Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis

The Truman Doctrine
PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN'S ADDRESS BEFORE

A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS, MARCH 12, 1947

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Congress of the United States:
The gravity of the situation which confronts the world today necessitates my appearance before a joint session of the Congress. The foreign policy and the national security of this country are involved.
One aspect of the present situation, which I wish to present to you at this time for your consideration and decision, concerns Greece and Turkey.
The United States has received from the Greek Government an urgent appeal for financial and economic assistance. Preliminary reports from the American Economic Mission now in Greece and reports from the American Ambassador in Greece corroborate the statement of the Greek Government that assistance is imperative if Greece is to survive as a free nation.
I do not believe that the American people and the Congress wish to turn a deaf ear to the appeal of the Greek Government.
Greece is not a rich country. Lack of sufficient natural resources has always forced the Greek people to work hard to make both ends meet. Since 1940, this industrious and peace loving country has suffered invasion, four years of cruel enemy occupation, and bitter internal strife.
When forces of liberation entered Greece they found that the retreating Germans had destroyed virtually all the railways, roads, port facilities, communications, and merchant marine. More than a thousand villages had been burned. Eighty-five per cent of the children were tubercular. Livestock, poultry, and draft animals had almost disappeared. Inflation had wiped out practically all savings.
As a result of these tragic conditions, a militant minority, exploiting human want and misery, was able to create political chaos which, until now, has made economic recovery impossible.
Greece is today without funds to finance the importation of those goods which are essential to bare subsistence. Under these circumstances the people of Greece cannot make progress in solving their problems of reconstruction. Greece is in desperate need of financial and economic assistance to enable it to resume purchases of food, clothing, fuel and seeds. These are indispensable for the subsistence of its people and are obtainable only from abroad. Greece must have help to import the goods necessary to restore internal order and security, so essential for economic and political recovery.
The Greek Government has also asked for the assistance of experienced American administrators, economists and technicians to insure that the financial and other aid given to Greece shall be used effectively in creating a stable and self-sustaining economy and in improving its public administration.
The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists, who defy the government's authority at a number of points, particularly along the northern boundaries. A Commission appointed by the United Nations security Council is at present investigating disturbed conditions in northern Greece and alleged border violations along the frontier between Greece on the one hand and Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia on the other.
Meanwhile, the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation. The Greek army is small and poorly equipped. It needs supplies and equipment if it is to restore the authority of the government throughout Greek territory. Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.
The United States must supply that assistance. We have already extended to Greece certain types of relief and economic aid but these are inadequate.
There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.
No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek government.
The British Government, which has been helping Greece, can give no further financial or economic aid after March 31. Great Britain finds itself under the necessity of reducing or liquidating its commitments in several parts of the world, including Greece.

We have considered how the United Nations might assist in this crisis. But the situation is an urgent one requiring immediate action and the United Nations and its related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the kind that is required.

It is important to note that the Greek Government has asked for our aid in utilizing effectively the financial and other assistance we may give to Greece, and in improving its public administration. It is of the utmost importance that we supervise the use of any funds made available to Greece; in such a manner that each dollar spent will count toward making Greece self-supporting, and will help to build an economy in which a healthy democracy can flourish.
No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected. The Government of Greece is not perfect. Nevertheless it represents eighty-five per cent of the members of the Greek Parliament who were chosen in an election last year. Foreign observers, including 692 Americans, considered this election to be a fair expression of the views of the Greek people.
The Greek Government has been operating in an atmosphere of chaos and extremism. It has made mistakes. The extension of aid by this country does not mean that the United States condones everything that the Greek Government has done or will do. We have condemned in the past, and we condemn now, extremist measures of the right or the left. We have in the past advised tolerance, and we advise tolerance now.
Greece's neighbor, Turkey, also deserves our attention.
The future of Turkey as an independent and economically sound state is clearly no less important to the freedom-loving peoples of the world than the future of Greece. The circumstances in which Turkey finds itself today are considerably different from those of Greece. Turkey has been spared the disasters that have beset Greece. And during the war, the United States and Great Britain furnished Turkey with material aid.
Nevertheless, Turkey now needs our support.
Since the war Turkey has sought financial assistance from Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of effecting that modernization necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.
That integrity is essential to the preservation of order in the Middle East.
The British government has informed us that, owing to its own difficulties can no longer extend financial or economic aid to Turkey.
As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply it. We are the only country able to provide that help.
I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey, and I shall discuss these implications with you at this time.
One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.
The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.
Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war.
It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for the world. Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to maintain their freedom and independence.
Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East.
We must take immediate and resolute action.

I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000 for the period ending June 30, 1948. In requesting these funds, I have taken into consideration the maximum amount of relief assistance which would be furnished to Greece out of the $350,000,000 which I recently requested that the Congress authorize for the prevention of starvation and suffering in countries devastated by the war.

