Second Hundred Days

The Second Hundred Days marks the high tide of the New Deal and the opening of Harry S. Truman’s national public life. It was a period in which reform extended beyond recovery from the Depression, and Truman’s early work in the Senate established a governing pattern: he prepared intensely, listened more than he spoke, and made his influence felt chiefly through votes and committee work. Later episodes in his career carried that pattern into the presidency, even as the scale and visibility of his decisions changed.

Setting and Significance

The book places Truman’s arrival in national public life at the start of the Second Hundred Days. In the Senate, he repeatedly voted with the Democratic majority for far-reaching measures, including the Wagner Labor Relations Act, the Works Progress Administration, the Social Security Act, and rural electrification. The last had particular force in Missouri, where in 1935 nine out of ten farms had no electricity. The period therefore connected national reform to an evident material need in Truman’s own state.

This was not yet a conspicuous orator’s career. Truman did not speak in favor of the measures or take part in debate; he voted. His first years in the Senate were devoted almost wholly to committee assignments, where regular attendance and careful listening helped him learn legislative practice. The Second Hundred Days thus introduces him not through a signature speech, but through sustained participation in a reforming congressional majority.

Committee Work and Independent Judgment

On the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee, Truman worked intensively on the Public Utility Holding Company Act, intended to challenge public-power cartels. The assignment also brought him into contact with powerful lobbyists and witnesses. A railroad lobby established its headquarters in a suite at the Mayflower Hotel, while Truman resolved to hear people out rather than close off access. His approach joined openness to a stated independence: he could accept a lobbyist’s hospitality and still make up his own mind, because he believed that hearing different sides helped him obtain the facts.

That insistence on inquiry was also visible in his preparation. Assigned to a subcommittee investigating railroad finances, he searched the Library of Congress for books on railroad management and history until more than fifty volumes had accumulated in his office. He was conscious of his limited formal education and set himself the task of becoming exceptionally well informed about transportation. The image of the senator surrounded by research books complements the quieter image of the man who seldom spoke at committee meetings: reticence did not mean passivity, but work conducted before a vote or decision.

From Senate Oversight to Presidential Action

The same concern with public responsibility appeared in Truman’s wartime scrutiny of production administration. The Truman Committee criticized the Office of Production Management for divided leadership and failures to act, and Truman objected when Sidney Hillman withheld a construction contract from a low bidder over fears of labor trouble. He called for replacing Hillman if he would not protect the national interest. The committee also questioned the more than 250 dollar-a-year officials in the office, arguing that corporate executives in government could favor their own companies and that divided loyalties required reform. The Second Hundred Days had introduced Truman as a reliable legislative vote; oversight work made him a more direct critic of how government power was being used.

When Truman became president, that developing style met a much larger test. His first decision was to confirm that the San Francisco Conference (1945) would open as scheduled on April 25. He told the Cabinet he intended to continue Franklin D. Roosevelt’s program, welcomed advice, and made clear that final decisions would be his. The following day, in his April 16 address to Congress, he received repeated applause; the speech was interrupted seventeen times. The contrast with his silent Senate voting was sharp, but the underlying task remained one of learning institutions, weighing counsel, and then acting.

The Reform Habit in the White House

After the war, Truman presented Congress with a 16,000-word message setting out a 21-point domestic program. Prepared during the return from Potsdam aboard the Augusta and revised through ten days of concentrated work, it proposed measures that included increased unemployment compensation, a higher minimum wage, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, crop insurance, and federal housing aid. Rather than divide the program into piecemeal requests, Truman sent Congress one comprehensive statement, establishing a liberal direction for his domestic agenda. Its breadth extended the reform politics associated with the Second Hundred Days into the new problem of postwar reconstruction.

Congressional resistance did not make him retreat to narrower requests. He sought national compulsory health insurance and universal military training, presenting the latter as preparation for emergencies even amid demands for demobilization. His fast-moving work style was visible in a five-minute press conference at which he announced several administrative changes and appointments, from reorganizing labor responsibilities to naming a new Supreme Court justice. At the same time, he gave symbolic form to his conception of national purpose: the redesigned presidential flag showed the eagle facing forward and toward the olive branch. Reform, administration, and public symbolism became parts of the same presidency.

The record also shows the limits and pressures surrounding that approach. In a crucial meeting on aid to Greece and Turkey, Truman heard George C. Marshall warn that inaction could allow Soviet domination to spread, followed by Dean Acheson’s more urgent argument; Arthur Vandenberg offered congressional support if Truman made the case forcefully. The exchange shows presidential influence being built through consultation and persuasion, not simply assumed from office. In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, unifying the armed services under a Department of Defense, establishing a separate Air Force and National Security Council, and formally authorizing the Central Intelligence Agency—an institutional transformation distinct from the New Deal’s domestic reforms, but another instance of consequential government restructuring.

Continuities Beyond the Period

The later episodes associated with Truman’s career should not be mistaken for events within the Second Hundred Days. They illuminate, instead, how the traits first visible in his Senate work recurred under different conditions. In a later meeting where George C. Marshall delivered a sharp rebuke, Truman kept his expression unchanged, acknowledged the dangers, and proposed that the participants sleep on the matter. During the Korean War, after Douglas MacArthur issued a public statement in defiance of presidential directives, Truman did not immediately dismiss him; he dictated a restrained reprimand reminding the general of the order requiring public statements to be cleared with Washington. The delay and restraint differed from the rapidity of Truman’s administrative announcements, but both reflected attention to consequences and to the limits of authority.

A private letter to Bess Truman, written on June 28, 1942, gives a contemporaneous measure of the personal life alongside this public career. On the twenty-third anniversary of their wedding, Truman recalled setbacks including the failure of his store and his loss in the eastern-district judge race, but regarded the successes as outweighing them. That private reckoning does not define the Second Hundred Days; it places the political work within a longer life of defeats, recoveries, and attachments. The period’s lasting significance lies in how it first presents Truman’s method: quiet preparation and steady voting gave way to committee scrutiny and presidential advocacy, while factual inquiry and a willingness to hear competing views remained recognizable across the changes in office.