He went into business with Eddie Jacobson, a friend who had helped him run a very successful canteen during their army training days in Oklahoma. His political enemies have endlessly retold the story, as if it was a kind of parable that proved Dad was a gross incompetent. The truth is simple and sad - he got caught in the recession of 1920-21 when business failures tripled overnight. Dad has always insisted it was a Republican recession, engineered by “old Mellon” - Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury under Harding.
More important than the failure, in my opinion, is the way my father handled it. He absolutely refused to go into bankruptcy and spent the next fifteen years trying to pay off some $12,000 in debts. Altogether, he lost about $28,000 in this bitter experience.
According to those who misread his career, my father, having failed as a merchant, now turned in desperation to politics. Those who prefer the worst possible scenario have him going hat in hand to Tom Pendergast, the boss of Kansas City, and humbly accepting his nomination for county judge. This version reveals nothing but a vast ignorance of my father - and of Democratic politics in and around Kansas City in the early 1920s. The Pendergasts were by no means the absolute rulers of Kansas City, or of Jackson County, which included Kansas City, Independence, and smaller farming communities such as Grandview. They were fiercely opposed in primaries by a Democratic faction known as the Rabbits. The Pendergasts were called the Goats. No one that I have found, including my father, can explain satisfactorily the origin of these nicknames.
My grandfather, John Anderson Truman, had been a close friend of one of the Goat leaders in Independence and thus Dad always thought of himself as a Goat - that is, a Pendergast - Democrat. But it was not Tom Pendergast, the boss of Kansas City, who came into his mind when the name was mentioned. It was Mike Pendergast, Tom’s older, far more easy-going brother who led the Goats in eastern Jackson County. As my father explained it somewhat cryptically - “Tom didn’t like the country.”
During the war, my father had become friendly with Mike Pendergast’s son, Jim, who was a fellow officer in the 129th Field Artillery. In Missouri, a county judge is an administrative, not a judicial office. The three-man Board of Judges in Jackson County were responsible for building roads as well as running the courthouse and other county facilities. They had command of a substantial political payroll, and this made control of the three-man board of vital interest to Goats, Rabbits, and Republicans. One judge was elected from the western district, which included Kansas City. The other judge came from the eastern district, and the third, the presiding judge, was elected from the county at large.
My father had toyed with the idea of going into politics even before he returned from France. Half playfully, he had written Cousin Ethel that he intended to run for Congress when he returned home. Jim Pendergast knew this and told his father, Mike, about it. In mid-1921, when Truman and Jacobson’s haberdashery was flourishing, Mike appeared on the customer’s side of the counter one day and asked Dad if he would like to run for judge of the county court for the eastern district. My father politely declined to commit himself. It was obvious to him - and to everyone else - that the Pendergasts needed Harry S. Truman at least as much as he needed them.
On January 9, 1922, the Independence Examiner ran a story speculating on who would be the Democratic candidate for judge from the eastern district. This story discussed several men, including Ε. Ε. Montgomery of Blue Springs, a banker, and Charles W. Brady, the postmaster of Independence. “Among the younger men, Harry Truman is talked of,” the reporter wrote. “Mr. Truman was born and reared in Jackson County and lived forty years near Grandview and his vote in Washington
More important than the failure, in my opinion, is the way my father handled it. He absolutely refused to go into bankruptcy and spent the next fifteen years trying to pay off some $12,000 in debts. Altogether, he lost about $28,000 in this bitter experience.
According to those who misread his career, my father, having failed as a merchant, now turned in desperation to politics. Those who prefer the worst possible scenario have him going hat in hand to Tom Pendergast, the boss of Kansas City, and humbly accepting his nomination for county judge. This version reveals nothing but a vast ignorance of my father - and of Democratic politics in and around Kansas City in the early 1920s. The Pendergasts were by no means the absolute rulers of Kansas City, or of Jackson County, which included Kansas City, Independence, and smaller farming communities such as Grandview. They were fiercely opposed in primaries by a Democratic faction known as the Rabbits. The Pendergasts were called the Goats. No one that I have found, including my father, can explain satisfactorily the origin of these nicknames.
My grandfather, John Anderson Truman, had been a close friend of one of the Goat leaders in Independence and thus Dad always thought of himself as a Goat - that is, a Pendergast - Democrat. But it was not Tom Pendergast, the boss of Kansas City, who came into his mind when the name was mentioned. It was Mike Pendergast, Tom’s older, far more easy-going brother who led the Goats in eastern Jackson County. As my father explained it somewhat cryptically - “Tom didn’t like the country.”
During the war, my father had become friendly with Mike Pendergast’s son, Jim, who was a fellow officer in the 129th Field Artillery. In Missouri, a county judge is an administrative, not a judicial office. The three-man Board of Judges in Jackson County were responsible for building roads as well as running the courthouse and other county facilities. They had command of a substantial political payroll, and this made control of the three-man board of vital interest to Goats, Rabbits, and Republicans. One judge was elected from the western district, which included Kansas City. The other judge came from the eastern district, and the third, the presiding judge, was elected from the county at large.
My father had toyed with the idea of going into politics even before he returned from France. Half playfully, he had written Cousin Ethel that he intended to run for Congress when he returned home. Jim Pendergast knew this and told his father, Mike, about it. In mid-1921, when Truman and Jacobson’s haberdashery was flourishing, Mike appeared on the customer’s side of the counter one day and asked Dad if he would like to run for judge of the county court for the eastern district. My father politely declined to commit himself. It was obvious to him - and to everyone else - that the Pendergasts needed Harry S. Truman at least as much as he needed them.
On January 9, 1922, the Independence Examiner ran a story speculating on who would be the Democratic candidate for judge from the eastern district. This story discussed several men, including Ε. Ε. Montgomery of Blue Springs, a banker, and Charles W. Brady, the postmaster of Independence. “Among the younger men, Harry Truman is talked of,” the reporter wrote. “Mr. Truman was born and reared in Jackson County and lived forty years near Grandview and his vote in Washington
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