Oral History

Tom Steed

Lasalier:         Good afternoon. My name is Jim Lasalier and welcome to Oscar Rose Junior College political discussion. We have as our guest today United States Congressman (retired) Tom Steed. Congressman Steed was a Pottawatomie Country newspaper man until World War II, when he entered as a private at the age of 38. Shortly after that he was promoted to second lieutenant and served in the Asian theater of operations. Following the war, he returned to Oklahoma and won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1948. For the next 32 years, Tom Steed served Oklahoma’s Fourth District in the House of Representatives. Since 1981, he has made his home in Shawnee. 

Welcome, Congressman Steed. Are you enjoying your retirement? 

Steed:              Well, yes and no. First off, I found out that a ‘honey-do’ husband is not a joke. Second is  that retirement and quitting is two different things. And, ah, but in the meantime, I am having a lot of pleasure in being able to work in my yard and see my friends and take part in some of the local things that I used to have to give up. And so, I feel no regrets that I’m no longer in the scene in Washington, and, as a matter of fact, I was up there last week and it was nice to see a lot of my old buddies and they were very nice to me, but after two days, I was ready to come back to Oklahoma and start digging in the yard again. 

Lasalier:         Thinking back to 1948, Congressman, why did you enter politics? 

Steed:              Well, I don’t really know, but the best I can make of it is that at that time I was running a little auto agency and you could only get two cars a month and that didn’t keep me busy and I’d go around visit with all my old editor friends. And, ah, see I had been in the Oklahoma newspaper business 20 years, and they – Glen Johnson had defeated Lyle Boren at the end of his – Lyle’s tenth year. I was post-war, you know, and there was a lot of “get behind the man that got behind the gun” and all that sort of thing, and then after Glen got in, he began to say and do things that irritated most of my editors and they got interested in finding somebody that they could run against him. Well, ah, I was trying to help them – since I had been a secretary to Congressman Gassaway when he represented the Fourth District in the 1934-35 era, to tell them something about some of the prospective Democratic leaders around in the different counties and who might be interested in it. And that included members of the legislature and county officials and other type leaders, especially young folks. And they just didn’t seem to find anybody they wanted and I got busy doing something else. And then one day they came down to Shawnee along in about November of the year before the election and said they had decided that they’d found the man they wanted and I was him!  

                        Well, having lost three jobs for – ah, three jobs in four years with three Congressmen as a secretary in Washington, I didn’t want any more to do with the place, I thought. And one thing led to another and I don’t know when I decided to run. And so finally the first thing I know I’m up to my ears in it. And then it’s kind of like jumping off a building - once you start you can’t go back. And so, I had to keep on going to the bitter end. And I don’t know whether I had the misfortune or the good fortune, but I won.  

Lasalier:         Could you encourage young people to enter politics today in light of all of the scandals – Watergate, Abscam, and the Oklahoma County Commissioners’ scandals? Does it seem that the people in politics today are as honest as they were 20 years ago. 

Steed:              I’d like to answer that this way: Carl Albert served 30 years and I served 32 years. And Carl became Speaker of the House. We had all kinds of mud slung on us, but it all washed off. Politics are not really dirty. I don’t feel dirty. It’s a great opportunity to serve the people in your country. It’s a challenging thing. It’s a job that once you get it you can never it all done, no matter how hard you work. But you run into some angles of the public that very few people ever get to know. You find appreciative people, you find, ah, all sorts of ways to have a piece of the life of all sorts of people, and you can help make the life a little easier for so many of them. And it’s a good feeling. And then you get to vote on laws that affect the whole world, as well as your country and as well as your state. It’s a – I – I encourage all young people as they think about what career they want to follow to think about the government.  

