I returned to civilian life on May 6, 1919. I was thirty-five years old.

Bess Wallace and I decided to go ahead with our plans for marriage, and we set the day, June 28, 1919, less than eight weeks after I was discharged from the Army. We were married in the Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence. After a wedding trip to Chicago and Port Huron, Michigan, we returned to live at 219 North Delaware Street in Independence.

In the meantime, Eddie Jacobson and I made plans to open a men’s furnishing goods store in Kansas City. Eddie Jacobson is as fine a man as ever walked. He had worked with me in the successful operation of the canteen at Camp Doniphan, and because that had been such a profitable experience on limited capital, we felt that we might do well in a business partnership. The idea of a haberdashery was Eddie’s, and it was agreed that he would be the buyer and that I would act as salesman.

We pooled our savings and raised the additional capital required to lease a building on Twelfth Street near the Muehlebach Hotel and lay in a complete stock of merchandise. I had a sale of equipment and stock on the farm that netted me over $15,000, which I immediately invested in the store. We bought $35,000 worth of merchandise, and by fall we were open for business.

This was a period of general prosperity. During the first year of operation, we sold over $70,000 worth of merchandise and had a good return on our investment. Our second year began well, too. In 1921, however, after the Republicans took over the U. S. Government under the presidency of Warren G. Harding, Andrew Mellon was made Secretary of the Treasury. He immediately started a “wringing-out” process which put farm prices down to an all-time low, raised interest rates, and “put labor in its place.”

On January 1, 1921, Jacobson and I had a $35,000 inventory at cost. And this figure was sound. We actually had a chance to sell out at inventory price about this time, but we refused. Before the year was out, values had fallen so greatly that on January 1, 1922, the value of that inventory had shrunk to less than $10,000. Our creditors and the banks we owed began to press us, and when we closed out later in 1922, we were hopelessly in debt.

Much of our stock of goods had been purchased from Kansas City concerns, and both Eddie and I wanted every creditor to receive every possible dollar. In fact, we intended to pay every creditor in full as soon as we were able, notwithstanding any settlement that might be made with them. We consulted an attorney, Phineas Rosenberg of Kansas City, who after investigating the condition of the business, advised settlement with our creditors.

Rosenberg then wrote to each merchandise creditor, stating the financial condition of the partnership and explaining that existing economic conditions were causing our business to suffer losses. He also notified them, at our direction, that both Jacobson and I wished to avoid further losses to creditors and wished also to avoid all expense incident to liquidation so as to give our creditors all that remained in the business without deductions of any kind. Without exception, the merchants in whose debt we were, agreed to this settlement. The stock of the store was closed out, and payments were made on the various accounts in accordance with the agreement. Jacobson and I, however, continued thereafter to make payments on the various accounts from time to time until all of them were settled in full.

There were other debts, too. We were committed at the time for bank loans which we had negotiated in the operation of our business. We were committed also for the balance of the rental for the store, which we had originally leased for five years. The bank loans were not included in the settlement with the merchandise creditors because it was agreed that these loans should be repaid dollar for dollar, whereas the merchandise creditors had already made profits from previous sales to our firm.

The Security State Bank and the Twelfth Street Bank (now the Baltimore Bank) had made the loans, and they held notes signed by both Jacobson and me. We owed the Twelfth Street Bank $2,500, but the indebtedness to the Security State Bank amounted to more than $5,000 at the time. This latter was secured by a deed to a 160-acre farm in Johnson County, Kansas. I had purchased this farm sometime before for the equivalent of $13,800, but I valued it at considerably more than that figure. I had paid $5,000 for it in the form of property which I had owned in Kansas City and had assumed a mortgage of $8,800 which was on the farm at the time of my purchase. After our store closed in 1922, I, along with Jacobson, gave a note to the Security State Bank for $6,800, with the farm listed as security to cover the principal and interest then due.

Neither Jacobson nor I wished to go into bankruptcy, as so many were doing during that period. We both wanted to pay all the indebtedness in full. Still, we did not find that easy, for our incomes were not large. Mine, in fact, was very limited, for it was in the fall of that year that I entered local politics, and Jacobson’s was not large, although he had been able to obtain employment as a salesman. From time to time, we made such payments as we could on these accounts. It was a struggle for both of us during the next several years, and in February 1925, Jacobson finally found himself unable to withstand the pressure. He was forced to file a petition in bankruptcy. Among his debts he listed the note, which at that time stood at $5,600. As a result of this development, there were those who tried to force me into bankruptcy at the same time. I resisted, however, and continued to make such payments as I could.

