August 27, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1948 President Harry Truman decided to attend a plowing match in the small town of Dexter, Iowa. It turned out to be an event that would help re-elect him to the Presidency.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories, and up next
the story about when our thirty third president made an
all important visit to a small town in Iowa. He's
our own Monty Montgomery with a story.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Dexter, Iowa is a small town with a lot of heart,
and even though its population has never exceeded a thousand people,
there's a lot of history there and it was also
once the presidential campaign stopped. Here's Rod Stanley with more
on that.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
September nineteen forty.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Eight, President Truman came to Dexter, Iowa for the National
Plowing Match, and then it was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
The National Plowing Match was a big, big deal.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
But what exactly is a plowing match? Roughly put, it's
a competition to see who's the best farmer.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
They judged him on I mean they judged him on
different things. They brought their tractors and their plows, and
there were judges that judged how well you plowed the field,
how straight it was, how open it was, and they
had some other like conservation like making a pond. They
made a pond on my uncle's farm. They blew up
and they're using dynamite and they blew up land, they
(01:26):
made a waterway to drain water off and stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
This was a statewide thing, so it was a national
thing too.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
So there you had lots of people coming in from
like there's a there was an airport south of Dexter,
southwest of Dexter, and that day like one hundred and
twenty airplanes landed and brought bringing people in. They estimated
the crowd between seventy five and one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
But how did President Truman even get involved in this
whole thing. It boils down to the drive of a
radio personality, Truman's opponent, and like a lot of things,
some politics whole numbers.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
The guy he was running against was a fellow by
the name of Thomas Dewey from New York, and Thomas
Dewey was.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So far ahead in the polls.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Her plan Beck, famous who farm personality, was in charge
of organizing this whole thing, and her Plan Beck called
or went and talked to Thomas Dewey and asked him,
do you want to be the headliner out here in
Dexter and talk.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
To these people?
Speaker 4 (02:30):
And Dewey said, in so many words, I'm pretty doing
pretty well in the polls. I don't think I need
to come out to Iowa and.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
To talk to these people.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
So her plan Beck then called up and scheduled a
meeting with with Truman. And normally they're on a limited
time basis when they when they talked to the President
so on, but they made an appointment they talked to
Truman and actually went over the time limit because Truman
like talking. I mean, Truman was a he was one.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Of those guys that liked to talk to and he
was a.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Former farmer too, I mean as far as he was
a farming occupation before he got into politics. And he said, well, boys,
he said, I would really like to come out and
to do that. But he says, I don't think the
Secret Service will allow me to do what I want
to do, and that's to go out and mingle and
talk to people and so on. And so when her
(03:26):
plan back left that meeting, he thought, well, guysh I
don't think I don't think Truman's going.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
To come either.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And so it kind of sat that way until like
three weeks before the event and the White House calls
her plan back up and says Truman's coming. That threw
a whole big wrench because they had to make sure
that you know, the security had to be better, and
there's a lot of things they had to do to
(03:53):
prepare for the president. Truman started over in eastern Iowa,
in Davenport on the Rock Island railroad line, the one
that runs through Dexter and goes across the state, and
he gave a speech there early in the morning, and
then he gave a speech at Oxford, Iowa, I believe,
and then a speech in Grenelle, and a speech in
(04:14):
des Moines.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Never in the world were the farmers of any republic
or any kingdom or any other country as prosperous as
the farmers of the United States. N If they don't
do their duty by the Democratic Party, they're the most
ungrateful people in the world.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And of those were just preliminaries.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
And he actually I believe, picked up his wife Bess
and his daughter Margaret in des Moines and they rode
the train out to Dexter. The band Dexter Band was
there to meet Trullan.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I believe.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
They played the Missouri Walltz for him. When he arrived
at the Deepot in Dexter. They had brought his Cadillac,
his Robin Egg blue Cadillac out according to my uncle
Dean Styles about three days before, and everybody wondering what
the heck was that was going on bringing that blue
Cadillac out here. And eventually they figured it out that
it was the president and he was going to be
(05:07):
stopping and going after the plowing match.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
But he he.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Was concerned, still concerned about the Secret Service blocking his style,
but he came anyway. The people said that we're sitting
with Truman. When Truman saw the crowd, When Truman saw
how big the crowd was, he said he had a
smile from ear to ear.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
He was just loving it.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
He was saying, this is this is going to give
me an opportunity to really to get my camp. I'm
so far behind it can't hurt that. It's going to
give me a chance to hammer home my points. The
majority of these farmers that attendant were of the Republican persuasion,
but he got thirteen ovations that day, and he really
(05:49):
hammered on the Republicans, the do nothings.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
He called them the do nothing Congress.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It was his first mayor campaign speech of the nineteen
forty eight election. He used this type of campaign, the
whistle stop using the train traveling around stop and talk
in small towns to people to actually turn the tide.