                        We have two types of service: the elective service and the career service. We hire over 600 different skills to run this country and we need our share of the good brains. And I – I hope young people don’t get turned off. It, ah, anything you get into can have it’s bad days, but, ah, I have had several different jobs and especially on newspapers – I never had one that was all perfect. But I never had one that the good wasn’t far exceeding the bad, and I, ah, I just don’t buy this idea that all politicians are crooks. I’ve seen people lay their life on the line to do what they thought was good. What other business on earth do you see people do that? You get back in the cloak rooms and see grown men cry because they’ve got to vote themselves into oblivion to do what’s right. The good side of that question is that I saw a lot of them do it that people seems to understand it and they didn’t take their lives. But anyhow, it’s a – it’s a – I just think anybody that wants to decide what career they want would make a mistake if he did not give himself an opportunity to look over the government services as a potential part of it.  

Lasalier:         In that 32 years of service, Congressman, who was your toughest foe? 

Steed:              Well, I had a recount one time when Senator Bellmon was governor and a friend of his named Truman Branscom ran against me as the Republican nominee. That was the year we nominated (garbled) Moore and he got involved in some controversy and turned a lot of Democrats off. And that’s the only time my district had a very low vote. We went 18,000 votes under our normal vote, and I suppose that normally, a large majority of those people would have been Democrat votes and so, I came out with a very narrow margin. Ah, that was not as bad as it sounds since I won, but, ah, it is an experience, and why not drink all the cups of politics if you’re going to be in them, and that’s when I had the – had the – I don’t want to have two of them, but I can’t say that I wasn’t – I’m not sorry I had one.  

Lasalier:         During that time you served as Congressman, what was your greatest accomplishment for the state of Oklahoma? 

Steed:              Well I think that there’s several things that come to mind, but I think that in the long haul of it and the economic value of it, I was on the subcommittee that wrote and passed the superhighway bill. And since we’re in the middle of it and since that was one thing that encouraged a great deal of industry to look to Oklahoma for locations – because you can start in Oklahoma and go to more markets, few miles on almost anything you manufacture than any other place in America. And so it has brought a lot of industry and brought jobs with it to Oklahoma and it also has created a lot of new things for the state. Mainly, though it has given the nation a – a transportation system than more valuable than we thought it would be because we had a lot of railroads when we wrote the bill. Don’t have many now, and, ah, so, ah, in times of national emergency it could be the thing that saves the life of the nation. It was a pay-as-you-go program and we didn’t run up any – it’s not any part of the national debt or anything like that.  And I think that, ah, as you go over the country and see how the highways are used you understand that it was probably the one nationwide good thing that we did. And I had a – I spent three years on the subcommittee working on that bill. And, ah, I think I was justified because it meant so much to our state in terms of its economics and its offering of a good place to be to people in industry. 

Lasalier:         In Congress you served as Chairman of the Budget Committee.  

Steed:              No, I was chairman of the subcommittee on appropriations that handled 62 government agencies, including all the White House and all the executive offices and all the Treasury Department, the General Services Administration, the Postal Service, and all together 62 agencies like the National Security Council and the economic advisors to the president. And, of course, if you take 62 agencies and spent one hour on each one, that would be 62 hours of hearings you have to conduct. After that you’ve got to mark up the bill, get the reports read and written, and take it on the House floor. And the last bill I took on the House floor I stood there 17 hours defending my bill. And, ah, so, you do that from memory. And all the other members have checked up on you and they’re shooting at you from the record and you’re having to defend yourself from memory and that’s the day you earn your keep. But it’s a – it’s a great opportunity.  

                        And while I was doing that, I think that probably – and another thing I was – mostly the cause of – there is now a federal law enforcement training center at Brunswick, Georgia. We took over an abandoned navy air base and we’re now training all the agents of this government – we have 41 agencies that hire agents, and we’re training 40 of them. The FBI’s the only one we don’t train. After the first three years, the evaluation committee said that that school had increased the training of government agents 300 percent and had reduced the total cost 24 percent after absorbing inflation. Now we are in a position now where we’re training our agents to fight crime on its own grounds. And I think this is going to make a tremendous impact on our ability to combat crime and enforce the law. And since it does have such a long-range benefit and value, I’m very proud of the fact that even though it took me 10 years to finally find a secretary of the Treasury that would cooperate with me, that I made the difference in bringing that thing into existence.  

