Whose Show?

Mr. Truman had written the words & music. All the 81st Congress had to do was to follow his score. The Fair Deal Fiesta, a grand and expensively produced show, should have been swinging along tunefully, heading toward the grand finale, in which the Republicans in Congress were vanquished, the cast sang "hallelujah," and Mr. Truman, author, took his bows.

Instead, the curtain had gone up on a slow first act in which Speaker Sam Rayburn and Majority Leader Scott Lucas had run off one or two minor legislative routines. The pace should have been brisk; it was slow, and as the act proceeded, it got slower. That could be explained by the necessity of getting things organized. But the author, for one, believed that the trouble might be deeper than that. Last week he sailed on stage to charge that someone, in fact, had rewritten part of his show.

He took his charge to the party faithful at the $100-a-plate Jefferson- Jackson Day dinner in Washington. He was in a cocky mood. "The central issue of the campaign last fall," said Harry Truman, "was the welfare of all the people against special privilege for the few. When we made it clear where the Democratic Party stood on that issue, the people made it clear where they stood with us ...

"[Now] we are meeting determined opposition. The special interests are fighting us just as if they never heard of November the 2nd." The special interests were trying to save the Taft-Hartley Act, he said. They were fighting his welfare measures, blocking the low-rent housing program, trying to keep minimum wages at starvation levels and destroy the farm price support program. The special interests were working through lobbies, editorial pages, columnists and commentators. "This one-sided barrage of propaganda seems overwhelming at first. There are no full-page ads on our side. In fact, all we have on our side is the people. Thank God for that," said Mr. Truman.

What did he intend to do? "I did a lot of traveling around the country last fall," he said. "I may even get on the train again and make another tour around the country. If I get on that train, I'm going to tell the people how their Government is getting along--and I know how to tell them."

Who were the special interests who were spoiling the show? Harry Truman came no closer to defining his term than to refer four times and scathingly to "the Republicans." But, after all, his own party was in the majority. Obviously not all of the Democratic cast were in sympathy with the Democratic author.

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