Interview with Alben W. Barkley, July 18th, 1953

SHALETT: Now, I think we're on the air, Senator. This is just a test. This is the second session on July eighteenth.

[Pause in recording.]

BARKLEY:--at all, but I have no desire myself.

SHALETT: Which dry goods store have we been talking about? That wasn't the place where you had your first experience of what you call crawly sugar?

BARKLEY: No, no. No, that--this dry goods store was in Paducah.

SHALETT: Where did you get the crawly sugar?

BARKLEY: The crawly sugar was in Lowes. That was a store run by J. R. Lowe & Son, who was the son of the original settler of Lowes who established the store. And I think I mentioned it there, but if I didn't I'd like to, that I believe it's the only community in America where--

SHALETT: You tell that ----------(??).

BARKLEY: I think I do, yes.

SHALETT: Now, the crawly sugar--

BARKLEY: The crawly sugar was a brown sugar, coarse brown sugar that was shipped to Paducah in hogsheads--that's a big barrel, oh, two or three times as much as an ordinary barrel--and Lowes store in wagons. And they'd sell it to the people. And after it got 00:01:00empty, why, they'd roll this barrel out in the backyard. And there's always some brown sugar left in the cracks and crevices, and I used to go out into the backyard and

crawl into that hogshead and pick out this brown sugar from these cracks and crevices and eat it. And the reason we called it crawly brown sugar, you could take a cup of this old-fashioned brown sugar and lay it out on a table or put it in a plate, and it'd just move around, sort of crawl around like it was alive, and it got to be called crawly brown sugar.

SHALETT: Are you sure it wasn't alive?

BARKLEY: Well, it was the--it was pretty good, and it stimulated life with us, especially. We didn't have too much sugar at home for me to steal and eat like many kids used to do, so I invaded the hogsheads around Lowe's store.

[Pause in recording.]

OTHER VOICE: This is the end of side two, reel one, Barkley tapes.

[Pause in recording.]

BARKLEY: --became somewhat tired and exhausted and sent word down on the floor of the convention and asked me if I would come up and preside for an hour while he rested. I went up and took charge, and he was gone two days instead of an hour. And I was--

SHALETT: You were a member of the House of Representatives.

BARKLEY: I was a member of the House of Representatives, and a member of the Kentucky delegation from the state at-large. During the--all of the balloting, there was great confusion. And especially after John W. Davis was nominated as a compromise candidate, due to the fact that neither Al Smith nor W. G. McAdoo could ever obtain the necessary two-thirds. And so after Smith was--after Davis was nominated for president, the question arose about his running mate. Nobody knew precisely whom Davis wanted as his running mate. And usually the nominee for president consulted about who was to be nominated for his running mate. So without any word coming to the convention, there are at least a dozen candidates being voted for. And on the first ballot, I think nobody got much more than two hundred votes, so finally the word came to 00:04:00the convention that Mr. Davis desired Charles W. Bryan, brother of William Jennings Bryan, to be his running mate. And before there was any announcement of the first ballot, after that word came to the convention, delegations all over the convention hall were asking recognition to change their votes from somebody to Charles W. Bryan. And in the confusion, there was a great deal of impatience, because at one time there were at least eighteen delegations on their feet at the same time. And I was in the chair, and finally I got a little impatient and I said, "Damn it, can't you wait?" And we went on and finished the ballot. There were enough changes of votes on that first ballot to nominate Bryan on the first ballot. So the record shows he was nominated on the first ballot. Well, the next day I got a telegram from Texas from somebody saying, "Be careful of your language up there, you're on the radio."

SHALETT: (laughs) Last night you mentioned a Thomas Corwin, C-o-r-w-i-n. Who was he?

BARKLEY: Thomas Corwin was a very famous Ohio politician, I might say statesman. He was in the House of Representatives for a good many years and was in the Senate from Ohio following the War Between the States. And he had a great ambition to be president of the United States, which is a very worthy ambition--many men have had it and did not realize it--but he was quite ambitious. He was a great humorist also, and because of his great humor, he was not taken too seriously. He would get votes at the conventions, but not enough, and finally when he realized that he was not going to be nominated or elected president, he gave vent to a sentiment which no doubt he harbored because of his disappointment, and he 00:06:00said--having in mind his humorous character, he said, "If a man desires to have the reputation of being a profound scholar, statesman, or philosopher, he must always be as solemn as an ass." He said, "Every monument that has ever been erected in the history of the world was erected to some solemn ass." Well of course, that's not true, but it showed that--there is an element of truth in it. I don't know that there have been any--very many monuments erected to humorists or jokesters. There may have been some erected to men who--of a serious nature who used the story and humor to illustrate something, but fundamentally, I think Corwin may have something there, that monuments are erected to serious men.

SHALETT: Isn't there a monument to Irvin Cobb?

BARKLEY: No, there's not a monument to Irvin Cobb, there is not. There's a hotel built in Paducah named for him. That might 00:07:00be a monument but, why, when the proprietor or the owner wanted to build it and he went to Irvin and asked if he might name it the Irvin Cobb, he said, "I want to know what kind of hotel it's going to be first." (Shallet laughs) They did name a cigar for him down at Paducah, but it wasn't much of a cigar, but the hotel is a very good one.

SHALETT: The cor--we might throw a corollary between Corwin and Adlai Stevenson. While Stevenson did get the nomination, actually he was criticized a good deal for his humor and lightness.

BARKLEY: Well, yes, he was criticized for it, but I think the humor of Adlai Stevenson was of a more subtle character than that of Thomas Corwin. I think that the humor of Stevenson comes naturally. It's a trait that has gone back all through the Stevensons, even to William Stevenson, the original Stevenson in North Carolina, who was the common ancestor of both Stevenson and me, and of Senator Dick Russell of Georgia. Now, he was a great singer. I think I 00:08:00state all that probably in the manuscript that I've written.

