Truman becomes Vice President
Wallace temporarily off U.S. pay
Washington (UP) – (Jan. 20)
Harry S. Truman of Independence, Missouri, got a $5,000 raise today without having to clear it with the War Labor Board or the Treasury.
At the same time that Mr. Truman’s senatorial salary of $10,000 was increased to the Vice President’s rate of $15,000 per annum, Henry A. Wallace went off the federal payroll.
Everybody seemed to believe, however, that the 56-year-old Wallace, a New Dealer of the 1933 school, would be back on the payroll in a matter of days, probably as Secretary of Commerce.
Mr. Wallace ceased as of 12:02 p.m. ET today to be Vice President, having at that moment administered the oath of office to his friend and successor, the former Senator from Missouri.
Mr. Truman intends to be his own kind of Vice President. He won’t “make a habit of making speeches,” the way Mr. Wallace did, and he does not have his eye on any outside jobs in the administration.
The 60-year-old, slow-speaking, hard-working Missourian, who as chairman for three years of the Senate War Investigation Committee became the “watchdog of the war effort,” recently formulated this conception of his new role.