TAFT, ROBERT ALPHONSO (1889–1953). Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Robert A. Taft was the son of William Howard Taft, president of the United States from 1908 to 1912 and chief justice on the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930. Taft graduated from Yale University in 1910 and Harvard Law School in 1913. He practiced law in Cincinnati and during World War I worked with Herbert Hoover at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He returned to his law practice after the war but was elected as a Republican to the Ohio state legislature in 1921, where he served until 1930 when he was elected to the state senate. Taft was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1938 and was an outspoken critic of the New Deal and a defender of what was seen as traditional values of individualism. He was also an isolationist and opposed the revisions to the neutrality legislation in the late 1930s, the Lend-Lease Act, and the Destroyers-for-Bases Agreement. Although once in the war Taft supported the effort, he nonetheless appeared to be in favor of a negotiated peace with Germany.
Taft was reelected in 1944, and after the war he continued to oppose big government but accepted federal aid to education, federal housing programs, and even national health provision. He maintained his isolationist position and did not see the Soviet Union as a threat. While he accepted the United Nations (UN), he opposed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and involvement in the Korean War. He also criticized President Harry S. Truman’s policy toward China and as part of the China lobby accused the president of being “soft on communism.” He also supported Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on the administration. However, Taft’s most significant contribution to postwar politics was the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, aimed to curb the power of trade unions. Although he was seen as “Mr. Republican,” Taft failed to win his party’s nomination for the presidency in 1940 and again in 1948 and 1952. He died of cancer in 1953.
TAFT-HARTLEY ACT, 1947. Named after the respective chairmen of the two congressional labor committees, Senator Robert A. Taft and representative Fred L. Hartley Jr., the Taft-Hartley Act, also known as the Labor-Management Relations Act, was passed over President Harry S. Truman’s veto on 23 June 1947. The measure was introduced following a wave of strikes in 1946 and increasing criticism of trade unions. The Republican Party’s victories in the congressional elections that year gave conservatives the majorities to enact legislation to curb labor. The act increased the membership of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from three to five, made it illegal for workers to impose a closed shop, only allowed a union shop after a majority vote of all employees. The act required workers to agree in writing for union dues to be deducted from paychecks, prohibited secondary strikes, and banned strikes among federal employees. To prevent “wildcat” strikes, the act required an 80-day cooling-off period. Unions and employers were both prohibited from using coercive measures. The act also prevented unions from contributing directly to political campaigns, and it required union leaders to file affidavits confirming that they were not members of the Communist Party of the United States of America before they could apply to the NLRB.
The Taft-Hartley Act became the focus of trade union opposition and in 1948 threw support behind Truman in the election campaign. While the act remains on the statute books, it has not had the limiting force that many anticipated.
TAIWAN. Formerly known by Europeans as Formosa, the island off the coast of China was ceded to Japan in 1895 but restored to China in 1945. When Chiang Kai-shek was defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist forces in 1949, Chiang occupied Formosa, imposed control, and established the capital, Taipei, as the center of the Republic of China. Taiwan was not recognized by the People’s Republic, and in 1950 President Harry S. Truman dispatched the U.S. Seventh Fleet to defend the island against a possible invasion. The U.S. commitment was reaffirmed in 1958 when communist China again threatened military action. The refusal of the People’s Republic to recognize Taiwan as an independent state led to its exclusion from the United Nations until 1971, when it replaced the Republic of China in the chamber. The United States ended their defense ties with Taiwan after recognizing communist China in 1979.
TAYLOR, MAXWELL DAVENPORT (1901–1987). Born in Missouri, Maxwell Taylor graduated from West Point in 1922 and joined the Army Corps of Engineers. He held several minor positions during the interwar years and attended the Army War College in 1939. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division during World War II, Taylor took part in the campaign in Sicily and, operating behind the lines in Rome, successfully prevented a parachute drop into areas covered by German troops. He was the first general to land in France when he parachuted into Normandy on D-Day on 6 June 1944. After the war, he was superintendent of West Point until 1949, when he took command of the Allied forces in Berlin, a position he held until 1951. In 1953, he took command of the Eight Army in the Korean War and was involved in the last major battle of the war.