SHALETT: Would you like to gather your thoughts a moment?

[Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: Senator, we're jumping around before our chapter on memorable personalities you've met. Let's put in the anecdote on Rene Viviani, I believe that's R-e-n-e V-i-v-i-a-n-i, who was a foreign minister of--

BARKLEY: France.

SHALETT: --France. Yes.

BARKLEY: Well--

SHALETT: You met him with--

BARKLEY: I met him with the French delegation that came over after we entered the World War I in April of 1917. Delegations came over from Belgium and from England and from France, because we had gotten into the war and there had to be conferences between the governments as to the procedure and methods by which the war could be won. And one of the first delegations that came over was the French, and on that delegation was General Joffre.

SHALETT: J-o-f-f-r-e.

BARKLEY: J-o-f-f-r-e, who had been the hero of the Marne. He was a one-armed man, lost one of his arms. And there was a--of course, these delegations were invited through their chairman or head to address the House of Representatives. And Rene Viviani, who was at that time supposed to be the greatest orator in Europe, spoke for the French delegation. He spoke in French. He was a very eloquent man, and he had beautiful gestures and a very impressive manner, so much so that all through his speech, though most of us could not understand the French language, we knew instinctively when to applaud him. And he was applauded all through his speech, because there was such a sort of intellectual connection between him and his audience that they knew that it was appropriate to applaud him.

SHALETT: Would you say that that is a happier method of 00:10:00spontaneous applause than today's radio and television, where they hold up a placard telling the sheep when to clap?

BARKLEY: (laughs) Well, it certainly is more spontaneous. And when a speaker is addressing an audience out in front of him, and he gets enthusiastic applause, he knows that he's getting it and it stimulates him, whereas no matter how much he may be approved by an unseen audience over the radio, he doesn't know whether he's getting any applause or any approval, and he doesn't know how many people are turning off the radio because they may not like him. Anyhow, it was a very inspiring thing to see a Frenchman addressing an American House of Representatives in French. And I imagine there were only a few of the members, really, who could understand French, there were undoubtedly some. But it was a very thing--a very inspiring thing, and one that impressed me very much and one that I've remembered ever since.

SHALETT: I believe it was on your inspection of the World War I battlefields that you met General Syringee, that's S-y-r-i-n-g-double-e for Edward, 00:11:00or--

BARKLEY: I think it was -g-y.

SHALETT: -g-y.

BARKLEY: I'm--the spelling, I would have to check up on.

SHALETT: We'll check that.

BARKLEY: But after--of course, afterwards, this was--these delegations of which I speak came in April or May, in the spring.

SHALETT: Of 18--

BARKLEY: Of 1917. We entered the war in April of 1917. Wilson delivered his war message to the Con--joint session of the Congress, I think, on the sixth day of April, 1917. The next day, I think, or the day after, we declared war or accepted a status of war that really already existed. Well, in August--July and August to September and maybe up into October, this delegation from the House, made up of six members of whom I have spoken, went over to Europe to make some investigation on its own. We had all voted for the war and for the appropriations, and we had a 00:12:00desire to see something of it and see what was happening. So on--we made our headquarters in Paris, and we would go out in fan-shaped type through various fronts. And we had a desire to see the great cathedral at Rheims, spelled R-e-a--R-h-e-i-m-s, but in French it's called Rheims. And on our way from Paris out to Rheims to see this cathedral, which had been practically destroyed by the German Army, and the priceless rose glass, which was very famous, had been destroyed. And the process by which it was made had been also lost to mankind. On our way out, this General Tyringee was in command of that sector and invited us to come by his headquarters. And on the way out, we were very much depressed by what we saw, shell holes everywhere in the land, the beautiful trees which lined the 00:13:00French roads all cut down by shells, and camouflage on either side of the road, so that travel could take place without being detected. We went into General Tyringee's headquarters. He had lost two sons in the war. And in view of all that we had seen on our way out to this destroyed--greatly damaged cathedral, some member of our party--I don't recall who it was--said to him, "General, when you get into Germany, we hope you will do to the Germans what they've done to France." Well, he straightened up and looked into our faces and said, "Gentlemen, when we get into Germany, there's one thing we will not do. We will not destroy her churches. For," he said, "religion is not the property of any nation, but the boon of all mankind." And under the circumstances, with that devastation everywhere, gloom everywhere, I thought that was one of the most inspiring sentences that I 00:14:00had ever heard, and coming from what was supposed to be a hardball military commander.

SHALETT: Was he an impressive figure?

BARKLEY: Very impressive figure, a handsome man, a very fine face, and very sincere. Of course, he spoke to us in French. We had an interpreter.

SHALETT: Who spoke up and made the suggestion that France might be revengeful?

BARKLEY: Well, I don't recall.

SHALETT: Some--not you.

BARKLEY: I don't know. It may have been I, but it may have been any one of the other five.

SHALETT: It might be appropriate here to jump a generation and to give your impressions of seeing the horrible extermination camps, that after the last war tell how two senators, who went over cynical, came away convinced.

BARKLEY: Well, as soon as the American Army began to drive the Germans back out of France and on through Germany, General Eisenhower 00:15:00cabled General Marshall and asked that a joint committee come over to view these atrocity camps, because they were so atrocious and so horrible that he didn't think anybody would believe that such a thing existed unless they saw it themselves, and he wanted a joint committee of the two houses of Congress to see what he had uncovered. Well, General Marshall took it up with me as majority leader of the Senate, and in two days we were on our way, a committee from the House and Senate. And since I was majority leader, I was the chairman of the committee. Well, our first visit was to Buchenwald, just outside of Weimar, spelled W-e-i-m-a-r. Weimar was the seat of the first German Republic created after World War I. And Fredrick Ebert, E-b-e-r-t, was the first president of the German Republic. And it seems 00:16:00ironical--and that was the home of Goethe, the great German poet. It seems ironical that outside that city there should be this Buchenwald, which was a hell on earth. Well, we went through this Buchenwald camp, and we saw things that were so terrible that you could hardly believe that in any civilized country or any civilized age they could be tolerated. We saw the results of their murders of the Jews, men and boys. We saw dead bodies piled up out in a court just like cordwood. We saw suffering, disease, hunger, and hopelessness. And after we had gone through the first one--

SHALETT: Made you feel like wanting to hit somebody or ----------(??).

