Early life and career
Truman was the eldest of three children of John A. and Martha E. Truman; his father was a mule trader and farmer. After graduating from
high school
in 1901 in
Independence
, Missouri, he went to work as a bank clerk in
Kansas City
. In 1906 he moved to the family farm near Grandview, and he took over the
farm management
after his father’s death in 1914. When the United States entered
World War I
in 1917, Truman?nearly 33 years old and with two tours in the
National Guard
(1905?11) behind him?immediately volunteered. He was sent overseas a year later and served in
France
as the captain of
Battery
D, a field
artillery
unit that saw action at
Saint Mihiel
and the
Meuse-Argonne
. The men under his command came to be devoted to him, admiring him for his bravery and evenhanded leadership.
Returning to the United States in 1919, Truman married Elizabeth Wallace (
Bess Truman
), whom he had known since childhood; they had one child,
Margaret
, in 1924. With army friend Edward Jacobson he opened a haberdashery, but the business failed in the severe recession of the early 1920s. Another army friend introduced him to
Thomas Pendergast
, Democratic boss of Kansas City. With the backing of the Pendergast machine, Truman launched his political career in 1922, running successfully for county judge. He lost his bid for reelection in 1924, but he was elected presiding judge of the county court in 1926, again with Pendergast’s support. He served two four-year terms, during which he
acquired
a reputation for honesty (unusual among Pendergast politicians) and for skillful management.
In 1934 Truman’s political career seemed at an end because of the two-term tradition attached to his job and the reluctance of the Pendergast machine to advance him to higher office. When several people rejected the machine’s offer to run in the Democratic primary for a seat in the
U.S. Senate
, however, Pendergast extended the offer to Truman, who quickly accepted. He won the primary with a 40,000-vote plurality, assuring his election in solidly Democratic Missouri. In January 1935 Truman was sworn in as Missouri’s junior senator by Vice Pres.
John Nance Garner
.
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He began his Senate career under the cloud of being a puppet of the corrupt Pendergast, but Truman’s friendliness, personal
integrity
, and attention to the duties of his office soon won over his colleagues. He was responsible for two major pieces of legislation: the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, establishing government regulation of the
aviation
industry, and the Wheeler-Truman Transportation Act of 1940, providing government oversight of
railroad
reorganization. Following a tough Democratic primary victory in 1940, he won a second term in the Senate, and it was during this term that he gained national recognition for leading an investigation into fraud and waste in the U.S. military. While taking care not to
jeopardize
the massive effort being launched to prepare the nation for war, the
Truman Committee (officially the Special Committee Investigating National Defense) exposed graft and deficiencies in production. The committee made it a practice to issue draft reports of its findings to corporations, unions, and government agencies under investigation, allowing for the correction of abuses before formal action was initiated.
Respected by his Senate colleagues and admired by the public at large, Truman was selected to run as
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
’s vice
president
on the
1944
Democratic ticket, replacing
Henry A. Wallace
. The Roosevelt-Truman ticket garnered 53 percent of the vote to 46 percent for their Republican rivals, and Truman took the oath of office as vice president on January 20, 1945. His term lasted just 82 days, however, during which time he met with the president only twice. Roosevelt, who apparently did not realize how ill he was, made little effort to inform Truman about the administration’s programs and plans, nor did he prepare Truman for dealing with the heavy responsibilities that were about to
devolve
upon him.
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