From 1955 to 1959, Taylor was army chief of staff. However, he disagreed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “New Look” defense policy with its reliance on nuclear power and massive retaliation and retired in 1959. He outlined his views in The Uncertain Trumpet published in 1960. In 1961, Taylor became President John F. Kennedy’s personal military adviser and from 1962 to 1964 chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Having gone to Vietnam on a fact-finding tour, Taylor initially recommended the use of U.S. ground troops in Vietnam but later argued in favor of bombing the North and key targets rather than a further escalation of the war. He became a special consultant to the president and chair of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and later president of the Institute for Defense Analyses. His autobiography, Swords and Plowshares, was published in 1972.
TECHNOCRACY. Led by engineer Howard Scott, the technocracy movement appeared in the early 1930s and proposed that only trained and qualified engineers could ensure the full and efficient use of the nation’s industrial power and natural resources. They argued that machinery could replace manual labor. They proposed that the natural resources of the country be divided equally through “energy certificates” that would replace money. Scott established Technocracy, Inc., but exposés about his lack of qualifications and shady past undermined his credibility. Moreover, once the New Deal began to take effect, faith in political action was to some extent restored.
TEHRAN CONFERENCE, 1943. The first wartime meeting of leaders of the “big three”—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—took place in Tehran, Iran, from 28 November to 1 December 1943. While the two Western leaders, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, confirmed to Joseph Stalin that a second front would open with an invasion of Europe in May 1944, Churchill and Stalin made agreements about divisions of influence in Eastern Europe. While they agreed that power would be shared equally in Yugoslavia and Hungary, Churchill conceded total control of Rumania and Bulgaria to the Soviet Union. Stalin also indicated that he would join the war against Japan when the war in Europe ended.
TELEVISION. Television (TV) was only just developing at the end of the 1930s, with only one station in New York City and about 1,000 sets in operation by 1939. By 1941, there were 13 stations and the 521 lines of signal had become standard, but World War II diverted attention and resources, and development slowed until after 1945. In 1946, the three TV networks were the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and from the late 1940s onward television sales began to steadily increase. Although primarily black and white, color TV was already available from about 1950. By October 1950, there were 8 million TV sets in operation. By 1955, almost half of U.S. homes, more than 25 million, already had TV.
The first drama series, the Kraft Television Theater, began in 1947; Gillette paid $100,000 to sponsor the return boxing match between Joe Louis and Jersey Joe Walcott; the comedy series I Love Lucy began in 1951 and was watched in more than 10 million homes a year later; and The Today Show began in 1952. The growing significance of the new medium was apparent in September 1952 when Republican vice presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon made the first televised public appeal directly to voters in his “Checkers” Speech. Equally significant were the televised Army–McCarthy hearings that were broadcast between April and June 1954 and at times watched by 20 million people, when the true character of Joseph McCarthy was exposed.
TEMPORARY NATIONAL ECONOMIC COMMITTEE. Following a message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1938 concerning issues of business monopoly, Congress established a Temporary National Economic Committee between 1938 and 1941 to perform a detailed study of the economy. The committee was chaired by Joseph C. O’Mahoney and consisted of senators, congressmen, and representatives from various government departments and agencies. It held 15 hearings and compiled 37 volumes of testimony. A number of monographs of a technical nature were also produced, along with the committee’s final report. Its recommendations were of a rather general nature: more antimonopoly regulation, a return to freer competition, and support for small businesses. They were largely ignored, particularly once the United States entered World War II.
TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (TVA). The TVA was established by an act of Congress on 18 May 1933 during the “First Hundred Days” of the New Deal. The TVA was to utilize and control the Tennessee River through the creation of hydroelectric schemes and irrigation systems. The authority was also to incorporate the government-owned nitrate facilities at Muscle Shoals that had been an issue of concern in the 1920s. These developments impacted seven states and more than 3 million people. It brought work, opened up areas to roads, and provided power for domestic consumers and industry. Although often criticized by private power companies and defenders of private enterprise, the TVA was largely judged as a success. It built 16 dams and during World War II produced vital nitrates for munitions and powered manufacturing in the area, and it was the largest producer of electricity in the United States. It also helped eradicate malaria in the region by 1952.
THOMAS, NORMAN MATTOON (1884–1968). Socialist Party of America leader Norman Thomas studied politics under Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University and then turned to theology. He was a Presbyterian pastor and worked in the New York settlement houses until 1918. A pacifist, Thomas opposed entry into World War I and was one of the founders of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a group of pacifist clergymen. He was also one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. He was an associate editor of The Nation from 1921 to 1922 and codirector of the League of Industrial Democracy from 1922 to 1937. He ran unsuccessfully as the socialist candidate in the New York gubernatorial campaign in 1924 and as the party’s presidential candidate in 1928, 1932, and 1936, offering a moderate, non-Marxist brand of socialism critical of Soviet-style communism. Thomas initially worked to keep the United States out of the war in Europe and was a founding member of the America First Committee, but after 1941 he supported the war effort, although he opposed certain government policies, like the internment of Japanese Americans. He was the socialist presidential candidate again in 1940, 1944, and 1948 but later suggested that the party should abandon such campaigns and support progressive Democrats. Thomas resigned his official positions in the party in 1955, while continuing as its leading spokesman. In his later years, he spoke out against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
THURMOND, (JAMES) STROM (1902–2003). Born in Edgefield, South Carolina, Strom Thurmond graduated with a degree in horticulture from Clemson College in 1923. After working as a farmer, teacher, and athletics coach, he became education superintendent in Edgefield in 1929. Having been admitted to the bar in 1930, he became the Edgefield town and country attorney that year until 1938. He also served in the state senate from 1933 to 1938, when he became a circuit court judge. Thurmond resigned to join the army in 1941 and won a number of awards for his military service.
After World War II, Thurmond was elected as the Democratic governor of South Carolina, but in 1948 he ran as presidential candidate for the States’ Rights Party against Harry S. Truman because of the president’s racial policies. Committed to segregation, Thurmond carried four states and won 39 Electoral College votes with more than 1 million votes. He was defeated in the campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1950 but in 1954 became the first candidate to be elected to the Senate in a write-in vote. He stood for reelection in 1956 and won. He served until his retirement in 2003 as the oldest person to have sat in the Senate. In 1957, Thurmond broke the record for the longest filibuster when he spoke for over 24 hours against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. In 1964, he switched allegiance to the Republican Party. In the 1970s, Thurmond accepted integration, and after his death a black woman was acknowledged by his family as his illegitimate daughter. See also CIVIL RIGHTS.
TOWNSEND, FRANCIS EVERETT (1867–1960). Born in Fairbury, Illinois, Francis Townsend grew up in Nebraska. After failing as a farmer in Kansas, he attended Nebraska Medical School in Omaha and graduated in 1903. He established a medical practice in South Dakota, and after serving as a doctor in the army during World War I, he moved to Long Beach, California in 1920. However, his practice was insufficient to support him, and he had to find other part-time work or risk facing old-age in poverty. In 1934, Townsend and the realtor for whom he had been working established the Old-Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd. and began to publicize his idea for a government-run pension scheme that would provide $200 per month for everyone over the age of 60 not in employment financed by a business tax. By 1935, there were more than 3,000 “Townsend Clubs” across the country with a membership of more than 500,000. When the plan was introduced to Congress in January 1935, it attracted more than 20 million signatures in support of legislation. The movement posed a political challenge to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal and contributed to the move “left” in the “Second New Deal.” It provided additional impetus for the Social Security Act. Once that measure was enacted, the Townsend movement lost its drive, and it was also economically unsound. Townsend then joined Father Charles Coughlin in the Union Party in 1936 but left before the election to support Alf Landon. He continued to support the Republican Party and spoke on behalf of the elderly for the remainder of his life.