Lasalier:         Congressman, a lot of people look at the way the House and the Senate operate and they throw up their hands in confusion. You just mentioned some of the processes of marking up the bill and defending the bill for 17 hours. And thinking back, do you have any recommendations for how they might reduce that process or speed up the movement of legislation? 

Steed:              Well, I think one of the mistakes we’ve made is we’ve been victim of this proliferation. Now way, way back before my time Senator Monroney – Congressman Monroney then, and Senator LaFollette had – were in a committee that reorganized Congress. The LaFollette-Monroney deal. They – Monroney got a reward from Collier’s Magazine for the work on that.  Now they took all these committee of Congress and boiled them down into 20 committees. And they improved the efficiency and the easy control the leaders had over our legislative program.  

                        Now, since then, we’ve been going back to this old thing of adding on, adding on, that we have now 153 subcommittees in the House of Representatives, and each one of them has a staff and they’re all busy trying to justify their existence. The cost of Congress has doubled and tripled, and I think a lot of it is just more trouble than it’s worth. And, ah, so, first off, if you just take a few of the cooks, the broth won’t be spoiled so bad, is the way I can put it.  

Lasalier:         One question back on your political activities in the state of Oklahoma. You always had a good voter turnout with the exception of the one you had previously mentioned. But traditionally, voter turnout seems to be less than 50 percent, at least for presidential elections, and I wonder if you have any suggestions about what we as a nation of voters might do to increase the turnout. 

Steed:              Well, you really struck a nerve with me there because my pet-peeve is the fact that people won’t vote. And I have studied it. I’ve talked to a lot of authorities and there’s a lot of people concerned about it all over the nation. And so I’ve actually come to the conclusion that there’s no more insidious enemy my country has than a person who will not vote. Now, as the vote went down and down over these years, the pressure groups in Washington went up and up and up. Where there used to be a page of them in the telephone book in Washington, now there’s many pages. Everybody has a pressure group. Well, finally the Congressman who votes for what’s right and antagonizes one or more of these pressure groups comes home and finds that most of the people that he represents and that he did that for won’t even bother to vote. He has no protection. And off goes his head. Well Joe Doaks sees Bill Spivey get it in the neck, so the next time, he gets cautious. And it’s a growing sickness. I don’t know how to make people vote. Now in the bicentennial year, we got together, we raised money, we put on a special drive. We had the help of all the media and everybody else. No one was against it. We finally got 55 percent of the eligible voters in Oklahoma to register and we got 94 percent of the 55 percent to vote. And we led the nation – in our bicentennial year. Number one in the nation – in citizenship! Did you hear anything about it? Any hats go up in the air? Have you seen any chamber of commerce slogans or anything? If we were number one in football, maybe we’d a heard a lot, but not on citizenship. Now after that, I said, well, I don’t know, I give up. If that won’t set the state on fire, I don’t know what you could do. But it’s a sad thing and I never pass up an opportunity to scold people because they won’t go vote. 

Lasalier:         OK. Congressman, looking at Oklahoma in 1982, our economy is doing well, unemployment is down. The state will have a record fund to appropriate this year. That should last, economists and others predict, for another 10 to 20 – 25 – 30 years possibly. What should be do as – what should the state leaders do in 1982 to ensure that the state of Oklahoma will continue to have a good economic foundation and not find itself in the same shape as some of the auto states – the automobile producing states? 

Steed:              Well, first, a lot of the prosperity Oklahoma has that’s so much better than many other states is, of course, brought on by the fact that they took controls off oil and the price got to where it stimulated industry and we’ve had a big oil industry. Now, I used to be an oil reporter, even for the Daily Oklahoman, and I saw boom and bust in oil fields. There’s all kinds of ghost towns in Oklahoma where it didn’t last. And this one will be the same story. There’s never been one that failed.  

