings Bryan without the oratory or the imagery. The railroad companies in the early years of the century, he claimed, had been far bigger robbers than Jesse James and his hold-up gang who occasionally got away with a few tens of thousands of dollars from express cars. The Carnegie libraries were ‘steeped in the blood of the Homestead steel workers’. The Rockefeller Foundation was built ‘on the dead miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and a dozen other similar performances’. More interestingly, and under the influence of Justice Brandeis, 3 who had taken him up, he launched an attack on bigness: ‘I believe that a thousand insurance companies, with $4 million each in assets would be a thousand times better for the country than the Metropolitan Life, with $4,000 million in assets … I also say that a thousand county seat towns of 7,000 people each are a thousand times more important to this Republic than one city of 7 million people.’
    The occasion of remarkable ill-judgment came in February 1938. Maurice Milligan, the brother of the Milligan who had opposed Truman in the 1934 primary, was at the end of his first term as District Attorney for the Kansas City area. Roosevelt, supported by his Attorney-General, was resolved to re-appoint him. This commanded the strong support of Governor Stark and the agreement of Senator Clark. It did not however command the agreement of Senator Truman, whose acquiescence might have been considered essential, on grounds of senatorial courtesy, in view of the location in the state of Milligan’s field of operation and the fact that Truman had previously done badly for patronage in comparison with Clark. The issue was now however not one of simple senatorial courtesy. Milligan, with Stark’s encouragement, was deeply involved in an investigation into Kansas City vote frauds at the 1936 elections. Pendergast was not directly involved for he had been ill in New York City at the time, but his machine most certainly was, and 259 over-eager supporters of it were convicted. It was also thought to be Truman’s machine. In addition, Federal agents, working with Milligan’s knowledge, were investigating Pendergast’s non-payment of income tax on his $750,000 insurance companies’ bribe.
    In these circumstances Roosevelt’s circumnavigation of Truman was understandable. Truman could have taken one of two courses, either of which, without being glorious, would have had something to be said for it. He could have rolled with the punch and quietly accepted Milligan, hoping that Roosevelt would compensate him on some future occasion. Or he could simply have blocked Milligan in the Senate, by saying, without reasons, that his re-appointment was unacceptable to him. The Senate would have drawn its own conclusions but it would almost certainly, for the sake of the prerogatives of other senators, not have overruled him.
    He did neither. He waived his right to formal objection, but launched a most violent attack on the whole administration of justice in Jackson County. Of course, he said, he did not defend voting frauds. (He could hardly have said otherwise.) Those responsible should be prosecuted. But not by the methods employed. Milligan was corrupt because he accepted bankruptcy fees outside his salary. His witch hunting made him the cheap hero of the
Kansas City Star
and the
St Louis Post-Dispatch.
He was supported both in his corruption and in his prosecutions by two Republican judges, the strength of who’s impartiality could be deduced from the facts that one was appointed by President Harding and the other by President Coolidge. Milligan and they could only get convictions by excluding inhabitants of Jackson County from juries in federal cases in the district. His conclusion was as extreme as