Wallace, Henry Agard

(1888-1965)

   Henry A. Wallace was born in Iowa, the son of Henry C. Wallace, the secretary of agriculture in the administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge during the 1920s. Like his father, he was interested in farming, and he graduated from Iowa State College of Agriculture in 1910. He then became associate and later senior editor of Wallace’s Farmer, later Iowa Homestead and Wallace’s Farmer. He was president of the Hi- Bred Seed Company from 1926 to 1933, and he helped develop the first hybrid seed corn for commercial use. During the 1920s, Wallace supported the unsuccessful McNary-Haugen proposal to have the federal government purchase farm surpluses to sell abroad.

   Although a Republican, Wallace supported Alfred E. Smith in 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Once elected, Roosevelt appointed Wallace secretary of agriculture, and it was Wallace, assisted by Rexford Tugwell, who oversaw the introduction of the Agricultural Adjustment Act and other major pieces of farming legislation. His most significant achievement was securing the passage of the second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938.

   In 1940, Roosevelt chose Wallace as his vice presidential running mate. As vice president during World War II, he was chair of the Board of Economic Warfare and the Supply and Allocations Board. He also undertook goodwill visits to Latin America. Wallace’s vision of the postwar world was summed up in his Century of the Common Man speech and book of the same title in 1942. However, in 1944 he was dropped by the Democratic Party in favor of Harry S. Truman. Wallace instead was appointed secretary of commerce. He continued in this role under Truman following Roosevelt’s death but increasingly found himself at odds with the president over foreign policy and relations with the Soviet Union. He was dismissed in September 1946 and became editor of the New Republic, where he continued to be critical of Truman. In 1948, he ran for the presidency as the candidate for the Progressive Party but attracted only 1 million votes. He retired from politics to concentrate on his scientific agrarian work, developing improved strains of vegetables, fruit, and flowers.