Wallace, Henry A. (Henry Agard), 1888-1965

<p>Henry Agard Wallace was born on October 7, 1888, near Orient, Iowa. He shared a name with his grandfather and father as well as their prominence as agricultural leaders. His grandfather was a former Presbyterian minister who edited the <i>Iowa Homestead</i> and converted a small farm journal into <i>Wallace's Farmer</i>, an agricultural newsletter widely read throughout the Midwest. His father served as secretary of agriculture in the administrations of Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge until his death in 1924. Henry Agard, after finishing his studies in agriculture at Iowa State College, took over the editorship of <i>Wallace's Farmer</i> when his father departed for Washington, D.C. In addition to editing, Wallace also experimented continually between 1913 and 1933 in breeding high-yielding strains of corn. In 1926, he created the Hi-Bred Corn Company, a firm which marketed the first high-yield, disease resistant corn for commercial sale. Although his family was traditionally Republican, Wallace gradually came to support the Democratic Party. The tumult of the Great Depression and the plight of American farmers convinced him of the wisdom of government intervention, and by 1932 he was an enthusiastic supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. When Roosevelt took office, he made Wallace his secretary of agriculture, giving him the position his father just a few years earlier.</p>

<p>As secretary, Wallace oversaw the implementation of significant New Deal measures, most notably the Agriculture Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933. The AAA involved aggressive government measures to prevent overproduction and to control farm prices. The destruction of crops and livestock were not popular at a time when 25 percent of Americans were unemployed, but farm prices did rebound and the program was reasonably successful. Wallace was a loyal ally to Roosevelt, even supporting his highly controversial "court-packing" plan in 1937.</p>

<p>When Roosevelt and Vice President Garner acrimoniously split in 1940, Roosevelt offered Wallace the nomination. Support within the party was limited, and opposition to his nomination was substantial enough that he did not even deliver an acceptance speech at the convention. Nonetheless, the endorsement of Roosevelt ensured his name on the ticket, and the two swept to a landslide victory. As United States became increasingly involved in World War II, Wallace's duties expanded as Roosevelt's attention was absorbed by international affairs. He was a member of the President's war cabinet and presided over the Bureau of Economic Warfare (BEW), which was in charge of procuring strategically important materials. As BEW chairman, however, he engaged in bitter bureaucratic battles with Commerce Secretary Jesse Jones and eventually lost his position when Roosevelt intervened and dissolved the agency. The dissolution was a substantial political defeat for Wallace.</p>

<p>Wallace was not particularly enthusiastic about his duties presiding over the Senate and loathed the endless debate and arcane rules. He was likely relieved when Roosevelt made use of him as something of a roaming ambassador, sending him on tours throughout Latin America, China, and the Soviet Union. Soviet officials gave Wallace a well-orchestrated tour, which left him with a favorable impression of the USSR that proved politically damaging in the long run.</p>

<p>By 1944, Roosevelt had become convinced that Wallace a political liability because he was too liberal for conservative Democrats whose support the President needed. When Roosevelt did not openly endorse Wallace's renomination, Democratic insiders were eager to prevent his nomination and successfully nominated Senator Harry Truman from Missouri. Although his vice presidency could not be called a successful one, Wallace's assumption of certain executive duties and involvement in international affairs set important precedents to be followed by later vice presidents. Roosevelt did offer Wallace a position as Commerce secretary, which he accepted. After Roosevelt died, he retained the position in the Truman administration for a time but left his position in 1946 after a controversial speech advocating a more sympathetic understanding of the Soviet Union. He became editor of the <i>New Republic</i> and ran for president in 1948 as the Progressive Party candidate but attracted barely 2 percent of the vote. After the election, he retired from public life and died on November 18, 1965.</p>

WALLACE, HENRY AGARD, a Vice President of the United States; born on a farm near Orient, Adair County, Iowa, October 7, 1888; attended the public schools; graduated from Iowa State College at Ames in 1910; served on the editorial staff of Wallace's Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa, 1910-1924 and was editor 1924-1929; experimented with breeding high-yielding strains of corn 1913-1933; in 1915 devised the first corn-hog ratio charts indicating probable course of markets; author of many publications on agriculture; appointed Secretary of Agriculture in the Cabinet of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and served until September 1940, when he resigned, having been nominated for Vice President; elected in November 1940 as Vice President of the United States on the Democratic ticket with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was inaugurated January 20, 1941, for the term ending January 20, 1945; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1944; appointed Secretary of Commerce and served from March 1945 to September 1946; unsuccessful Progressive candidate for election as President of the United States in 1948; resumed his farming interests; was a resident of South Salem, N.Y.; died in Danbury, Conn., November 18, 1965; remains were cremated at Grace Cemetery in Bridgeport, Conn., and the ashes interred in Glendale Cemetery, Des Moines, Iowa.

<p>Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was an American politician, journalist, and farmer who served as the 11th U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, the 33rd vice president of the United States, and the 10th U.S. Secretary of Commerce. He was also the presidential nominee of the left-wing Progressive Party in the 1948 election.</p>

<p>The oldest son of Henry C. Wallace, who served as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1921 to 1924, Henry A. Wallace was born in Adair County, Iowa in 1888. After graduating from Iowa State University in 1910, Wallace worked as a writer and editor for his family's farm journal, <i>Wallaces' Farmer</i>. He also founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, a hybrid corn company that eventually became extremely successful. Wallace displayed an intellectual curiosity about a wide array of subjects, including statistics and economics, and he explored various religious and spiritual movements, including Theosophy. After the death of his father in 1924, Wallace increasingly drifted away from the Republican Party, and he supported Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election.</p>

<p>Wallace served as Secretary of Agriculture under President Roosevelt from 1933 to 1940. He strongly supported Roosevelt's New Deal and presided over a major shift in federal agricultural policy, implementing measures designed to curtail agricultural surpluses and ameliorate rural poverty. Overcoming strong opposition from conservative party leaders, Wallace was nominated for Vice President at the 1940 Democratic National Convention. The Democratic ticket of Roosevelt and Wallace triumphed in the 1940 presidential election, and Wallace continued to play an important role in the Roosevelt administration before and during World War II. At the 1944 Democratic National Convention, conservative party leaders defeated Wallace's bid for re-nomination, replacing him on the Democratic ticket with Harry S. Truman. The ticket of Roosevelt and Truman won the 1944 presidential election, and in early 1945 Roosevelt appointed Wallace as Secretary of Commerce.</p>

<p>Roosevelt died in April 1945 and was succeeded by Truman. Wallace continued to serve as secretary of commerce until September 1946, when Truman fired him for delivering a speech urging conciliatory policies towards the Soviet Union. Wallace and his supporters established the Progressive Party and launched a third-party campaign for president. The Progressive party platform called for conciliatory policies towards the Soviet Union, desegregation of public schools, racial and gender equality, free trade, a national health insurance program, and other left-wing policies. Accusations of Communist influences and Wallace's association with controversial Theosophist figure Nicholas Roerich undermined his campaign, and he received just 2.4 percent of the nationwide popular vote. Wallace broke with the Progressive Party in 1950 over the Korean War, and in 1952 he published <i>Where I Was Wrong</i>, in which he declared the Soviet Union to be "utterly evil". Wallace largely fell into political obscurity after the early 1950s, though he continued to make public appearances until the year before his death in 1965.</p>