In addition to funds, I ask the Congress to authorize the detail of American civilian and military personnel to Greece and Turkey, at the request of those countries, to assist in the tasks of reconstruction, and for the purpose of supervising the use of such financial and material assistance as may be furnished. I recommend that authority also be provided for the instruction and training of selected Greek and Turkish personnel.
Finally, I ask that the Congress provide authority which will permit the speediest and most effective use, in terms of needed commodities, supplies, and equipment, of such funds as may be authorized.
If further funds, or further authority, should be needed for purposes indicated in this message, I shall not hesitate to bring the situation before the Congress. On this subject the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government must work together.
This is a serious course upon which we embark.
I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious. The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace.
The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than 1 tenth of 1 per cent of this investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.
If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world -- and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events.
I am confident that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.

"Strike Against Jackie Spiked," 1947
From The Baltimore Afro-American, May 17, 1947.
Strike Against Jackie Spiked
Rickey Terms Rumor
"Tempest in Teapot"
By SAM LACY
AFRO Sports Editor
Philadelphia
Despite emphatic denials on the part of the principal characters in the drama, it is an established fact that a move to promote a strike against the presence of Jackie Robinson in the National League was on foot here and in Brooklyn last week.
The strike, instigated by a small bloc of St. Louis Cardinal players who had fantastic visions of a general walkout later, was checked by League President Ford Frick and Cardinal owner Sam Breadon. Both denied this, however. . . .
Breadon Pleads Ignorance
Breadon asserted that he was not aware of the strike plan, and explained his hurried trip to Brooklyn last Tuesday as for the purpose of finding a means of improving the hapless 1948 champions currently floundering in last place in the league standings.
Whether Frick talked to the players in person or whether he sent them a written message, could not be confirmed when the Dodgers arrived here Friday to open a four-game series with the Phillies. But it is a known fact that he told the St. Louis team:
"If you do this (strike) you will be suspended from the league. You will find that the friends you think you have in the press box will not support you, that you will be outcasts. I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do it will encounter quick retribution. All will be suspended and I don't care if it wrecks the National League for five years. This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right to play as another.
"The National League will go down the line with Robinson whatever the consequences. You will find if you go through with your intention that you have been guilty of complete madness."
Rickey's Statement
Following on the heels of these denials, Branch Rickey, president of the Dodgers, attempted to brush off the matter with the assertion that it was "just a tempest in the teapot." . . .
But the AFRO learned this was not exactly true. While Rickey may have been sincere in his belief, it was discovered that the strike plan was actually in effect as early as last March, when several Brooklyn players sought to promote a petition demanding that Robinson be forgotten as a prospect for the Dodgers. . . .
Scheduled for May 6
Originally, the St. Louis walk-out was to have taken place on May 6, when the Cardinals went to Brooklyn for the first game of the series with that club. But the lowly state of the team in the National League race is believed to have given the players something else to think about. The anti-Robinson plan, consequently, lost much of its importance to them.
Although denials as to the existence of strike machinery have been general, and although none of the Cardinals admitted to New York newsmen that he was in any way involved, the AFRO determined here Saturday morning that three key players of the club were questioned at length by Breadon and Dyer during the club's stay in Brooklyn.
These were Terry Moore, center-fielder; Marty Marion, shortstop, and Stan Musial, first baseman. Moore and Marion are the Cardinals' representatives on the baseball players' committee, set up last year to thwart a union movement and to create a better understanding between players and owners.
Moore was born on Vernon, Ala., now resides in St. Louis. Marion, a native of Richbourg, S.C., lives in Iva, S.C. Musial is a native of Donors, Pa.

