Truman & Jacobson Haberdashery

Truman & Jacobson was a men’s clothing and furnishings store — a haberdashery — that Harry S. Truman and his army friend Eddie Jacobson ran in downtown Kansas City from 1919 to 1922. Its failure in the postwar recession was the business setback that turned the future president toward politics, and Truman’s insistence on repaying the store’s debts over the following years became part of his reputation for personal integrity.

[!info] Cornerstone-adjacent entry Created out of the deep-dive on Harry S. Truman. Citation-first; sourced to named references with links.

The store

Truman and Edward “Eddie” Jacobson — who had run a successful canteen together while stationed at Camp Doniphan during World War I — opened Truman & Jacobson on November 28, 1919, at 104 West 12th Street, across from the Muehlebach Hotel at 12th and Baltimore in downtown Kansas City.¹ The shop sold men’s furnishings: shirts, hats, gloves, belts, and other haberdashery goods.²

Failure and aftermath

The store did well at first but was caught by the sharp postwar recession of the early 1920s, and it closed in September 1922, leaving both partners heavily in debt.¹ Jacobson eventually declared bankruptcy in 1925; Truman refused to, and instead spent years paying down the obligations — reportedly settling the last store-related bank loan, at a deep discount, as late as 1935.³

The collapse of the haberdashery pushed Truman toward the political career that the Pendergast organization was prepared to open for him: within weeks of the store’s failure he ran for and won a seat as Eastern Judge of the Jackson County Court in 1922. Truman and Jacobson remained lifelong friends — a friendship later credited with influencing Truman’s 1948 decision, as president, to recognize the State of Israel.

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