TRADE AGREEMENTS ACT, 1934. Passed in 1934, the Trade Agreements Act enabled the president to negotiate tariff agreements with foreign governments and increase or reduce rates by up to 50 percent to stimulate trade and promote economic recovery. By 1937, some 30 agreements had been negotiated by Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
TRADE UNIONS. Although the organization of working people in a particular craft or industry in response to industrialization and the rise of the factory system began in the early 19th century, it was not until the American Federation of Labor (AFL) emerged under the leadership of Samuel Gompers in the 1880s as an organization of skilled workers using collective bargaining to achieve better wages and conditions in the workplace that they achieved lasting prominence. However, while the AFL concentrated on skilled workers, unskilled immigrant and African American employees were largely ignored. The AFL was briefly challenged in its role as mouthpiece of the working classes in the 1890s by the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World. These radical challenges did much to prompt progressive reformers into action, but in the long run they had only a limited appeal to U.S. workers.
During World War I, unions gained strength and recognition as a consequence of labor shortages and their participation in the mobilization of manpower. In 1919 there were 5 million members. However, a concerted counterattack by employers, aided by the conservative Republican administrations and the antipathy of the Supreme Court in the 1920s, led to a drop in membership to only 3 million. The reluctance of AFL leaders, especially Gompers’s successor in 1924, William Green, to organize industrial workers or engage in militant action left the organization even weaker and facing terminal decline. Faced with further losses during the Great Depression, some union leaders, particularly John L. Lewis, called for a revitalized effort to organize workers on an industrial basis, including the unskilled. This caused a rift with the AFL and eventually led to the emergence of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1938. Although this schism appeared to be the final straw, paradoxically, the 1930s turned out to be one of the greatest periods of union growth and militancy.
With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the start of the New Deal, government now supported union activity. The first step toward recognition came with Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act, which recognized the right to organize, recognized the right to collective bargaining, and prohibited company unions. When the act was declared unconstitutional, new legislation like the National Labor Relations Act, introduced by Senator Robert F. Wagner in 1935, specifically provided union recognition and banned obstruction by employers. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established minimum wages and maximum work hours. This sympathetic government attitude spurred on organizers in both the AFL and CIO, and their determination often led to industrial action. In 1937, almost 2 million workers took part in 4,720 strikes, the most significant being those led by the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee and also those in the car industry, starting in Flint, Michigan. The violence experienced in incidents like the Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago in 1937 and the revelations of the Senate committee chaired by Robert M. La Follette Jr. that some employers literally had small armies of spies and strikebreakers armed with an arsenal of weapons did much to win public sympathy for the unions. By 1940, more than 8 million workers were union members.
The unions played an important role during World War II, and the war helped consolidate some of the earlier gains. In December 1941, the unions issued a “no-strike pledge” and indicated their willingness to cooperate with government and business. In January 1942, President Roosevelt established a National War Labor Board (NWLB) to resolve disputes that could jeopardize the war effort. In 1942, the NWLB adopted the “maintenance of membership” clause that ensured that members of unions remained so for the duration of war contracts. Coupled with full employment, this resulted in the addition of almost 5 million new union members and a total membership of more than 14 million by 1945. However, as unions grew in size, it often became harder for union officials to manage them. As wartime inflation pushed up prices, union members began to revolt against the restrictions imposed on wage increases under the “Little Steel” formula and the no-strike pledge. In 1943, almost 2 million workers took part in 3,700 strikes, and in 1944 more than 2 million were involved in 5,000 stoppages. Congress responded in 1943 by passing the War Labor Disputes Act in an attempt to curb would-be strikers.