In the meantime, the whole affair became complicated by the fact that the Security State Bank, which had made the loan originally, had itself run into financial difficulties. Its assets were taken over by the Continental National Bank, and our note was included among these transferred assets. In December 1923, a suit was filed on behalf of the bank to recover on the note, although it was not until April 30, 1929, that judgment for $8,944.78 in principal and interest was recorded in favor of the Security State Bank against both Jacobson and myself.

Matters became more involved when the Continental National Bank got itself into trouble financially, and its liquidation was in progress for several years. During this period, certain of the assets, including notes, securities, and other property, were sold by the receiver for various small sums at the order of the court. Among these was our note, which by court order was sold for $1,000. My brother Vivian purchased it at that price. Meanwhile, the 160-acre farm which I had deeded to the bank as security had been taken over.

Our other lender, the Twelfth Street or Baltimore Bank, had made us a $2,500 loan in January 1922. Complete records of this loan and of the subsequent payments and renewals have been preserved in the bank’s files, and they show that during 1922, 1923, and 1924, long after the close of the haberdashery store, we reduced the indebtedness by numerous payments, some as small as $25, until, with a final payment of $200 in December 1924, we discharged that obligation in full.

One of the obligations not included in the settlement with the merchandise creditors when we closed out our business was for store rental under the lease which we had originally signed with Louis Oppenstein, owner of the property at 104 West Twelfth Street. This lease was for a five-year period, and it had some time to run after the store closed. Settlement of the account was made later, and the property then became available to the owner for other purposes. Oppenstein has since died.

This was a hard experience for me, at the age of thirty-eight, to fail in a business venture in which I had invested a considerable amount of money and time. I have since come to realize that thousands of others went through similar experiences during those postwar years, although my difficulties came to be more widely publicized and distorted because I later became President of the United States.

There has been quite a bit of talk about my start in politics in Jackson County. It was in 1921, while the store was still doing very well, that I was asked if I would consider the nomination for judge of the county court for the Eastern District. In the store Eddie Jacobson and I used to meet many of the men with whom we served in France. One of our customers was Jim Pendergast, who had been a lieutenant in the 129th and who had later gone into the 130th Field Artillery, where he commanded a battery on the front.

When the time came for the Pendergast organization to endorse someone as candidate for eastern judge in 1922, a meeting was held at Twenty-sixth and Prospect streets, with representatives from every township in the county. Jim’s father, Mike Pendergast, informed the gentlemen there that he thought it would be a good thing for them to support me as that candidate. He said I was a returned soldier, a captain “whose men didn’t want to shoot him”!

The judges of these Missouri county courts are not judges in the usual sense, since the court is an administrative, not a judicial, body. It levies taxes. Expenditures for roads, for homes for the aged, and for schools for delinquent children are supported by orders of this court on the county treasurer, and the court also orders such payments as are necessary to state institutions for the support of the insane. The only really judicial act the court performs is to make a finding of insanity when that has been recommended by two reputable physicians. Each county in the state has a county court made up of three judges, two of whom represent districts, while the third is elected at large for the whole county.

For years, my father and other members of our family had been interested in county affairs. My father had been road overseer in Washington Township, where the farm is located, from 1910 until the time of his death in 1915, and I had succeeded him. I had also been postmaster of Grandview before World War I, and at every election from 1906 on I had been Democratic clerk. I was familiar with local politics, and Mike Pendergast’s suggestion appealed to me. I told him that I would like to run.

The failure of our business followed, and when the time came in 1922, I filed for eastern judge. Even with Mike Pendergast’s backing it was far from certain that I could win the nomination. The primary campaign was a very bitter fight. There were five candidates: a banker named Emmett Montgomery from Blue Springs who had the support of the Shannon faction, known as the “Rabbits”; a road overseer by the name of Tom Parent, who had the support of the Bulger faction; James Compton, who had been eastern judge by appointment once and who had been trying to be elected ever since; George Shaw, a road contractor, who was honest (very unusual for a contractor of county business in Jackson County at that time) and who had been broken by the Bulger court; and myself, who had the support of the “Goats,” or Pendergast faction.

I did not know any of the factional leaders at the time except Bulger, who was presiding judge and who was not so well thought of by the people generally.

I had an old Dodge roadster which was a very rough rider. I kept two bags of cement in the back of it so it would not throw me through the windshield while driving on our terrible county roads. I went into every township - there were seven of them - and into every precinct in the county in the Eastern District. Luckily I had relatives all over the county, and through my wife I was related to many more.

