wins or loses on a proposition. It seems to me that it’s one big guess and the fellow who guesses right is the man of good judgment.”
Absorbed in Harry’s struggle, they still ignored the war in Europe in their letters. By now, it had been raging for almost two years. Even local papers such as the Examiner began carrying stories on it. One Independence resident was serving with the British army and sent letters to friends that were published in the paper. The Kansas City Star and the other city papers covered it even more extensively. But most Missourians shared the opinion of the state’s congressional delegation: The United States should stay out of it. Missouri’s senior senator, William J. Stone, had grown famous for denouncing Woodrow Wilson’s flirtation with intervention on the allied side. Harry Truman’s political hero, William Jennings Bryan, had resigned as secretary of state to protest Wilson’s policies.
Bess and Harry probably discussed the war. All his life, Harry had been fascinated by military history, and he followed the great battles being fought in France, Russia, and Turkey with intense interest. But they had no special enthusiasm for either side. A glimpse of their typically Missourian neutrality emerges from a letter he wrote Bess about her dog.
While he was mining lead and zinc in Oklahoma, he was also raising a greyhound that Bess had acquired somewhere. When he brought him home from the defunct mine, he was calling him Don Juan of Austria, after the hero of the battle of Lepanto. But he remarked that Bess could easily change his name. “If you are an English sympathizer, you could hardly call him anything Austrian. . . . You could call him Kitchen (short for Kitchener) [the English general]. You could even name him Willy [after William Jennings Bryan] and be Democratically right.”
But the drumbeat of history refused to stay out of their lives, no matter what they thought and felt about it. The war dominated the presidential campaign of 1916 in which Woodrow Wilson ran for reelection against Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson won by carrying California by 3,773 votes. The embittered Republican regulars had refused to give the nomination to Theodore Roosevelt, because of his bolt from the party in 1912. Teddy had been calling the president everything from a coward to a hypocrite for what he considered Wilson’s halfhearted support of the Allies. Roosevelt’s abuse stirred a lukewarm sympathy for Wilson in Missouri. But as Harry Truman’s letter casually demonstrated, it was a long way from enthusiastic support.
Meanwhile, Harry went from lead-and-zinc mining into the oil business. His finances had been improved by a sad but not unexpected event, the death of his Uncle Harrison. The old bachelor left his share of the Young farm to Harry, his mother, and sister. With the farm for collateral, Harry was able to raise enough money to go into business with Kansas City attorney Jerry Culbertson (who had been a partner in the zinc mine) and an oil speculator named David H. Morgan, who was sure there were millions to be made from oil beneath the farmlands of Kansas and Oklahoma.
They formed a company and began selling shares of stock. One of the first investors was Bess Wallace. I do not know how much she invested or where she got the money - she may have borrowed it from her grandfather. But it was another example of her faith in Harry Truman. There were plenty of other investors, thanks to the war-stimulated economy. In January 1917, Harry was excitedly reporting to Bess that “the money is coming in by the basketful.”
They were taking in as much as $1,500 a day, and he proudly informed her that her shares now owned a refinery and leases on some 15,000 acres of promising oil land. “Hope to call you and say we’re over the rocks soon,” he wrote. “Here’s wishing you all the happiness on earth and hoping to share it.”
By March 1917, a few weeks after Bess turned
Absorbed in Harry’s struggle, they still ignored the war in Europe in their letters. By now, it had been raging for almost two years. Even local papers such as the Examiner began carrying stories on it. One Independence resident was serving with the British army and sent letters to friends that were published in the paper. The Kansas City Star and the other city papers covered it even more extensively. But most Missourians shared the opinion of the state’s congressional delegation: The United States should stay out of it. Missouri’s senior senator, William J. Stone, had grown famous for denouncing Woodrow Wilson’s flirtation with intervention on the allied side. Harry Truman’s political hero, William Jennings Bryan, had resigned as secretary of state to protest Wilson’s policies.
Bess and Harry probably discussed the war. All his life, Harry had been fascinated by military history, and he followed the great battles being fought in France, Russia, and Turkey with intense interest. But they had no special enthusiasm for either side. A glimpse of their typically Missourian neutrality emerges from a letter he wrote Bess about her dog.
While he was mining lead and zinc in Oklahoma, he was also raising a greyhound that Bess had acquired somewhere. When he brought him home from the defunct mine, he was calling him Don Juan of Austria, after the hero of the battle of Lepanto. But he remarked that Bess could easily change his name. “If you are an English sympathizer, you could hardly call him anything Austrian. . . . You could call him Kitchen (short for Kitchener) [the English general]. You could even name him Willy [after William Jennings Bryan] and be Democratically right.”
But the drumbeat of history refused to stay out of their lives, no matter what they thought and felt about it. The war dominated the presidential campaign of 1916 in which Woodrow Wilson ran for reelection against Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson won by carrying California by 3,773 votes. The embittered Republican regulars had refused to give the nomination to Theodore Roosevelt, because of his bolt from the party in 1912. Teddy had been calling the president everything from a coward to a hypocrite for what he considered Wilson’s halfhearted support of the Allies. Roosevelt’s abuse stirred a lukewarm sympathy for Wilson in Missouri. But as Harry Truman’s letter casually demonstrated, it was a long way from enthusiastic support.
Meanwhile, Harry went from lead-and-zinc mining into the oil business. His finances had been improved by a sad but not unexpected event, the death of his Uncle Harrison. The old bachelor left his share of the Young farm to Harry, his mother, and sister. With the farm for collateral, Harry was able to raise enough money to go into business with Kansas City attorney Jerry Culbertson (who had been a partner in the zinc mine) and an oil speculator named David H. Morgan, who was sure there were millions to be made from oil beneath the farmlands of Kansas and Oklahoma.
They formed a company and began selling shares of stock. One of the first investors was Bess Wallace. I do not know how much she invested or where she got the money - she may have borrowed it from her grandfather. But it was another example of her faith in Harry Truman. There were plenty of other investors, thanks to the war-stimulated economy. In January 1917, Harry was excitedly reporting to Bess that “the money is coming in by the basketful.”
They were taking in as much as $1,500 a day, and he proudly informed her that her shares now owned a refinery and leases on some 15,000 acres of promising oil land. “Hope to call you and say we’re over the rocks soon,” he wrote. “Here’s wishing you all the happiness on earth and hoping to share it.”
By March 1917, a few weeks after Bess turned
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