BARKLEY: Oh yeah, surely. It was just indescribable and incredible. Well, 00:17:00after we went through Buchenwald, we talked among ourselves, and two or three of the senators--and I'd rather not call their names--said, "Well, we think this is just fixed up for us, it's all planned here, planted. We'd like to see something else." Now, at Buchenwald they killed them in the most horrible way, by dropping them down through a concrete chute onto the concrete floor in the basement. And if they were not dead, they'd beat them over the head with an enormous club. And we saw those clubs hanging from the wall, and we saw the hooks on the wall, similar to hooks from which hogs are hung when they're killed, to dry or to set, before they're cut up into different parts. They said, "We--."

SHALETT: I didn't know that.

BARKLEY: "We want to see something else, we--this may be planted." So we went up to Nordhausen, where they hanged them out in an open court, and they required every able-bodied man or boy who 00:18:00could walk or stand up to go out and watch those executions. And they executed them at the rate of 150 a day. Well, that was pretty horrible, and they still piled them up because they had run out of fuel and the incinerator wasn't working. They had to pile these dead bodies out until they could get fuel to put them through the incinerator where they burned them. Well, they still wanted to see something more. So we took them down to Dachau, just outside of Munich, and there they killed them by gas chambers. They would say, "We want you go into a theatre. We're going to put on a show," or something. And they'd herd them in there, anywhere from 150 to 250, just like herding cattle, and then they'd close all the openings and all the escapes for air and turn on the gas. And then they would, through the windows, watch the arrivings of these victims. And all along as they went down 00:19:00on the railroad or drove down, they saw on the sides of the railroad tracks dead bodies that had been thrown off because they'd been hauled down there in boxcars and crowded in, standing up without food or anything. It was a horrible thing. Well, after that Dachau experience, all of these senators said, "We don't want to see anymore. We're sick of these sights, and we're convinced that it hasn't been planted." And so we didn't go anywhere else, and we went back home and wrote the report. And all the senators who were there and the members of the House--I want to include them because it was a joint committee--participated in the drawing of the report, which I made to the Senate after we had finished it. It was one of the most horrible things and the most horrible experiences through which I ever went.

SHALETT: We'll obtain that document.

BARKLEY: Yes. Oh yes, it's available.

SHALETT: Relating what you saw there to present-day problems, doesn't it make you a little uneasy that the people who engineered this, some 00:20:00of them may have escaped and are now operating with us?

BARKLEY: Well, yes, there is that danger, and you never know in a widespread program like that. And these atrocity camps were not set up by Hitler just because of the war, the war didn't come until '39. He began setting up those atrocity camps in 1933 after he went into power, immediately. They were set up in order to destroy the Jewish people. He said he would destroy all of them, and he was on his way toward doing it, as far as Germany was concerned. These things happened long before the war, and they were not a war measure at all.

SHALETT: And the bulk of his people went with him. They may have been unhappy ----------(??).

BARKLEY: Well, they went with him, but it was a strange thing. Many of them claimed they did not know what was going on. Even in Weimar, people said they didn't know that this thing existed outside the city limits. Well, that's almost incredible that a thing like that could exist for years within the shadow of a great 00:21:00historic city without everybody knowing what it was. But I, of course, can't prove that.

SHALETT: Do you think a man in political life could ever have his mind so rigid that he has a preconceived notion that anything that he doesn't believe in may be planted, or may take the cynical view?

BARKLEY: Well, I--

SHALETT: You never have.

BARKLEY: I think that a man takes a long risk in having such a mental rigidity that when he sees something that is obvious that he will not be convinced by that, that it--it's a general pattern, in that he has to be shown over and over again this horrible experience in order to believe that such a thing could exist. And you can't blame a man, really, in a sense, because it was so incredible in this age in which we live, to believe or to see anything like that. I wouldn't have believed that anything like it could happen in this so-called civilized age unless I saw it. And it was so much worse that I had 00:22:00ever heard it was that it left a deep impression on me and on everybody else. Those who came to scoff remained to pray, as the poet said.

SHALETT: Well, you've been a regular Democrat throughout your whole career, but you've never been what we'd call a party hack who would just go along or ----------(??), excuse me, or oppose something because the other party in power was advocating it.

BARKLEY: Oh, I hope I've never been a party hack. I've been a loyal, regular Democrat. I believe in the principles of the Democratic Party and have all my life and have advocated them. But that has never precluded me from recognizing a lot of good things in the opposition party. And when we have been in the minority, since I have been in Congress, from forty years ago, have always supported any good measure that I thought was beneficial to the people, even though it came from the opposition. And I'm doing the same thing now, though I'm not any longer in public office.

[Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: Senator, let's jump way back to the day you were born. What was your name on birth?

BARKLEY: (laughs) Well, I had two uncles, one on my father's side of the family and one on my mother's side. Their names were William. William Barkley and William Smith. My mother's name--maiden name was Smith. Strange to say, both of them were called Willie. Instead of Bill, they were given the name Willie as babies. You know how it is, you call a baby--if you name him James, you call him Jimmy. Or if his name's John, you call him Johnny, and so forth. Well, these two uncles I called Uncle Willie, both of them. And when I was born my parents named me Willie Alben. Well, they were calling me--they were going to call me Alben, and I always did think it was a little awkward to call a person by his middle name, so if he had an initial that he wanted to put in, he had to put his initial first 00:24:00and then his name. But I went by the name of Willie Alben until I got old enough to realize that I thought that that was an awkward name. And I changed it myself to Alben William Barkley, and I was never called Willie. It was incongruous to me, it seemed, even as a boy, robust and strong as I was, to go around with the name of Willie attached to me, so I changed it.

