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This section of America, Vol. 2 follows the nation from
the surprise victory of Harry Truman in 1948, through his
Four Point Program, plus the indictment of Alger Hiss, the
victory of Mao in China in early 1949, the invention of
the 33 1/3 r.p.m. record, and the founding of NATO.
1948
Democrats Sweep
November 2
All night Truman surged in the popular count
but trailed in the electoral college
till dawn when
he won the State of Illinois
& measured his victory.
Final tally: 303 electoral votes to Truman
189 to Dewey
Thurmond 30
Wallace zero
Popular count: Truman 24.1mk to Dewey at 21.9 mk
Henry Wallace at 1.15 mk
Strom Thurmond, States-Rights Democrat 1.169mk
& the Democrats won both houses of Congress!
(Wallace won 509,559 votes in NY
and the state went to Dewey)
Labor
In the end America's working people
particularly those in unions
voted for Harry
to stanch the assault on the New Deal
and the crushing of labor
"Labor did it,"
Truman said in Kansas City
the day after the voting
The Strength of the Nation
As for the commies
America was very much strong enough
to have just let the 'nists work openly
without oppression
as in Italy, France, and other countries
where the Communist Party
is just part of the spectrum
It would have made the '50s
a lot more fun
November
The Communists took Manchuria
from Chiang Kai-shek
and the huge fight continued in China
Chambers Also Continued
November 17
Whittaker Chambers now produced 65 typed pages
he said were copies of State Department documents
"I had forgotten I had."
He said they'd been given to him by Alger Hiss
to stealth-fork to a commie agent
And, lo!, December 2
Chambers "retrieved" from a pumpkin patch on his
farm in Westminster, Md.
five rolls of microfilms
–the "pumpkin" papers
Supposedly "secret" State Department stuff
forked over to Chambers by a member of the CP underground
Nixon would not allow Justice Department, grand jurors,
the Federal judge, the press, or anyone else
to see the "shocking" evidence for themselves
(During the furor the films were kept secret,
as if they were nuclear treasures
and only 25 years later were obtained
through the Freedom of Information Law
and were shown to be laughable stuff
having to do with Navy rafts, life preservers,
and fire extinguishers.
and available to the general public
at the Bureau of Standards library)
•
December 10
The UN Human Rights Declaration was passed
with the UN Assembly
giving a standing ovation to Eleanor Roosevelt
for her work in writing the Declaration
December 15
a Grand jury indicted Alger Hiss for perjury
two counts
1. denying he had ever given State Dept doc's to
Whittaker Chambers to give to Russkies
2. denying he had ever seen Chambers after
joining the State Dept in '36
The Hiss case allowed the hard right
to spray through American brains the Republican charges
that Roosevelt's administration
had harbored maybe a glut of spies
•
Novum 1948:
Olivier Messiaen created his Turangalila Symphony
& Cole Porter his Kiss Me, Kate
Emeric Pressberger's The Red Shoes
starring Moira Shearer
Also Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics:
Control and Communications
in the Animal and the Machine
a mathematician at MIT
Cybernetics from kubernétes,
helmsman in Greek
and the World Health Organization, the Porsche, velcro,
and synthetic cortisone injections
plus Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead
whose use of the word fug for fuck
inspired the name of a musical group
called The Fugs
and Polaroid cameras
Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World
nor let us overlook Alfred Kinsey's
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
–Fascist-hearted followers of McCarthy
suggested the Kinsey report boosted the chance
of a Commie US take-over
& the Supreme Court commanded movie studios
to give up their theater chains
Antonio Gramsci Prison Notebooks
(good reading even now)
Truman Capote Other Voices, Other Rooms
Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter
Thomas Merton Seven Storey Mountain
Ezra Pound The Pisan Cantos
Jean Genet The Maids
Pop tunes '48: "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth"
"Now is the Hour" "Buttons & Bows"
"On a Slow Boat to China"
& the Nobel Prize for TS Eliot
for the '22 Wasteland, the '30 Ash Wednesday, the '44 Four Quartets
and a bunch of plays showing him
not to be
Aeschylus
Hi/Bye '48:
January 8 Kurt Schwitters passed at 60
Jan 30 Orville Wright at 76
Sergei Eisenstein on Feb 11 at 50
Antonin Artaud on Mar 4 at 52
Aug 16 Babe Ruth at 53
Al Gore, Garry Trudeau, Mikhail Baryshnikov
Scrabble,
a drive-in hamburger cafe
auto airconditioning
flicks o' '48:
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
de Sica Bicycle Thieves Fort Apache
Olivier's Hamlet The Naked City Key Largo
Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai
John Wayne Red River
New television in the USA: Candid Camera
Hopalong Cassidy
plus The Toast of the Town, which later became the
Ed Sullivan Show on CBS
Tube it up, O America
1949
January 7
Dean Acheson became Secretary of State
George Marshall split
January 9-10
Columbia Records announced its 12-inch "microgroove" record
at 33 1/3 rpm
developed by CBS engineer Peter Goldmark
Good job, Peter!
and the next day RCA presented its 45 rpm record
Both were of vinylite
to replace the 78 rpm shellac records
January 20
Harry Truman
in his inaugural address outdoors to 100,000 people
outlined a Four-Point Program:
•support of the UN
•Euro-recovery through the Marshall Plan
•Military aid to "freedom-loving nations"
•American industrial and scientific advances
to be shared
with the poorer parts of the globe
Then Truman, in his annual message to Congress,
spread to the nation his "Fair Deal":
•rub-out of the Taft-Hartley law
•expansion of social security
•minimum wage to be raised
from 40¢ to 75¢
•& a vastly enlarged low rent federal public housing program
Truman still wanted a National Health Care System!
Roll, o cap-eyes, roll!
The Peoples Republic of China Is Icumin' In
January 31
Mao Zedong's forces entered Beijing
& Chiang Kai-shek resigned as president on January 21
Nanking fell, and Canton
then Shanghai was Mao'd on May 26
Mao was to bring some of the Soviet model to vast China
–socialized agriculture &
heavy industry run by the state
& then on October 1
the People's Republic of China was declared
Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan (Formosa), and set up
a rival gov't there.
The US refused recognition
and kept its allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek
February 13
The American Medical Association
belatedly begrudgingly belittle-ingly
proposed a "Voluntary Medical Care Plan"
opposing President Truman's
national health care system
February 19
Ezra Pound was awarded the $10,000 Bollingen Prize
for The Pisan Cantos
which caused a furor in literary circles
with a headline in the New York Times:
POUND, IN MENTAL CLINIC,
WINS PRIZE FOR POETRY
PENNED IN TREASON CELL
Shaky Truces
February 24
Egypt and Israel made an armistice
and then Israel and Lebanon a truce in March
armistice with Transjordan on April 3, and with Syria on July 20
Able to Drop A-Bombs Anywhere Anytime
March 2
The US military flew
a B-50 bomber non stop
around the world
with mid-air refueling in the Azores
Saudi Arabia
Manila & Hawaii
The Air Force told the world (i.e. Russia)
it was ready to pummel with a-bombs
at will at random at any target
April 4
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in D.C.
by twelve nations
(Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, Iceland,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal
& the US of A)
The muscle of NATO grew out of
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty:
"The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them
in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack
against them all."
–to be continued–
America, A History in Verse, Volume 2, 1940-1961 has recently
been published by Black Sparrow Press. Volume 1 (1900-1939),
was published in 2000 by Black Sparrow Press.
More America, A History in Verse Vol. 2
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