It's interesting when Thomas Dewey found out one hundred people
one hundred thousand people showed up and dexter Iowa, he
(06:21):
got a little nervous and he actually got the Republicans
in Iowa to have a campaign thing for him in
Des Moines, and they actually got like fifteen thousand people
to hear Thomas Dewey give a speech, which was a
pretty good crowd, but nothing like Truman. But anyway, when
Truman was here, he ate lunch, and we have stuff
(06:45):
in the museum. The tablecloth actually that was on the
table that he ate off of. But anyway, he ate
lunch out there. We had fried chicken dinner, mashed potatoes
and corn and relish tray and all apple pie or
that had different kinds of pie. And then he went
out on a He went out on a wagon to
look at some of the projects, the conservation projects that
(07:06):
they were.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Doing that day.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
It wasn't only a plowing contest, but there was some
like they were making a pond and they were making
waterways and they were doing some other stuff conservation things
that out there on that in.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That area as well.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
But anyway, he went out and he was on the
back of a hay wagon, and of course the Secret
Service was with him, and they were cruising along, and
the Secret Service looked around and Truman wasn't on the
wagon anymore, and he had jumped off the wagon and
he was heading down to where they were making this pond.
And we called it Walker's Pond back when I was
growing up. It was on Howard Walker's property. It was
(07:42):
Piper property back and then. But anyway, so those people
that were on the bulldozers had actually been told by
the Secret Service earlier that if Truman came down there,
to turn off the bulldozers and you know, just sit
on the bulldozers and so if the President comes over
and wants to ask you questions and that kind of thing, and.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And so that's what they did.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
They saw it, They saw this guy coming down, they
figured it was Truman, and some of them recognized him,
and so they turned their bulldozers off and Truman got
down there was just chatting with him like you know,
like you normally chat with people, and he said, well,
why did you turn off your Bulldozer's four yeah, I mean,
you guys got work to do. And he said, well,
we were told by the Secret Service to do that.
(08:23):
And Truman said, well, he says, the next time they
ask you to do that, you tell those sobs that you.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Aren't going to do that, and you just keep right
on working. You know, he got everybody got a big
laugh out of that.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
And of course the Secret Servers gets down there and
puts him back on the wagon.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And away they go.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
But that was Truman. But he did get to talk
to some of the people out there. But like I said,
this was a huge boost to his his It turned
the tide as far as his his election, and he
was really the only one in the articles I read,
he was the only one. Even his wife had given up.
He was so far behind that he's going to lose.
And she said, we even need to start packing things
(08:59):
up to get back to Missouri and live in Independence
where our house there. And Truman's eyes doesn't want to
give up yet. And he election came in November, and
he was listening to it, and he was holding his
own and in it, and and Dewey wasn't blowing him away.
And he goes to bed thinking that probably the next
morning that you know that maybe I won't be president.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But he he was kind of had a quiet confidence.