SHALETT: Now what did your father call you?

BARKLEY: Well, he called me--he had a peculiar pronunciation of my name. It's spelled A-l-b-e-n, and he called me Aben, just as if it were A-b-e-n. Now that was just a rather brief way of pronouncing the name Alben. Well, I never realized the significance of that until I got old enough to get up and make the fire. We lived in the country and had a fireplace, an open fireplace, and as soon as I got big enough to make a fire, my father would call out for me to get up and make the fire in the morning instead of doing it himself. I could 00:25:00very well understand that, because I hated to get out of bed and I could understand that he did. So he would shout to me from his room into mine, "Aben, Aben, get up and make a fire!" And when I heard him say Aben, I knew he meant it. It was like the fellow who had two holes in the bottom of his door in his bedroom, and somebody asked him why he had two holes. "Well," he said, "When I say 'scat,' if there's a cat in here, I mean it. And I've got two holes so that they can get out one or the other." And when I heard my father say, "Aben, Aben," I knew exactly what he meant, and sometimes I had one foot out of the bed before he finished calling me.

SHALETT: On page ninety-one of your manuscript, you have the story of the first telephone you saw. How many years, roughly, would you say it was before you used one of these devices?

BARKLEY: Well, let's see, I was about twelve years old then. And I don't think I used one of them until I was about seventeen or eighteen years old, because there was no telephone at Lowes at that time, and I moved away from Lowes to Clinton 00:26:00when I was fourteen, and it was some time after I moved to Clinton before they put in a telephone system at Clinton.

SHALETT: Ah-ha.

BARKLEY: And the first--the strange thing is, the first time I talked over the telephone from Clinton after they had installed it, I went up to the operator's office--the telephone exchange with my guitar. At that time, I was a pretty good hand at a guitar.

SHALETT: Oh, I didn't know that.

BARKLEY: Yeah, I was quite a hand at the guitar.

SHALETT: Six-string or twelve-string?

BARKLEY: Six-string. So I went up into this exchange and called up my girl who lived three or four miles out in the country, and I played her a tune and sang it over the telephone. (Shalett laughs) That was my first experience in actually talking over the telephone.

SHALETT: What was the tune?

BARKLEY: I think it was "Sweet Marie, Come to Me, Come to Me, Sweet Marie." A very old song, very popular at that 00:27:00time, and an awful pretty one too.

SHALETT: Oh, that's wonderful. Do you ever play the guitar now?

BARKLEY: No, no, I can't even play the chords now. No, I--you have to keep up practice on those things, but I really did enjoy it and got a lot of fun out of it, but after I got busy and tried to make a living and raise a family, I didn't have much time for the guitar.

SHALETT: Plus, as a country boy, you probably picked up the guitar yourself.

BARKLEY: Oh yes, I picked it up myself.

SHALETT: Watching people--

BARKLEY: Watching people, and I got so I could use the--of course, the left hand to move my fingers up and down the strings so as to make a tune out of it.

SHALETT: Ah-ha.

BARKLEY: I was pretty good, but I didn't have one of these steel instruments either, I did it with my fingers.

SHALETT: Yeah. Yeah. Another little bit of Americana, we all see in the movies now when the father takes his son in the old dry goods store to buy the year's supplies, and the little boy looks in the candy counter, and then finally the storekeeper gives him the peppermint stick free. That ever happen to you?

BARKLEY: Oh, yes, many times there at this old Lowes general 00:28:00store with the familiar country advertisement up front, "dry goods and notions." And I never had a very clear idea what notions meant, but it means dry goods and nearly anything everybody would want. And so when we'd go in and buy supplies, usually there at the local place, they'd give me a stick of red candy, red and white. It was just--it looked like the walking canes that Uncle Sam is supposed to use on the Fourth of July. Very good. And you'd suck that thing. It's sticky and get all over you, but when we went into Mayfield or Paducah to buy the supplies for the winter, why, frequently the merchant, if my father bought me a suit of clothes, it was customary to give the purchaser a pair of suspenders as a gift, or a necktie, something like that.

SHALETT: A harmonica?

BARKLEY: No, they never gave me a harmonica, I bought that myself. (Shalett laughs) They always had suspenders around, but they didn't have 00:29:00any harmonicas. But it was customary, when you bought a suit of clothes or a big bill of goods, the merchant would give you something as a token of his appreciation.

SHALETT: When did a boy get his first pair of long pants in those days? At what age?

BARKLEY: Well, I got mine when I was about--I guess I was eleven years old when I got my first pair of long pants. They get them much sooner now.

SHALETT: Up until then you wore the black leg stockings?

BARKLEY: I wore the--well, they were not always black, they were brown. You know, my mother knitted all of my stockings when I was a boy, and she knitted all her children--and she knitted my father's stockings and--socks, we'd call them. Of course, when I had on knee pants it was stockings, because they had to come up above my knees for protection. But she would card her own wool. That is, that's a term, an old-fashioned term, where a woman gets a couple of carding instruments and cards the--as they call it, cards the wool. Straightens it out, gets the seed out of it, or any cockleburs or whatever may be in it, and then she would spin 00:30:00that yarn, that wool, on the old spinning wheel and make her own yarn out of which she knitted the stockings and socks for all the family. Now, that was in a natural wool color. She colored that brown by use of the seed of the sumac bush. I would frequently go out into the woods or the fields and gather a basket of sumac, S-u-m-a-c. And she would boil that and make a brown dye out of it, and she would dye all these white wool socks in that pot of brown dye. They were all the same color, but it was a good looking brown. And usually there were--I wore brown stockings until I put on long pants, and then even then I wore brown socks because she still continued to knit them.

SHALETT: Did you use anything else for homemade dye, like butternut, or was that just Civil War?