When a wave of strikes involving 5 million workers broke out during the period of postwar reconversion from 1946 to 1947, major elements of this legislation became permanent in the Taft-Hartley Act. Despite this, there was not the postwar reaction against unions that there had been in 1919, and although President Harry S. Truman alienated some workers with his response to the miners’ and railway workers’ strikes in 1946, organized labor was increasingly wedded to the Democratic Party both in terms of domestic policies and in support of the anticommunist strategies abroad. While support for the Democratic Party was channeled through Political Action Committees, unions that supported Henry A. Wallace in 1948 were expelled from the CIO, and both Philip Murray and Walter Reuther orchestrated campaigns against communist sympathizers in their organization. Thus, although by 1955 union membership stood at 17.5 million or 36 percent of the labor force, by the time the AFL and CIO merged later that year, much of the militant reforming zeal evident in the 1930s had disappeared. See also COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (CPUSA); DUBINSKY, DAVID; GREEN, WILLIAM; HILLMAN, SIDNEY; SIT-DOWN STRIKES; WAR LABOR DISPUTES ACT; YOUNGSTOWN SHEET & TUBE CO. V. SAWYER.
TREATY OF SAN FRANCISCO, 1951. Signed on 8 September 1951 by the United States and 48 nations representing the Allied powers—save the Soviet Union, which declined to attend—the Treaty of San Francisco officially brought a cessation of hostilities in World War II’s Pacific theater and restored Japan’s sovereignty. The treaty went into effect on 28 April 1952. It was controversial from the start in that while Japan renounced its various territorial claims over neighboring nations and territories and agreed to pay compensation to Allied civilians and prisoners of war, it did not provide reparation payments for Asian nations overrun by Japanese armies during the war. Neither communist nor nationalist, China was represented at the signing. Some of the clauses of the treaty have subsequently been challenged in U.S. courts. A separate agreement with Japan, signed on the same day, allowed U.S. troops to remain in the country. See also UNITED STATES-JAPANESE SECURITY TREATY.
TRUMAN, BESS (ELIZABETH VIRGINIA) (1885–1982). The future first lady was born Elizabeth Wallace in Independence, Missouri. She first met Harry S. Truman at the age of five, and they met again 16 years later. They got engaged in 1917 and married in 1919. After two still births and several miscarriages, Bess gave birth to a daughter, Mary Margaret, who was her only child.
Bess was not particularly active in her husband’s political life, but during World War II she worked in the Red Cross and the United Service Organizations and also as a secretary in her husband’s office. When Harry became president in 1945, Bess assumed the role of first lady. She has been described as “the least active first lady in the 20th century,” but she did reinstitute the White House social season after the war and was a hard-working hostess at numerous official functions. She also took on formal roles as president of the Girl Scouts, Red Cross, and other organizations. However, unlike her predecessor, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess avoided publicity and only gave one press conference. She was unassuming and unpretentious, and she continued to visit the same beauty parlor while in the White House. As President Truman’s published correspondence later made clear, Bess was also his trusted presidential adviser and confidante. After leaving the White House, she achieved her ambition and retired with her husband to an ordinary house in Independence.
TRUMAN, HARRY S. (1884–1972). 34th vice president and 30th president of the United States. Harry S. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri. The “S” was added to his name to appease both paternal and maternal grandfathers, Anderson Shippe Truman and Solomon Young. The family moved to Independence, Missouri, in 1890. Truman finished high school in 1901 and had a number of jobs, including timekeeper and bank clerk. He served in a National Guard artillery unit in Kansas City, Missouri, and when the United States entered World War I, he rose from lieutenant to captain in charge of a battery in the 129th Artillery Regiment. He saw action in France during the Argonne offensive.
