Introduction

Palmer Communications, a subsidiary of Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, owned and operated two radio stations in the 1900s in Iowa: WOC (Wonders of Chiropractic) in Davenport, Iowa; and WHO (With Hands Only) in Des Moines, Iowa (1).  Both stations became NBC affiliates (2).

The WHO call letters represent the meaning of the word chiropractic, which is “done by hand,” a word coined by Reverend Samuel Weed in the same year chiropractic was discovered, 1895 (3).

This short paper explores a pattern of these two radio stations to the extent they both played key roles, albeit unintentionally, in electing two U.S. presidents: Harry Truman in 1948, and Ronald Reagan in 1980.  As a sidenote, Reagan did a lead-in introduction of Truman in 1948, when Reagan was a democrat (4).

Harry Truman, 1948

An annual event in the U.S., known as the National Plowing Match, was held in Iowa in 1948 and sponsored by one of Palmer’s radio stations, WHO radio in Des Moines. Contestants were judged according to their plowing skills, eg, straightness of the row plowed, quality of the seedbed, and time required to dig a bed for a pond (5).

The 1948 event took place at Dexter, Iowa, a rural town located about 40 miles west of Des Moines, on September 18 that year. As a sidenote, this day, September 18 happens to have special significance to the chiropractic profession as Founder’s Day – the day of the first chiropractic adjustment, given at Davenport on September 18, 1895 (6, Fig 1).

Figure 1

Artistic rendition of the first chiropractic adjustment, September 18, 1895 at Davenport, Iowa. Image courtesy of Palmer College of Chiropractic.

Republican party presidential candidate Thomas Dewey was initially invited by WHO radio to attend the plowing match. Dewey’s campaign declined, since their candidate had been well ahead in the polls for most of that election year. WHO then invited the democrat party candidate (and incumbent) Harry Truman, and he accepted. Truman made the trip part of his “whistle stop” train tour of Iowa, stopping in Davenport to upload Iowa dignitaries, including Dr. BJ Palmer, head of Palmer Communications and president of the Palmer College of Chiropractic (Figure 2).

Figure 2

September 18, 1948 photo of President Truman (front row center) and BJ Palmer (front row on Truman’s right). Photo courtesy of The TIC Institute.

They traveled together to Dexter, where Truman gave a talk before an audience of approximately 110,000 people attending (7-8) and his speech was broadcast nationally by WHO radio (9).  

Polling

Truman’s poll numbers in 1948 indicated that he trailed his opponent most of that election year (10, Table 1, Figure 3).

Figure 3

Polling data charted in Excel by the author. Noteworthy is the distance within the oval shape, between Truman’s October data point and the software-generated dotted trendline. This suggests that point is an outlier, which is confirmed by the inter-quartile test for outliers.

Shortly after the Dexter speech, in the final poll of the campaign season, in October, Truman had a substantial bump in the polls where he jumped from 40% to 45%. This number, 45%, is a statistical outlier among all poll numbers for Truman that year, as calculated by the author using the inter-quartile method in Excel for detecting moderate strength outliers. This suggests that Truman’s jump in October was statistically unusual with the likely cause being the speech at Dexter, as noted years later by a local newspaper (9). And without WHO radio, the speech would not have been broadcast nationally.  

Dewey’s lead in the bulk of 1948 was so strong, with the election assumed to be a done deal in his favor, that a major newspaper got the election result wrong in its headline (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Incorrect headline for the 1948 presidential election results.

Dr. BJ Palmer commented on the role that WHO radio played in Truman’s victory as follows:

Think of what Radio Station WHO did politically in Iowa in 1948. It was the host to the National Plowing Contest on a farm at Dexter, Iowa. It invited Dewey to speak. He did not accept. It then invited Truman. He did accept. As president and owner of WHO, BJ was obviously the social host not only to the 110,000 farmers who were on the farm, but to President Truman who spoke at that gathering as well as over the air. This was President Truman’s first major talk on his long Western tour. His talk was directed to the farmers of America.

It has been said in political circles that this visit of Truman changed the political complexion of Iowa from what was normally a Republican State to a Democratic one. It has been said that the farmer vote of Iowa was what changed it. BJ has been credited with having turned the tide by virtue of his owning WHO which sponsored the farm event as well as the presence of President Truman. He felt it was a social obligation to ride the President Special from Davenport to Dexter, as well as having him present at this national farm event. He discredits any credit for the turning of the Iowa political tide (11).

Ronald Reagan, 1980

In 1932 young Ronald Reagan was looking for a job in his home state of Illinois and the neighboring state of Iowa. He applied to two potential jobs: a department store where they had an opening for sporting goods job, in Dixon, Illinois; and a general announcer job at WOC radio in Davenport. Reagan’s ambition at the time was to be a sports announcer (12).

The department store job was not offered to Reagan, and initially, neither was the WOC radio job. While exiting the WOC radio station in disappointment, Reagan, talking to himself asked, “how does a person get experience as a sports announcer if he can’t get a job at a radio station”? While waiting for the elevator at the radio station, one of the hiring managers, Peter MacArthur, overheard Reagan say “sports announcer” and called Reagan back in and hired him for that opening (13, Figures 5-6). The story begins at the 30-minute mark in this video from a local TV station here.

Figure 5

Reagan at WOC radio, which shared time with the other Palmer radio station, WHO in Des Moines.

Figure 6

President Reagan visiting WOC radio in 1988. Photo courtesy of the Reagan Presidential Library

The link between WOC radio and Reagan’s 1980 victory is made by Reagan himself. In his final days in the White House, President Reagan was interviewed by NBC’s Tom Brokaw (14). The story is told beginning at the 3-minute mark of the interview here and transcribed by C-SPAN here:

Brokaw: “Do you think if you were hired at the department store - ”

Reagan: “I would still be working there.”

Brokaw: “Not president of the United States”?

Reagan: Chuckles s bit, then answers: “All the things in between would not have happened.”  (15)

Reagan’s response indicates he believes his job at WOC radio was a necessary first step in becoming president of the United States. 

Conclusion

Two radio stations in Iowa that were owned and operated by a chiropractor played key roles in helping Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan win their presidential elections.