When the votes were counted, I had a plurality of 500. Mr. Shannon said the voters preferred a busted merchant to a prosperous banker. Most people were broke, and they sympathized with a man in politics who admitted his financial condition.

The election that followed was a walkaway. All the Democrats on the ticket won in the county, although we three judges of the county court promptly began a factional fight among ourselves. The presiding judge was a member of the Shannon faction - the “Rabbits.” The other district judge and I were “Goats,” and we promptly took all the jobs. We ran the county, but we ran it carefully and on an economy basis.

Counties in Missouri are a part of the state government and are also a part of the sovereign power of the state. A county cannot be sued, and damages against the county can be allowed only by legislative act, unless the county itself passes a resolution authorizing it. I spent a great amount of time with the county counselor learning county procedure under state laws.

I also became completely familiar with every road and bridge in the county. About that time, the State Highway Commission had begun the construction of a Missouri road system by getting right-of-ways across the county for the state, and I soon became acquainted with the state system and what the Commission had in view for the western end of the state.

I visited every state institution in which the county had patients. This included the state asylums in St. Joseph, Nevada, Fulton, and Farmington, where the insane patients were sent. Jackson County had an institution of its own at Little Blue to take care of the indigent aged. This institution had usually 500 or 600 patients, both men and women, in the winter and about 400 in the summer. The county had no hospital, but it maintained a county physician whose business it was to visit the county home at Little Blue once or twice a week and who cared for those indigent people who could not pay doctors’ bills.

In 1924, I ran for re-election as eastern judge. The Democratic Party in the county split over the fact that the Shannon faction thought it had not obtained a fair division of the jobs, and I was defeated by 867 votes. I was defeated by the old harness maker, Henry Rummel, who had made the beautiful set of harnesses for my brother and me when we were children. This was the only defeat I ever suffered in an election. Rummel is still alive, by the way, a fine old gentleman.

Our daughter Margaret had been born on February 17, 1924. And now, only a little over two years since Eddie Jacobson and I had lost our business, I was out of a job again. But I had many friends, and in January 1925, I was able to make a connection with the Automobile Club of Kansas City, where I spent about a year and a half adding to its membership. It gave me a substantial income.

In 1926, when the election machinery was being oiled up by the party leaders, I was slated to run for presiding judge of the county court.

I was always interested in civic, fraternal, and public affairs, and because these widened my acquaintance and kept me in contact with many people, they no doubt played some part in my political fortunes.

When I was discharged from the Army, I continued in the reserve. In 1921, after I had attended camp at Fort Leavenworth as a major of the Field Artillery Reserve, I decided to try to get all the local Army, Navy, and Marine Corps reserve officers in the greater Kansas City area together in the interest of national defense. A meeting was called in 1921, and I was made president of Reserve Officers Association Chapter No. 1. When the organization was expanded on a state-wide basis, I became president of the state association. I never held any of these offices, however, except during the organization period. I always trained a successor in every organization in which I had a leading part.

I was active in the 22nd Masonic District. This covered Jackson County as a whole, but as it grew it was split into two districts, and in 1924, on the death of the deputy grand master for the new 59th District, I was appointed district deputy grand master and lecturer.

Because of these and other activities, as well as the fact that I had been a very active district judge from 1922 to 1924, I entered the 1926 campaign with reasonably good prospects of success. Mike Pendergast had suggested that I run for county collector of Jackson County, and I was in a willing frame of mind to do this because it was a good public office with a substantial income. Mike and I went to see his brother Tom and discussed the matter with him. He said he had already promised to support someone else for that job, but he thought, because of my experience as eastern judge, I ought to be a candidate for presiding judge. That was my first meeting with Tom Pendergast.

I was elected that fall with a majority of 16,000 votes. I immediately went to work to set up a system of roads, to construct new public buildings, and to try to get the county on a sound financial basis.

The county court previous to the one to which I had been elected in 1922 had run the county into debt. It is customary in the state of Missouri for counties to borrow money on tentative tax levies made in January and February. There were some $2.4 million in outstanding warrants which were protested and which drew 6 percent interest from the date of their issue. The borrowings are made monthly on tax anticipation notes, which are as good as gold because they are a first lien on tax collections, and only 90 percent of the anticipated revenue can be borrowed.

The roads were in terrible shape in the county, and the public buildings were all run down. Some were on the verge of falling down.