BARKLEY: No, we didn't use that. We didn't use anything except 00:31:00the juice of the sumac berry.

SHALETT: You were telling me yesterday about your mother, who was a wonderful person and lived to ninety and how she came to see you when she was well up in years and ----------(??)----------. What did you call her?

BARKLEY: I called her Mommy. All--she and my father taught all of us children to call her Mommy.

SHALETT: How about your dad, what did you call him?

BARKLEY: We called him Poppy. When I got older, Mommy and Poppy sounded a little bit puerile to me, and I began to call them Mama and Papa. I never did say Dad to my father, it was always Papa, and then Mama. Sometimes Ma, maybe sometimes Pa, which was an old-fashioned country appellation.

SHALETT: Would you call her Mommy when she came to visit you?

BARKLEY: I did. Of course, you know, I had gotten so used to calling her Mommy when I was younger that I never 00:32:00really did break my habit--myself from that habit. So when she came to Washington to visit me and my wife and children when I was in Congress, I still called her Mommy about half the time. And she stayed up there a month or so and had a wonderful time. She enjoyed Washington, I took her over to the White House. I think Coolidge was president at that time, I'm not quite certain because I've forgotten what year, but I think it was Coolidge. And my wife and I took her out to the White House, and Mr. Coolidge was very gracious, very courteous. He displayed a human aspect that most people didn't ascribe to him at all. My recollection is that he rushed over to a table in the White House office and grabbed a red rose and handed it to my mother, and maybe pinned it on her.

SHALETT: Really?

BARKLEY: Which was a very gracious little touch of courtesy. My mother, of course, appreciated that, coming from the president of the United States.

SHALETT: What did she call you?

BARKLEY: She called me Alben.

SHALETT: She got away from Willie.

BARKLEY: Oh, Lord, she got away from Willie. Well in fact, 00:33:00they never did call me Willie, even when I was a baby, because Willie was the first name and they had decided to call me by my middle name. And that's one reason why it sounded so awkward to me to be called by my middle name and have Willie in front of it. And if I signed it that way, it would be W. Alben Barkley, or Willie Alben Barkley. And I made up my mind when I was about six that I wasn't going through life with a little Willie Alben stuck onto me, so I changed it to Alben William.

SHALETT: What was the thought you gave me last night about sparing children names until they could pick them ----------(??)?

BARKLEY: Well, I--in view of the ridiculous names that I've often seen given to innocent babies who can't help themselves, I have suggested--and I have frequently thought and suggested that a child be allowed to name himself or herself after he gets old enough to know what kind of a name he wants. And yet I realize the difficulties of that, because the parents and friends and the family have got to call the child something, and if they just call it Baby, 00:34:00why, first thing you know it'll be Babe, and he'll go through all his life like Babe Ruth. That wasn't a bad name for Babe, but as big and as robust as he was, Babe sounded a little odd for a great big robust, double-jointed fellow like Babe Ruth. But anyhow, great injustice is done to perfectly innocent babies by the ridiculous names that their parents sometimes in great affection give them.

SHALETT: But you have to say, "Here ----------(??), come eat your cereal."

BARKLEY: Yes, I realize it would create an awkward situation, but I don't know what the remedy is. I suppose they'll go on, as they have throughout the generations, giving perfectly innocent babies ridiculous names.

SHALETT: I'm going to break off recording here and take a tablet note on how many of your brothers and sisters are surviving.

[Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: While we've been off the tape, you've told me about your grandchildren and your children and their names. Your grandchildren, do they visit you on the farm in Paducah a lot?

BARKLEY: Not too much now, because they're pretty busy, they've been pretty busy during the summer on their father's farm down in Southern Maryland. But they have managed to come see me, I would say, on the average of once a year when I've been at home, and I haven't been at home too much.

SHALETT: Have you been a more indulgent grandfather than you were a father? Do you spoil ----------(??)?

BARKLEY: Well, I'll tell you, there's a funny thing about grandchildren. People enjoy frequently their grandchildren more than they do their own children, because they don't have the responsibility of rearing them. They get all the joy out of it but no responsibility. And I imagine in that sense I have been more indulgent, of course, with my grandchildren, because I was not charged with the responsibility of training them. And when I have visited with them or they've visited with me, we've all had a lot of fun together, and I never had any occasion to chastise them much, because they are pretty well-behaved boys. And the girls too, the girls are lovely, lovely girls, and I never 00:36:00had any trouble with any of them.

SHALETT: What do your grandchildren call you?

BARKLEY: They call me--well, Mrs. Truitt's boys call me Gramps, G-r-a-m-p-s. The others call me Granddaddy, and they call me Granddaddy too part of the time.

SHALETT: Were you a strict father?

BARKLEY: Well, I tried to be, but I wasn't too much of a success at it. (They laugh.) I find that I probably was like my own father. He became more indulgent, the more children he had. He was much more strict on me than he was on my youngest brother. By that time, he seemed to have mellowed, and they got away with a lot of things that I couldn't get away with when I was growing up.

SHALETT: One of the sad things I've seen about some of the political figures I've known is that they get so busy they don't have much time for their family.

BARKLEY: Well, that is a tragedy, because--

SHALETT: Did you have any time with your children?

BARKLEY: Oh, I had--yes, I had a great deal of time with my children, because I kept my family in Washington. My children 00:37:00were in school from the time they got old enough to go to school, and I kept them in Washington the whole school season. I would not take them out of school in the middle of the season to go back home and start over again in a new circum--new environment. So from September until June, I kept my family in Washington so that the chillins could go to school there. And I was there during the session, which usually lasted, at least every other year, up until June or July. And sometimes before this amendment to the Constitution that abolished the so-called lame duck session, when Congress had to adjourn the fourth of March every other year, whether they were through or not, I would go home sometimes after that adjournment. Sometimes we'd take a trip, maybe to Panama during the Easter vacation of the schools, and while Congress was being reassembled, maybe, by a special call of the president.