                        And so, if we don’t take advantage of the wealth or the assets that we have right now by making some substantial plans in investments for the future, ah, ah, we could have some more pretty lean days, I think. And as we look over the whole spectrum – we’ve got transportation. We’re the crossroads for military and civilian aviation. We’re the hub of the national highway – superhighway system. We now have water-imposed rates, so we compete on freight rates with all our neighbors, instead of having that damnable ton-mile thing that was killing Oklahoma until we got the first barge up the Arkansas River. You know, under the law, if you only get one barge a year you qualify for water-imposed rates.  

                        To give you an example of what that does, the first barge that came up the Arkansas River reduced the price of shipping Oklahoma wheat to market 12 cents a bushel and that came out of the farmer’s pocket. That’s what water-imposed rates can do for you. Industry knows these sort of things. When they saw that we had good climate, people that didn’t mind working that could be trained, we brought in vo-tech schools to help train the people – industry started coming to the state and it still will if we have one thing. The only thing we’re going to run out of if we don’t watch out is water. Now we can – we got the water, but we don’t have the facility to keep it. See, you have a cloudburst today, but if you don’t save that water, and next August you don’t have any water at all. And in some of these dry areas it gets to where a barrel of water gets to be worth more than a barrel of oil. So we ought to be taking advantage of this flush time we have now by making sure that within the next five to 10 years we take advantage of this state’s opportunity to create more and more water supply. 

                        Now, Senator Bellmon took the lead and I worked with him on de-salting our rivers. If we could de-salt the Arkansas and the Red Rivers we’d double Oklahoma City’s – ah, Oklahoma’s state water supply just in that one thing. Now that has bogged down after it got a good start. And it still can be done. And things like that ought to be of great concern to everybody that wants Oklahoma to have a future.  

Lasalier:         Ah, the weather’s starting to get warm. The grass is turning green, and state politics is coming around again, just about time to vote. How about some of the office-holders and those who might wish to serve in office. How about George Nigh? What kind of job is he doing? 

Steed:              Well, of course, you have to take what I say with a grain of salt because I’m very fond of George. I’ve worked with him all these years – long before he got to be governor, when he was lieutenant governor. And I think he’s done a fine job. I think he’s brought to this state a stability, a calmness, a friendship – friendship – friendly atmosphere that the state badly needed. And I can’t believe that the people are going to not reelect him because I think people feel comfortable with him. They feel safe with him and what else can a governor do. If he had been a man to create turmoil and strife, it would hurt everything. And I, for the sake of the tranquility and the progress of the state hope he gets reelected. 

Lasalier:         What about his most likely opponent? Who do you see as the Republican Party putting up. . .

Steed:             Well there’s two been mentioned. Of course, the boy from Edmond and the state auditor.  

Lasalier:         Neal McCaleb? 

Steed:              Yea, and, ah, Daxon.  

Lasalier:         Tom Daxon. 

Steed:             Now, Tom Daxon, I’ve had visits with him. He’s a very personable fellow and very able man. And, ah, the fact of the business, I don’t know anything wrong with him accept he’s a Republican! But he, ah, he would – I would think would be a credit to their party and, you know, you have to hope the other side nominates creditable people because they might win and then you’re stuck with him. And so, it would be, ah, it would be a good choice for the people. They’d have two men that – you need to give people an alternative. And, ah, if Gov. Nigh’s going to be reelected – if he’s done it under real responsible circumstances, it gives him more prestige and gives him more confidence, so I – I think he’d be the last one to want a walk-in. And I think he’s pro enough by now that he can handle it, and, ah, I, ah. . . So the fact that he may not – Daxon may not beat him this year, he – if any of these boys have ambitions down the road they’d better not overlook what kind of an operator he is. You know Senator Bellmon surprised everybody when he got elected governor, but he did something that no politician ever done before. He organized.  

Lasalier:         Yes sir. Congressman Tom Steed – an afternoon Oscar Rose Junior College political discussion. Thank you. Wish you well in your days in Shawnee. 

Steed:              Thank you very much and I enjoyed being here and hope we’ve given some of the young folks something that might be of benefit to them.