After the war, Truman married Bess Wallace and opened a haberdashery store in Kansas City. He lost this business and a farm in the recession of 1920 through 1922. A member of the Democratic Party, in 1922 he was elected district court judge with the support of Kansas City “Boss” Tom Pendergast. Truman advocated economy and efficiency and improved rural roads, and he also looked after the interests of his political backers. Nonetheless, he was defeated in 1924 but elected presiding judge of the county court in 1926 and again in 1930. In 1934, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
As senator, Truman supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and served on the Interstate Commerce Committee, where he built strong relations with the railway unions. He was reelected in 1940 and in 1941 was appointed chair of a select committee investigating defense production. The committee was critical of waste and inefficiency in war contracts, and Truman made a reputation as a defender of small businesses.
In 1944, Truman was chosen as a compromise candidate for the vice presidency over Henry A. Wallace. Successfully elected, he had little personal contact with the president before Roosevelt’s death on 12 April 1945 propelled him into the White House. As president, Truman had to provide the leadership in bringing World War II to a successful conclusion and ensure a lasting peace settlement. While the German armies were already beaten and surrendered on 7 May, it was Truman who made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a move that finally ensured Japan’s agreement to surrender on 14 August 1945.
Truman set a new tone in relations with the Soviet Union in his first meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in April when the president addressed him in very strong terms about the Soviet failure to honor agreements in Eastern Europe. Truman met with the other Allied leaders, British prime minister Winston Churchill (replaced following his defeat by Clement Attlee) and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, at the last major wartime conference in Potsdam in Germany in July 1945. Although agreement was reached on a number of issues, including Soviet entry into the war against Japan, relations were less cordial than had previously been the case. As relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, Truman endorsed the policy of containment when he announced the Truman Doctrine in his speech on 12 March 1947 asking Congress to approve aid to Greece and Turkey. This was followed on 3 April 1948 by the creation of the Marshall Plan to provide aid to Europe. As the Cold War between East and West developed, Truman approved the National Defense Act in 1947 reorganizing the armed forces and creating the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. When faced with the Berlin blockade in June 1948, Truman opted against the use of military force and instead ordered the airlift of supplies that continued until May 1949 when the blockade was lifted. However, Truman approved U.S. involvement in North Atlantic Treaty Organization in April 1949 as a further defensive measure against the perceived threat of communism in Europe.
At home, Truman had to see the country through reconversion from wartime to peacetime production. The ending of wartime controls with the demise of the Office of Price Administration in November 1946 was followed by inflation and a wave of industrial unrest. In 1946, more than 4.6 million workers were involved in almost 5,000 strikes, including a coal strike in March and a rail strike in May. Truman, whose desktop motto was “The Buck Stops Here,” responded on 17 May by seizing the railroads and mines on 21 May. He followed the act on 25 May with a speech to Congress that was highly critical of trade unions and included a threat to draft strikers, if necessary. When the miners, led by John L. Lewis, ignored a court order and again began a strike in 1946, Truman’s public opinion ratings fell from 87 percent in June 1945 to 32 percent. Although he took the mine union to court and forced them back to work, the damage was done, and in the congressional elections the Republicans captured both houses of Congress for the first time since 1930. Truman regained some of his standing with the unions when he vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, but it was still passed over his veto.
Truman won support from one section of the population while losing it from another. Appalled by the violence suffered by returning African American G.I.s, Truman became the first president to publicly speak out against such acts when he addressed the annual meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in a national broadcast from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on 29 June 1947. Having failed to establish a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, the president established a Committee on Civil Rights in 1946. Its report, To Secure These Rights, published in 1947, called for an end to discrimination in employment, housing, transportation, and public accommodation and also called for an end to discrimination in the federal civil service and armed forces, as well as antilynching legislation and protection for voting rights. On 26 July 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9981 directing the beginning of desegregation in the armed forces. Another order called for an end to discrimination in the federal civil service.