SHALETT: You'd take the kids to Panama.

BARKLEY: Take the kids to Panama, yes. We were pretty closely associated together.

SHALETT: They were never afraid of you.

BARKLEY: No. No, they weren't. If they did, they never showed it (laughs). I remember one time I was giving my boy a spanking. He was about six years old, he'd done something for which I thought he needed a little chastisement and I was spanking him. And he said--looked up at me, he said, "Are you playing, Daddy?" And I said, "No, I'm not playing." And he looked at me again, and he said, "Are you playing, Daddy?" I said, "No, I'm not playing." And he looked at me the third time and said, "Are you playing, Daddy?" I said, "Yes, I'm playing." (both laugh)

SHALETT: Did you put--all the children went through college?

BARKLEY: Yes. They didn't all graduate. They--the two girls graduated at Holton-Arms School there in Washington, which is a very fine girls' school. And Marian went out to the University of Wisconsin for a while, but didn't graduate. And Wahwee, the younger daughter, went to Sophie Newcomb for a year, and then back--she came back to Washington, went to 00:39:00George Washington University, but she didn't graduate. My son went to the University of Virginia four years, but did not graduate.

SHALETT: That kept you over the barrel, right?

BARKLEY: Oh, kept me over the barrel with three children in college all at the same time on a salary of seventy-five hundred dollars a year. It was pretty tough. And I look back on it, and I don't really see how I got away with it, how I got by.

SHALETT: Well, do you want to tell us some of the things you had to do to supplement your income?

BARKLEY: Well, I had to speak, lecture, a good deal, which I did. After I'd been in Washington a few years, I began to look around to see if I couldn't supplement my salary by speaking before different kinds of organizations and also do a little bit of writing. So I was able to, by the hardest, to make enough extra money to pay for their tuition and give them all a very good education. And I'm very glad of it, because there's 00:40:00no hardship, in my judgment, that a parent can undergo that is not worthy of his effort to give his children an education. And that's about all I expected to be able to give them was a good education.

SHALETT: You had no outside income from a law practice?

BARKLEY: No. When I left Paducah--I was a judge when I was elected to Congress. And while I could practice law in the circuit courts--and I had a fairly good law practice following my four-year term as prosecuting attorney, and while it was in existence I could practice civil law. I couldn't practice criminal law because I had to prosecute. But that didn't bar me from taking civil lawsuits. But when I left Paducah, after being elected to Congress and resigned as judge, I turned over all my business and my library to another lawyer, and I never attempted to practice law after that because Wilson had kept us pretty busy. He came in, you know, in 1913, and 00:41:00there was so much to do that we were pretty much in constant session of the Congress. And then when World War I came along in '17, it was more so, so I was kept in Washington nearly all the time. And a lawyer has to be at home if he gets in a law practice, because if a client has a lawyer, he wants him to be at the courthouse when his case comes up. So I never made any effort to practice law, and I haven't practiced law since I was first elected to Congress.

[Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: This is a rather somber personal note, but I remember the first Saturday Evening Post article about you told how when the first Mrs. Barkley was so ill you were absolutely--it was almost a matter of desperation, you would make speeches, and you'd go out with a briefcase and lunch sack to do your duty. That kept on for several years, didn't it?

BARKLEY: Well, my wife--my first wife was ill for at least five years, and during the last three years of that illness, it 00:42:00was necessary to have a nurse day and night with her. And the nurses' bills amounted to more than my salary as a senator.

SHALETT: The nurses' bill--

BARKLEY: The nurses' bills, yes. And doctor's bills added onto that. I had to supplement my income, and I did it by lecturing and by writing. And frequently after the session of the Senate would end in the afternoon, I'd take an airplane to some nearby place, New York, Pittsburgh, or Chicago sometimes, and make a--deliver a lecture or make a speech before a Chamber of Commerce or a college or any legitimate organization that wanted to have a speaker and pay him an honorarium. And I supplemented my salary in that way, which was necessary, because I had no outside income by investment, or by any ownership of property that I had that would have drawn any income to me. And I was glad to do that, because I felt that I--in making that effort, I was prolonging the life of my 00:43:00wife. And while the doctors gave her two years to live when she first had this heart attack, she lived five.

SHALETT: Have you ever made any effort or could you reconstruct how many miles you've flown? You're one of the most traveled men by air in the country.

BARKLEY: Well, I imagine that I have flown over the United States and over the ocean more than any other civilian in the United States.

SHALETT: I remember Wilson talking--

BARKLEY: I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean fourteen times by air.

SHALETT: Back and forth.

BARKLEY: Back and forth. Seven round-trips.

SHALETT: Seven round-trips.

BARKLEY: Seven round-trips. That was fourteen crossings.

SHALETT: How about the Pacific?

BARKLEY: And I've crossed the Pacific twice, that is one round-trip. I went to Korea and Japan and the Philippines in the fall--in November of 1951. I--

SHALETT: South America?

BARKLEY: I've been to South America, but I've never flown. I wouldn't know how to guess how many hundreds of thousand miles I 00:44:00have traveled by air. I--during the campaign of 1948 when I was running for vice president with Mr. Truman, for six weeks I flew all over this country. We chartered an airplane, and I campaigned all together by air. We had a regular crew, and we kept the same plane during the whole campaign.

SHALETT: Let's save that for a concentrated chapter.

BARKLEY: Yes. Yes.

SHALETT: That's going to be a wonderful chapter.

BARKLEY: I imagine that I have flown, oh, it'd be purely a guess how many hundreds of thousands of miles I've flown, I just wouldn't know how to guess at it. But it runs up into the hundreds of thousands of miles. I travel altogether by air now, except in some case where I have to take a train for connection, because I can't get where I'm going and get back without flying.

SHALETT: And you told me you don't even take insurance. You just get on and go.

BARKLEY: Oh, no. I get on a plane and I never think about taking insurance.