I made it my business to go to Chicago and St. Louis in order to discuss the matter of county borrowing with some of the bankers in those cities, and as a result, I finally succeeded in getting the interest rate on tax anticipation notes cut to 4 percent and, eventually, to two and a half. The local bankers had had a bonanza at 6 percent.

At this time, Kansas City itself was calling a bond issue for a great many improvements, and I got the political bosses to agree to let the county propose an issue of road bonds for $6.5 million. The political bosses and the Kansas City Star did not think the county bonds would be approved by the voters, but they were, and a second issue was later approved for $3.5 million more in road bonds and $5 million for a new courthouse in Kansas City, for the rehabilitation of the courthouse in Independence, and for the construction of a hospital at the county home in Little Blue. I had told the taxpayers just how I would handle the bond money, and they believed me.

All these projects were successfully carried out, and without one breath of scandal, while I was presiding judge. I was responsible for the spending of $60 million in tax funds and bond issues. I succeeded in getting thirty-five or forty more miles of roads built from the $10-million bond issue than the engineers had anticipated, and the public buildings were constructed without any difficulty whatever. In fact, when this work was completed, there was money left in the bond fund which was turned into the sinking fund, with the exception of $36,000, which was used for the Andrew Jackson statues at the courthouses in Independence and Kansas City.

After visiting Chicago, St, Louis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Cincinnati, I organized the Greater Kansas City Regional Planning Association. This organization was expanded eventually into a state organization and made many contributions to the improvement of the county and the state.

In 1930, I was re-elected presiding judge by a majority of 58,000 votes, and I continued my policies and my program. I succeeded in having the protested warrants refinanced on an income basis, and when I left the county, its finances were in first-rate shape. By that time, too, it had one of the best road systems in the United States and had a fine new set of public buildings, as well. All the bonds that were connected with my program have been paid off on their due dates, and the county is one of the few financially solvent counties in the state.

Although I was to become very well acquainted with Tom Pendergast, I barely knew him when I was first elected presiding judge of the Jackson County Court. He was a power in local politics, of course, and when the bond issues for Kansas City were up for consideration I went to see him. I told him I would like very much to issue bonds for the rehabilitation of our roads in the county and for some new public buildings. A new courthouse was needed for Kansas City, and the courthouse in Independence required remodeling. A hospital was badly needed at the county home. Pendergast replied by saying that there was no possibility of the county supporting such a bond issue - that the same idea had been turned down on two previous occasions in the last ten years. I argued, however, that if I could tell the taxpayers just how I would handle their money, I felt sure it would carry. My confidence was justified, too. The bonds for the county were carried with a three-fourths majority, which was much better than the city bonds did, some of which had not been carried at all.

When the first contracts were to be let, I got a telephone call from Tom Pendergast saying that he and some of his friends were very anxious to see me about those contracts. I knew very well what was in the wind, but I went to their meeting. I told them that I expected to let the contracts to the lowest bidders, just as I had promised the taxpayers I would do, and that I was setting up a bi-partisan board of engineers to see that specifications were carried out according to contract, or else the public would not pay for them.

Pendergast turned to the contractors and said, “I told you he’s the contrariest man in the state of Missouri.” When the contractors had left, he said, “You carry out the agreement you made with the people of Jackson County.” And I never heard anything from him again.

In 1934, when I had been presiding judge of Jackson County for eight years, I expected to run for Congress. Two years earlier new congressional districts had been set up for the state of Missouri, with the Fourth District in eastern Jackson County, with two or three eastern wards of Kansas City added. This was the district I hoped to represent in Congress, and if I had been permitted to run, I feel confident that I could have been its representative. I was maneuvered out of this and finally ended up by running for the U. S. Senate.

Two fine and very experienced congressmen opposed me for the nomination for senator. They were John J. Cochran of St. Louis and Jacob L. Milligan of Richmond, Missouri. Each of them had already been in Congress for many years, and they had wonderful reputations. Fortunately for my prospects, however, I had become acquainted with all the county judges and county clerks in the state of Missouri and was very familiar with the operations of the so-called “courthouse gangs” in all the country counties. I had their support when I went into sixty of Missouri’s 114 counties, where I made from six to sixteen speeches a day. I made my campaign on the basis of support for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and when the votes were counted, I came out with a plurality of 44,000 in the primary. I carried Jackson County by 130,000 votes. In the fall elections, when I opposed Senator Roscoe C. Patterson of Springfield, the Republican incumbent, I won with a majority of over a quarter of a million votes.