Truman’s stand on race alienated large numbers of southern Democrats, many of whom bolted the party to support Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats in the 1948 elections. Some liberals also left the party to support Wallace’s Progressive Party. To many observers it seemed that Truman’s defeat was inevitable. However, faced by a lackluster campaign from the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, and a barnstorming performance from Truman in a “whistle-stop” tour across the country, the result was an upset victory for the president and a return to Democratic control in Congress. In his inaugural address on 5 January 1949, Truman promised a “Fair Deal” for “every segment of our population and every individual.” However his program of reform was largely blocked by an alliance of conservative Democrats and Republicans and because of the impact of the Cold War on domestic politics.
In the area of foreign policy, the United States faced major setbacks when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb on 29 August 1949, ending the U.S. monopoly. On 21 December 1949, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to leave mainland China for Taiwan by the communist forces led by Mao Zedong. These developments were seen as defeats by Republican critics who blamed communist sympathizers within the government, particularly the State Department. Truman responded to such charges by establishing the Federal Loyalty Program in 1947, but this merely provided ammunition for his critics. Their suspicions appeared to be confirmed by the revelations made by Whittaker Chambers before the House Un-American Activities Committee in August 1948 and the subsequent trial of Alger Hiss and his conviction for perjury in 1950. This provided the backdrop for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, that unleashed the further accusations and investigations, or “witch hunt,” known as McCarthyism. The Internal Security Act of 1950, also known as the McCarran Act or McCarran-Wood Act, intended to deal with suspected communist infiltration, was passed over Truman’s veto.
Events overseas strengthened McCarthy’s position. Truman responded to the invasion of South Korea by the North on 25 June 1950 by calling for a United Nations’ (UN) police action and announcing that U.S. military forces would be led by General Douglas MacArthur on behalf of the UN. When communist China sided with North Korea in October 1950, MacArthur recommended attacking China and using atomic bombs. Truman refused, and after MacArthur’s forces were pushed back, the general openly criticized the president’s decision and was called home. The war, now a stalemate, ended on 27 July 1953. Elsewhere in Asia, Truman made what turned out to be a fateful decision in 1950 when he recognized French rule in Vietnam and approved a substantial aid package to assist the French in their war against the procommunist nationalist forces led by Ho Chi Minh.
The Korean War, the president’s public differences with MacArthur, and several scandals involving minor members of the administration—particularly in the Internal Revenue Service—led to a drop in Truman’s popularity to the lowest levels ever recorded. This was exacerbated by his seizure of the steel mills on 8 April 1952 in an industrial dispute in which the employers rejected a raise approved by the Wage Stabilization Board. The president was viewed as being too sympathetic to the labor unions for not using the Taft-Hartley Act to delay the strike. The Supreme Court ruled the seizure unconstitutional in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer on 2 June 1952.
After losing in the New Hampshire primary to Estes Kefauver in March, Truman announced his decision not to stand for reelection. He and Bess Truman returned to their home in Independence, Missouri, where he worked on his Memoirs, published in 1955 and 1956, and established the Truman Library. He toured Europe in 1956 and was given an honorary degree by the University of Oxford. In 1964, he was honored by Congress, and in 1965 he was present at the White House for the signing of the Medicare bill. Truman’s reputation has improved since his death because of his lack of pretension, forthright manner, and honesty. See also BERLIN AIRLIFT; HOUSING ACT, 1949.
TRUMAN DOCTRINE. On 12 March 1947, President Harry S. Truman asked Congress for $400 million in economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey. His message was a response to Great Britain’s warning that it could no longer underwrite the Greek monarchy, which was embroiled in a civil war against communist rebels supported by Yugoslavia’s communist leader, Josip Broz Tito. Oversimplifying and also overstating the situation, Truman declared that the Soviet Union intended to use the civil war to dominate Greece and then Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Every nation, he insisted, had to choose between “alternative ways of life”—democratic rule or communist terror. Named the Truman Doctrine, this speech was hailed by the press and public. Former isolationists like Republican senator Arthur H. Vandenberg were persuaded by Truman’s argument, and Congress passed the proposed legislation in May 1947.