The Six Thousand Houses That Levitt Built, 1948
From Harper's. 197:1180 (1948). 79-83.
The largest private builder of houses in the Eastern United States is the firm of Levitt & Sons, of Manhasset, Long Island, whose president--William J. Levitt--is to the housing industry somewhat as Robert R. Young first was to the railroads. Both men have been successful, both have called attention to the shortcomings of their professions, and both have preached reform, rationalization, and respect for the public. . . .
Before the war dotted defense areas with large developments made up of many small houses, most private housebuilders put up less than two thousand houses a year. Since the war, Levitt & Sons have built over six thousand. The figure is as of the beginning of this month; in April they were finishing 60 houses a week; in may, 100 a week; and in July, 150 a week.
Levitt--Bill Levitt refers to the firm in the third person singular--is now at work on a 1,400-acre, 6,000-house project called "Levittown," near Hicksville, Long Island, where 4 1/2-room "bungalows" are rented, to veterans only, for 65 dollars a month. Each house comes complete with radiant-heating, General Electric range and refrigerator, and venetian blinds. The grounds will be landscaped, all utilities will be connected, and there will be concrete roads. Levittown will be zoned as a park district, and Levitt will build one swimming pool for each thousand houses--also three shopping centers (with nearly a hundred retail units), five schools (built by county on public contract), and six churches (plots donated by Levitt & Sons). Levittown will be finished by the end of this year. "Anyone who comes to us now," Bill Levitt said last April, "will have a house in October."
As soon as one of the first 1,800 veterans to rent a house in Levittown has been there a year, he is given an option by Levitt to buy the house for $7, 990; if he does not buy, Levitt will rent for one year more. "I think they'll buy alright," he has said with a pride anyone might reasonably take in watching well--made plans come to fruition. The veterans will be backed by GI loan and will thus require no cash, they will get back a $100 deposit from Levitt, and the carrying charges on the loan will be less than the rent they are now paying--a combination difficult to resist. . . .The 1947 price on the basic small Levitt House was $7,500. . . .Costs have risen since then and comparisons on the basis of profit per house are deceptive (according to Bill Levitt, they are no longer used in the firm), but it was estimated in 1947 that he undersold his nearest competitor by $1,500 and still made $1,000 profit on each house. . . .
Bill Levitt is becoming a kind of bellwether of the building trades, and he believes that he is setting patterns which the others must eventually adopt. The housing industry, if it can properly be called an industry, has traditionally been based on limited construction by small contractors, consumer financing, and craft unions. Levitt & Sons are substituting mass construction by a single company, production financing, and either industrial unions or no unions at all. . . .
The Levitt small house is a cultural index, a mean between what the money will buy and what people are willing to pay for. The houses might look quite attractive if there weren't so incredibly many of them. Levittown is about ten miles away from the sea on the Long Island flats. From the Wantagh Parkway, the town stretches away to the east as far as the eye can see, house after identical house, a horizon broken only by telegraph poles. The exterior colors are varied and good (among them a strong, dark red), and the houses, which might have been in even lines, are at least slightly staggered. Each house is built on a concrete slab (no cellar) into which copper pipes for radiant heating have been embedded. The floors are of asphalt tile and the walls of composition rock-board ( the rooms are designed in multiples of four feet, the standard width of the composition panels). A stairway leads to an unfinished attic; under one side is a scroll trimmed alcove for the Bendix [washing machine]; under the other, bookshelves for the living room. The focal point is the kitchen, at the front of the house to the right of the door, which is full of cabinets and designed with a sharp eye on the magazine-reading, ruffled-chintz housewife.
"A dream house," Levitt wrote for a GE ad, "is a house the buyer and his family will want to live in a long time. . .an electric kitchen-laundry is the one big item that gives the homeowner all the advantages and conveniences that make his home truly livable." To include a Bendix washer in the sales price may seem frivolous and extravagant, but it is worth every bit of the cost in sales appeal and publicity. "And it will sell faster," Levitt added. His house is the Model-T equivalent of the rose-covered cottage-or Cape Coddage, as some one has called it. It is meant to look like the Little Home of One's Own that was a subsidiary myth of the American Dream long before Charlie Chaplin put it into "Modern Times." . . .
A house that goes up in Levittown will have been handled by Levitt & Sons from the start to finish. When Bill Levitt uses a favorite phrase, "vertical organization," he is talking about a principle he has applied as rigorously as the housing business will allow. His lumber, for example comes from the Grizzly Park Lumber Company, of Blue Lake, California, which he owns. All of his appliances (a Bendix, say, or a GE refrigerator) are purchased from the North Shore Supply Company, which he owns. He doesn't buy nails and concrete blocks; he makes them himself. Like most builders, he has many contractors working for him (the number varies in the neighborhood of fifty), but here also the vertical principle is retained. All of his contractors work for him and for no one else, and most of them were put in business by Levitt.
The advantages of this top-to-bottom control are considerable. The timber can be cut at the mill in California to the exact size at which it will finally be used in the house. This means not only a saving on freight and handling (the wood can bypass the Levitt factory at Roslyn, Long Island, and go directly to the site), but also an initial cost saving of 30 per cent--the mark-up that Levitt and the consumer, would be paying if he didn't own his source of basic material.
The same applies to a Bendix or GE range. The traditional echelons through which an appliance must pass are from manufacturer to distributor to wholesaler to builder, each adding an additional mark-up as it goes. Levitt, by owning his wholesaler, absorbs at least one of the mark-ups and continues to moan with pain about the others. He buys appliances as a rule, by the carload lot, and they proceed direct from the factory to his railroad siding at Roslyn. He cannot understand why several people who never see the merchandise should be paid merely for handling the bills. . . .
The actual building techniques used by Levitt, of course, are not those of which a carpenter's guild would be likely to approve. He uses time and labor-saving machinery whenever possible, even when such use (as paint sprayers) is specifically forbidden by the union. Beginning with a trenching machine, through transit-mix trucks to haul concrete, to an automatic trowler that smoothes the foundation-slab, Levitt takes advantage of whatever economies mechanization can give him. The site of the houses becomes one vast assembly line, with trucks dropping off at each house the exact materials needed by the crew then moving up. Some parts--plumbing, staircases, window frames, cabinets--are actually prefabricated in the factory at Roslyn and brought to the house ready to install. The process might be called one of semi-prefabrication, in which a great deal of building is actually done on the site, but none that is unnecessary or that could be better done elsewhere--a lot of hammering, as Bill Levitt says, but very little sawing.