SHALETT: I believe you told me--

BARKLEY: I think it's silly not to take it, but I 00:45:00don't. I may take it up from now on. It's a good idea.

SHALETT: I believe you told me one of the amusing mishaps--and you've had very few mishaps--was when you got on a plane for Rochester, New York, and wound up in Rochester, Minnesota.

BARKLEY: No, no, I tell you, I was due to speak in Rochester, Minnesota. I was due there at a luncheon. It was a Democratic rally. I was to be at the luncheon and then I was to make a speech to a big crowd at three o'clock in the afternoon. And I got on the plane at Chicago where they told me and went through the gate they told me, and the porter took my bags and put them on the plane, and I went out. I noticed in a few minutes after we got into the air that the plane seemed to be flying across the south end of Lake Michigan. That made me a little suspicious, but I didn't say anything. Finally the hostess came to me and said, "What is your name?" And I told her. She went back up in the cabin and came back, said, "We don't have your name on our list." I said, "Well, I don't understand that, because 00:46:00I'm on here." She said, "Where is it you're going?" I said, "Rochester." She said, "Rochester, what?" I said, "Rochester, Minnesota." She said, "This plane goes to Rochester, New York." I said, "They told me to get on this plane." "Well," she said, "we'll have to put you off at South Bend and let you fly back to Chicago to get a plane for Rochester." So they let me off at South Bend, I caught the next plane back to Chicago, and when I got there they had discovered their mistake and they had a special plane waiting for me to take me to Rochester. And while I missed the noon-day luncheon, I got there in time for the three o'clock speech.

SHALETT: What airline was this that provided this special plane?

BARKLEY: Oh, I'm not certain whether it was the Northwestern or the United. I'm not certain about that. It's been a good many years ago.

SHALETT: What were you, a senator then?

BARKLEY: I was a senator.

SHALETT: Um-hm. Yeah.

BARKLEY: It was back around--somewhere around 1940, I've forgotten what year, 00:47:00but I was campaigning, as usual, for the ticket.

SHALETT: Well, let's go back to 'My Old Kentucky Home' in the manuscript. On ninety-five, you have this fascinating reference to the stick-and-dirt chimney. And you've already told me that despite the fact that this sounds very shaky to me, you had very few fires from a stick-and-dirt chimney, so they're not too ----------(??).

BARKLEY: Well, you mean conflagrations?

SHALETT: Conflagrations, yeah.

BARKLEY: Well, a stick-and-dirt--I don't know why that is. A stick-and-dirt chimney is a frail sort of construction and a stick-and dirt house. Now, we lived in a one-room log house with a frame addition, which we used as a kitchen. And a--the logs were, of course, hewn out of the wood close by. We didn't build it. But it was a primitive sort of thing, not only the cracks between 00:48:00the walls, which were chinked with dirt and sticks, which gives it its name of stick-and-dirt, but the chimney for the fireplace and the escape for the smoke in this log room was made of sticks and dirt. No bricks, no mortar, no cement, just sticks and dirt built up, with sticks of course to hold the dirt together and make it solid. Now, I don't know why it is that--as far as I can recall, very few fires ever happened in one of those stick-and-dirt houses and chimneys. But the result was--the reason, I guess, was that the chimney was sufficiently substantial that all the sparks and the flames and the smoke found its way out through the top and didn't set even the wood afire that was in the stick-and-dirt chimney. But you see, on the inside of the chimney, this dirt, mud really it was and then dried, covered up the sticks so 00:49:00that they couldn't catch fire.

SHALETT: Um-hm.

Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: --like a clay.

BARKLEY: Yeah, like a clay, that's right.

SHALETT: I wonder if you can give a little of your personal touch to this story on page ninety-eight about how barefoot Alben used to have to walk in the other kids' tracks in the snow.

BARKLEY: Well, this all happened while we were living in this stick-and-dirt log cabin with a stick-and-dirt chimney. The schoolhouse was known as Breckinridge's Schoolhouse. It was named for Mr. Breckinridge, who was a farmer 00:50:00and a very well-to-do man in the neighborhood. And as a matter of fact, we rented this little log house from Mr. Breckinridge. It was a tenant-house on his place. Well, my father and mother hadn't gone to town to buy the winter supplies, and my feet had been growing so that I couldn't wear the shoes of the previous winter. And so we--I started school there, I was about six years old.

SHALETT: I suppose your parents were too thrifty to cut the toes out ----------(??).

BARKLEY: Well, I think, as a matter of fact, I'd worn them out before the previous spring. But school began along in Sept--August or September, and when November came and the frost began to show up on the ground and the grass, I still had no shoes, because my parents hadn't gone to town with the crop to buy the winter supplies. So these frosts got pretty heavy and I think there was a light snow that took place in November. And the 00:51:00result was, I was still barefooted. And in order not to frostbite my feet, or freeze them, I walked along in the tracks of those who had shoes, stepping in their tracks all the way from my home to the schoolhouse. That--now that sounds fantastic in a way, and my children, even to this day, make fun of me when I say that. And they have exaggerated into the story--into the statement by them that I was twenty-one years old before I had on a pair of shoes. Well, of course, that's just a joke in the family, but that was literally true that I had to walk in those tracks where the frost--the light snow had been knocked away so I could step in with my bare feet.

SHALETT: You deny categorically that they had to tie you down to get that first pair of shoes on you.

BARKLEY: Oh, yes. I deny that. As a matter of fact, I was always very proud. What they usually bought for me at that time was not shoes, but boots.

SHALETT: Leather boots?

BARKLEY: Leather boots. And they had a certain type of boot known as red-top and brass-toe. There was a little brass piece around 00:52:00the toe that keeps from wearing the toe out when we were crawling around on our knees and hands, and this red top was just an ornament. So that's what I usually wore, and I was very proud of those brass-top and red-top boots, so they didn't have to lasso me or run me down to get a pair put on me.

Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: Senator, you wanted to go back and amplify what you said yesterday about early boyhood fights, fisticuffs.

BARKLEY: Well, I intimated that my father, who was a very religious man, had a rule that I should not provoke fights among my schoolmates and the neighborhood boys. I don't mean--I didn't mean to say--to intimate by what I said that he was cruel or anything, but he had a rule. He didn't proscribe my defending myself, but he did not approve of me provoking fights. And it was when I provoked one that he would punish me with a second one 00:53:00if I got home and he learned about it. In addition to the feud between the Harlan Mill boys and the Lowes boys that I spoke about, there are two or three others that I think are worth mentioning because they illustrate the fact that no matter how bitter, temporarily, boys may become toward each other in their boyhood, that they may later become the greatest of friends, and very intimate. Now, I lived about a mile from Lowes, north of Lowes, and out beyond me and between Lowes and my house there were other boys and other girls. There was a drove of students, every afternoon when the school was out, I would say ten or twelve, they all walked along together. Among them was one bully. His name was Tom Herd, H-e-r-d. He was a bully, and he had everybody afraid of him. And he imposed upon us because he knew we were afraid 00:54:00of him and we knew it, because he was a bully, and you're always scared of a bully until you learn that he's not as dangerous as you think. So he would inflict his punishment, his exasperations, his teasings, upon me and the rest of them. One day his father had told him to buy a horse collar at the store in Louisville, which he did, and all the way home he threw that collar over my neck and prodded me from the rear as if I were a horse pulling a two-horse wagon. And when we got nearer to my house I got tired of it, and I turned on him and I gave him the darnedest licking that any boy ever got. We fought in the road, we went over into the field where my father had a tobacco crop, and we tore down at least a quarter of an acre of tobacco, but I finally licked him.

SHALETT: Excuse me.

Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: Did this character call you ignominious names as he was prodding you?

BARKLEY: Yes, he called me ignominious names, which I wouldn't mention, 00:55:00and you know, you can just drive a boy so far and then he revolts. Well, the result of this was that I gave him a tremendous thrashing, and that, of course, stimulated my own self-confidence, and it helped every other student who walked out that road. He never bothered any of us after that. And then there was another episode I think I should remember--mention, because the boy with whom I fought then is still living, and he's one of my devoted friends. His name was John Elliott. In the country, boys have a very bad habit, or used to have a very bad habit, of calling one another very vile names. And there was a certain appellation which always meant a fight, because it reflected upon a parent. You know what I'm talking about. Well, John Elliott and I got into a controversy, and one or the other of us called the other one that name. We fought all over the livery stable. We just fought 00:56:00and fought and fought, and the object was to make the boy who called the other one this vile name take it back. Well we fought and fought and fought all over the darn livery stable, and the result was that finally, whichever one had called the other one the vile name took it back, and that ended it. We got up and went on about our business. Well, this John Elliott, who figured in this episode, has all his life been--and all my life been one of my most intimate friends. He's still living at Lowes, and he married Emma Rust, the daughter of Mr. Bill Rust, whose fictitious bumble bee's nest figured in my facial disfiguration when I got home from the Harlan Mill.

SHALETT: ----------(??) What's he doing in Paducah now?

BARKLEY: He's a farmer. He lives at Lowes. Still lives there, he's a farmer. Well, the other episode that I had in mind took place after I went to Clinton and I was a janitor at Marvin College, as a student there. We played football out on the campus. We didn't have any uniforms, and we didn't play according to the rules of football now. We kicked the ball and we 00:57:00ran with it and we grabbed one another and we tried to interfere and all that kind of thing, and we--it was ----------(??) football rules similar to that which they play now, but a little different. Well, I had only one suit of clothes, and I wore it at school, and I wore it out on the campus, and I wore it when we were playing football. And there was a schoolmate of mine named Dick Hayes, and he was a very robust fellow, and he was not afraid of anything. And I was running with the ball, and he grabbed me in my pocket of my coat to stop me, and he pulled the pocket out and pulled off the tail end of my coat, the only coat I had. Well, it made me so mad that I lit into him and I called him every vile name that a country boy could lay at somebody(??). Really, it was terrible. And he just stood up and looked at me, and he said, "Do you mean what you're saying?" I said, "I certainly do." "Well," he said, "That's all right if you 00:58:00mean it," but said, "I don't take any foolishness." (Shalett laughs) Well, by that little quirk of his, both of us avoided a terrible fistfight, and both of us are glad of it. And to the day he died, he was my devoted friend, which shows that boys, young people, in their boyish controversies, their bitterness, turn out to be great friends and devoted, intimate companions. And it leads me to the suggestion that if the world could do that, if nations could do that, what a wonderful thing it would be, and how many lives it would save, and how much precious treasure you'd save if nations could come to an agreement and forget their difficulties and be friends. Don't you think so?

SHALETT: You mean if Malenkov could say to Eisenhower, "Do you mean what you say? And then, "It's all right, I don't take any foolishness."

BARKLEY: That's right. "If you mean what you say, why, we'll 00:59:00agree. I don't take any foolishness." And Eisenhower would say, "I wasn't dealing in any foolishness," and then get together.

SHALETT: Well, that's the trouble. The United States, I think, now does mean what it says.

BARKLEY: Of course, the United States means what it says.

SHALETT: And they don't believe us.

BARKLEY: And I would hate to think it didn't mean what it says. Trouble is they do not believe it, and they don't believe it because they don't want to believe it. They want to indulge in a false propaganda, a false assumption, a false front toward the rest of the world, toward our sincerity and our devotion to peace. As you know, we are devoted to peace. Our people are not a warlike people, though they've never avoided a war if it was necessary to defend our rights and our institutions.

SHALETT: Wonderful.

[Pause in recording.]

SHALETT: This is Sidney Shalett. This is the end of the recording at the Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City. End of side one, reel number two.

[End of interview.]