The Truman Doctrine marked the acceptance of a worldwide policy of resistance to real or perceived Soviet expansion along the lines of George F. Kennan’s principle of containment and indicated the start of the Cold War. The aid to Greece and Turkey was followed with the Marshall Plan and the later establishment of North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
TUGWELL, REXFORD GUY (1891–1979). Rexford Tugwell, who was born in Sinclairville, New York, was a graduate of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. He was briefly a professor at Washington University and the American University in Paris, before taking the post of professor of economics at Columbia University, which he held from 1920 until 1937. In 1932, he joined President Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust” and became undersecretary of agriculture. In 1935, he became head of the Resettlement Administration but resigned in 1937 because of the criticism the agency received. After a year in business, he became a member of the New York Planning Commission. In 1942, he was appointed governor of Puerto Rico and served until 1946. From 1946 until 1957, Tugwell was professor at the University of Chicago and then a member of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. He retired in 1964. Tugwell authored 20 books, including The Democratic Roosevelt (1957) and The Brains Trust (1968).
TWENTIETH AMENDMENT. Passed on 3 March 1932 and ratified on 23 January 1933, the Twentieth Amendment reduced the gap between the election of a new president and a new Congress from November to January rather than March. It also ended “lame duck” Congresses that had met from December to March and had included congressmen defeated in the November elections. See also APPENDIX B.
TWENTY-FIRST AMENDMENT. Passed on 20 February 1933 and ratified on 5 December 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and so ended prohibition in the United States. The amendment was ratified directly by state conventions, the first time such a device had been used since the approval of the Constitution itself. The vote for delegates in favor of repeal was approximately 73 percent of votes cast. Control of alcohol after 1933 became a state issue rather than a federal one. See also APPENDIX B.
TWENTY-SECOND AMENDMENT. Passed on 24 March 1947 and ratified on 26 February 1951, the Twenty-Second Amendment was passed to prevent an individual from being elected president more than twice and to establish that no president who had served more than two years of a term could be elected more than once. The amendment did not to apply to President Harry S. Truman, but he did not stand for reelection in 1952. See also APPENDIX B.
TYDINGS, MILLARD EVELYN (1890–1961). Born in Maryland, Millard Tydings graduated from Maryland Agricultural College in 1910 and the University of Maryland Law School in 1913. He briefly practiced law before entering the Maryland House of Delegates as a Democrat in 1915. During World War I, Tydings served in the army and rose from private to lieutenant colonel in command of a machine gun brigade. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Distinguished Service Medal for his bravery and afterward wrote a book The Machine Gunners of the Blue and the Gray (1920) based on his war experiences. Tydings returned to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1919 and was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1921 and then to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922. In 1926, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he made a name for himself as an opponent of prohibition and a campaigner for Philippine independence.
Tydings was an advocate of states rights and increasingly critical of the New Deal and attacked the National Recovery Administration, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and Tennessee Valley Authority. He was one of the leaders of the opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempted “court packing” in 1937. Having survived Roosevelt’s attempted “purge” of his opponents in 1938, Tydings allowed his name to be put forward as a potential candidate against the president for the Democratic nomination in 1940. He continued to be critical of government waste and bureaucracy throughout World War II. After the war, he called for the elimination rather than simply the control of atomic bombs.
In 1950, Tydings headed the Senate committee investigating the charges of communist infiltration made by Joseph McCarthy in his speech in Wheeling, West Virginia. The committee found the accusations to be a “hoax and a fraud.” However, their findings had little effect, and McCarthy attacked Tydings when he stood for reelection in 1950 and contributed to his defeat in a particularly dirty campaign. After practicing law in Washington, D.C., Tydings attempted to return to the Senate in 1956 but was too ill.
TYDINGS-MCDUFFIE ACT, 1934. See PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE ACT.