He thought he thought he was going to win.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
And the next morning the results are are rolling in
and Truman's winning, and he's gonna he's gonna end up
winning the election.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And it was a huge, huge upset.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
I mean, there was no way that he was supposed
to win. But they say that win all started right
here in the one horse town of Dexter, Iowa, in
nineteen September forty eight.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The story of Dexter and Harry Truman's campaign victory here
on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories, and up next
the story about when our thirty third president made an
all important visit to a small town in Iowa. He's
our own Monty Montgomery with a story.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Dexter, Iowa is a small town with a lot of heart,
and even though its population has never exceeded a thousand people,
there's a lot of history there and it was also
once the presidential campaign stopped. Here's Rod Stanley with more
on that.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
September nineteen forty.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Eight, President Truman came to Dexter, Iowa for the National
Plowing Match, and then it was a big deal.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
The National Plowing Match was a big, big deal.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
But what exactly is a plowing match? Roughly put, it's
a competition to see who's the best farmer.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
They judged him on I mean they judged him on
different things. They brought their tractors and their plows, and
there were judges that judged how well you plowed the field,
how straight it was, how open it was, and they
had some other like conservation like making a pond. They
made a pond on my uncle's farm. They blew up
and they're using dynamite and they blew up land, they
(01:26):
made a waterway to drain water off and stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
This was a statewide thing, so it was a national
thing too.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
So there you had lots of people coming in from
like there's a there was an airport south of Dexter,
southwest of Dexter, and that day like one hundred and
twenty airplanes landed and brought bringing people in. They estimated
the crowd between seventy five and one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
But how did President Truman even get involved in this
whole thing. It boils down to the drive of a
radio personality, Truman's opponent, and like a lot of things,
some politics whole numbers.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
The guy he was running against was a fellow by
the name of Thomas Dewey from New York, and Thomas
Dewey was.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So far ahead in the polls.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Her plan Beck, famous who farm personality, was in charge
of organizing this whole thing, and her Plan Beck called
or went and talked to Thomas Dewey and asked him,
do you want to be the headliner out here in
Dexter and talk.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
To these people?
Speaker 4 (02:30):
And Dewey said, in so many words, I'm pretty doing
pretty well in the polls. I don't think I need
to come out to Iowa and.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
To talk to these people.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
So her plan Beck then called up and scheduled a
meeting with with Truman. And normally they're on a limited
time basis when they when they talked to the President
so on, but they made an appointment they talked to
Truman and actually went over the time limit because Truman
like talking. I mean, Truman was a he was one.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Of those guys that liked to talk to and he
was a.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Former farmer too, I mean as far as he was
a farming occupation before he got into politics. And he said, well, boys,
he said, I would really like to come out and
to do that. But he says, I don't think the
Secret Service will allow me to do what I want
to do, and that's to go out and mingle and
talk to people and so on. And so when her
(03:26):
plan back left that meeting, he thought, well, guysh I
don't think I don't think Truman's going.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
To come either.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And so it kind of sat that way until like
three weeks before the event and the White House calls
her plan back up and says Truman's coming. That threw
a whole big wrench because they had to make sure
that you know, the security had to be better, and
there's a lot of things they had to do to
(03:53):
prepare for the president. Truman started over in eastern Iowa,
in Davenport on the Rock Island railroad line, the one
that runs through Dexter and goes across the state, and
he gave a speech there early in the morning, and
then he gave a speech at Oxford, Iowa, I believe,
and then a speech in Grenelle, and a speech in
(04:14):
des Moines.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Never in the world were the farmers of any republic
or any kingdom or any other country as prosperous as
the farmers of the United States. N If they don't
do their duty by the Democratic Party, they're the most
ungrateful people in the world.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
And of those were just preliminaries.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
And he actually I believe, picked up his wife Bess
and his daughter Margaret in des Moines and they rode
the train out to Dexter. The band Dexter Band was
there to meet Trullan.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I believe.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
They played the Missouri Walltz for him. When he arrived
at the Deepot in Dexter. They had brought his Cadillac,
his Robin Egg blue Cadillac out according to my uncle
Dean Styles about three days before, and everybody wondering what
the heck was that was going on bringing that blue
Cadillac out here. And eventually they figured it out that
it was the president and he was going to be
(05:07):
stopping and going after the plowing match.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
But he he.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Was concerned, still concerned about the Secret Service blocking his style,
but he came anyway. The people said that we're sitting
with Truman. When Truman saw the crowd, When Truman saw
how big the crowd was, he said he had a
smile from ear to ear.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
He was just loving it.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
He was saying, this is this is going to give
me an opportunity to really to get my camp. I'm
so far behind it can't hurt that. It's going to
give me a chance to hammer home my points. The
majority of these farmers that attendant were of the Republican persuasion,
but he got thirteen ovations that day, and he really
(05:49):
hammered on the Republicans, the do nothings.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
He called them the do nothing Congress.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It was his first mayor campaign speech of the nineteen
forty eight election. He used this type of campaign, the
whistle stop using the train traveling around stop and talk
in small towns to people to actually turn the tide.
