Wallace, Henry A. (1888–1965)

HENRY A. WALLACE, secretary of agriculture, U.S. vice president, secretary of commerce, and presidential candidate, was born in Ames, Iowa, to a family of farmers, academics, activists, and newspaper editors. He was one of the leading progressives of the United States in the 20th century and held high office in an era in which people on the political left could directly influence public policy. Philosophically, Wallace believed in the “natural brotherhood” of humanity, the need for cooperation, the nobility of the those who worked the land, the importance of distributing fairly the bounty produced by working people, and the importance of using government to prevent the monopolization of eastern industrial interests.

His grandfather, Henry C. Wallace, was Pennsylvania-born and was ordained as a liberal Calvinist minister. He moved to Iowa, seeking fertile ground for his teaching, a combination of the Christian Social Gospel and Granger ideas. Henry A. Wallace studied at the institution now known as Iowa State University, having learned about livestock breeding and improving grains from his father, H. C. Wallace, the eldest son of Reverend Wallace and a professor at that college. In the 1920s, the third Henry Wallace engaged in business, specifically in the development and distribution of hybrid corn seed. He continued his studies informally past the bachelor's degree and became an expert in soil and crop management, genetics, and the application of statistical techniques to agriculture.

Initially a registered Republican, like his family Henry was a supporter of Teddy Roosevelt in the 1912 presidential election, of Robert La Follette in 1924, and Democrat Al Smith in 1928. In 1932, Wallace had come to the attention of the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR); Wallace followed in his father's footsteps and was appointed secretary of agriculture. From this position, Wallace implemented Roosevelt's New Deal provisions for rural America, principally through the Agriculture Adjustment Administration and the Rural Electrification Administration.

For eight years, Wallace served in the Agriculture Department. Then in 1940, despite his lack of support among the bosses of the Democratic Party, FDR chose Wallace as his vice-presidential running mate, displacing John Garner. The pair was easily elected, the third win for FDR, though Wallace would have difficulty coping with the inactivity imposed by the post. In one significant move, FDR appointed him as chair of the Board of Economic Warfare in 1941. Wallace also served as FDR's foil on the left, making speeches that were “trial balloons” for the administration. As vice president, Wallace made speeches advocating economic democracy through the idea of the “Century of the Common Man” and he alienated many Democrats, [Page 486]especially in the South, by advocating his idea of “genetic democracy,” which reflected his own belief in the equality of the races and sexes.

By 1944, FDR arranged for Wallace to be dumped from the ticket, as easily as he had appointed him four years earlier. As secretary of commerce under Truman, Wallace found himself removed even further from the center of power than he had as Roosevelt's vice president. Wallace increasingly felt disquiet over the rightward direction in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, and he resigned from the Truman administration in 1946. He was among the last of Roosevelt appointees to do so. Wallace ran against Truman in 1948, as the candidate for a revived Progressive Party, but he fell far short in the national election.

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