It's interesting when Thomas Dewey found out one hundred people
one hundred thousand people showed up and dexter Iowa, he
(06:21):
got a little nervous and he actually got the Republicans
in Iowa to have a campaign thing for him in
Des Moines, and they actually got like fifteen thousand people
to hear Thomas Dewey give a speech, which was a
pretty good crowd, but nothing like Truman. But anyway, when
Truman was here, he ate lunch, and we have stuff
(06:45):
in the museum. The tablecloth actually that was on the
table that he ate off of. But anyway, he ate
lunch out there. We had fried chicken dinner, mashed potatoes
and corn and relish tray and all apple pie or
that had different kinds of pie. And then he went
out on a He went out on a wagon to
look at some of the projects, the conservation projects that
(07:06):
they were.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Doing that day.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
It wasn't only a plowing contest, but there was some
like they were making a pond and they were making
waterways and they were doing some other stuff conservation things
that out there on that in.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
That area as well.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
But anyway, he went out and he was on the
back of a hay wagon, and of course the Secret
Service was with him, and they were cruising along, and
the Secret Service looked around and Truman wasn't on the
wagon anymore, and he had jumped off the wagon and
he was heading down to where they were making this pond.
And we called it Walker's Pond back when I was
growing up. It was on Howard Walker's property. It was
(07:42):
Piper property back and then. But anyway, so those people
that were on the bulldozers had actually been told by
the Secret Service earlier that if Truman came down there,
to turn off the bulldozers and you know, just sit
on the bulldozers and so if the President comes over
and wants to ask you questions and that kind of thing, and.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And so that's what they did.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
They saw it, They saw this guy coming down, they
figured it was Truman, and some of them recognized him,
and so they turned their bulldozers off and Truman got
down there was just chatting with him like you know,
like you normally chat with people, and he said, well,
why did you turn off your Bulldozer's four yeah, I mean,
you guys got work to do. And he said, well,
we were told by the Secret Service to do that.
(08:23):
And Truman said, well, he says, the next time they
ask you to do that, you tell those sobs that you.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Aren't going to do that, and you just keep right
on working. You know, he got everybody got a big
laugh out of that.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
And of course the Secret Servers gets down there and
puts him back on the wagon.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And away they go.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
But that was Truman. But he did get to talk
to some of the people out there. But like I said,
this was a huge boost to his his It turned
the tide as far as his his election, and he
was really the only one in the articles I read,
he was the only one. Even his wife had given up.
He was so far behind that he's going to lose.
And she said, we even need to start packing things
(08:59):
up to get back to Missouri and live in Independence
where our house there. And Truman's eyes doesn't want to
give up yet. And he election came in November, and
he was listening to it, and he was holding his
own and in it, and and Dewey wasn't blowing him away.
And he goes to bed thinking that probably the next
morning that you know that maybe I won't be president.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
But he he was kind of had a quiet confidence.
He thought he thought he was going to win.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
And the next morning the results are are rolling in
and Truman's winning, and he's gonna he's gonna end up
winning the election.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And it was a huge, huge upset.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
I mean, there was no way that he was supposed
to win. But they say that win all started right
here in the one horse town of Dexter, Iowa, in
nineteen September forty eight.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The story of Dexter and Harry Truman's campaign victory here
on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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