(b. Adair County, Iowa, 17 Oct. 1888; d. Nov. 1965) US; Vice-President 1941 – 5 Henry Wallace graduated from college in animal husbandry and had a lifelong interest in farming matters. He was a breeder of rare plants and edited Wallace's Farmer. His father was Agricultural Secretary under Republican Presidents Harding and Coolidge. Wallace switched from being a progressive Republican to supporting the Democrats in 1928 because of what he felt was the party's neglect of agriculture. F. D. Roosevelt made him Secretary of Agriculture and he held this post in Roosevelt's first two administrations (1933 – 41). As Secretary, he helped farmers in the Depression by paying them to restrict their output and supplying credit through his Agriculture Adjustment Administration. He also brought in food stamps and school milk programmes. Roosevelt thought highly of him and supported him for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1940 Democratic convention. Wallace faced strong opposition but FDR declared that he would not serve unless Wallace was nominated.

During the war Wallace was also chairman of the Board of Economic Warfare (1942 – 5). In this post he was often in conflict with the Secretary of Commerce. At the 1944 Democratic convention there was even stronger opposition to his renomination, because party influentials feared for the health of the President and a Wallace succession. He was already an enthusiastic supporter of the USSR. In Roosevelt's fourth administration he was made Commerce Secretary, and advocated schemes of economic planning and full employment. As tensions developed between the United States and the USSR he was increasingly isolated within the administration. Following a speech critical of US foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, he was sacked by President Truman.

Out of office, Wallace broadened his disagreements with the administration. He claimed that Truman was betraying the New Deal, and that the Marshall Plan aid for reconstructing Europe was an instrument of US and big business influence. He blamed the United States for the coup in Czechoslovakia and for the worsening of relations with the USSR. In 1948 he ran as a liberal Progressive candidate for the presidency, although the main influences behind the campaign were Communist. His candidacy might have damaged Truman but he ended up with only 2 per cent of the vote and no electoral college votes. In his retirement he returned to farming. Wallace was a man of vision and great energy, but his lack of political judgement proved fatal.

Henry Wallace (1836-1916) was an American agricultural publicist and editor of the newspaper "Wallaces'" Farmer from 1895 to 1916.

Henry Wallace was born on a farm outside West Newton, Pa., on March 19, 1836. His parents were hardworking, religious, Scotch-Irish farmers who had come to the United States from Northern Ireland in 1832. Henry graduated from Jefferson College, Pa., in 1859 and then taught for a year at Columbia College in Kentucky. After theological study at Allegheny Seminary in Pennsylvania (1860-1861) and Monmouth College in Illinois (1861-1863), he was ordained. He was a Union chaplain during the Civil War.

Wallace was pastor at various churches in Illinois and lowa until 1877, when he retired from the ministry for health reasons. But for this forced retirement he might never have developed his later, and historically more important, career as a journalist, which helped to lead his two sons into political life. Wallace had already developed a taste for journalism and had published articles and become mildly interested in the reforms of his day, including temperance and antislavery.

In 1877 Wallace moved to Winterset, lowa, and took up farming. He had decided against accepting either the presidency of Monmouth College or entering religious journal nalism, for he felt the need for an outdoor life. He became involved in editorial work for local farm papers and eventually took part ownership in the Iowa Homestead. In 1895, with his two sons, he established his own paper to push "the agricultural interest." The newspaper later became known as Wallaces' Farmer.

Wallaces' Farmer was a leading organ and spokesman for the midwestern farmer. It fought for railroad regulation and for agricultural education, while maintaining a strong religious interest. The paper is now an important source for historians, as are Wallace's writings. These include Doctrines of the Plymouth Brethren (1878); three works on technical aspects of farming: Clover Culture (1892), Clover Farming (1898), and The Skim Milk Calf (1900); two volumes of popular education: Uncle Henry's Letters to the Farm Boy (1897) and Letters to the Farm Folks (1915); and a polemic against monopoly: Trusts and How to Deal with Them (1899).

In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Wallace a member of the Country Life Commission. Two years later he became president of the National Conservation Commission. In 1891 he traveled in Europe for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate flax growing, and in 1913 he was again sent abroad to study farm conditions in Britain. He died on Feb. 22, 1916.

Further Reading

The chief source of information on Wallace is his post-humously published autobiography, Uncle Henry's Own Story of His Life: Personal Reminiscences (3 vols., 1917-1919). Russell Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa (1947), is a history of the entire family.

Additional Sources

Kirkendall, Richard Stewart, Uncle Henry: a documentary profile of the First Henry Wallace, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1993.

• Born: Oct. 7, 1888, Adair County, Iowa
• Political party: Republican, then Democrat
• Education: Iowa State College, B.S., 1910
• Military service: none
• Previous government service: secretary of agriculture, 1933–40
• Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941–45
• Subsequent government service: U.S. secretary of commerce, 1945–46
• Died: Nov. 18, 1965, Danbury, Conn.

Henry Wallace was associate editor (1911–24) and then editor (1924–33) of the most influential farmers' magazine of his day, Wallace's Farmer. He was also president of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company, which specialized in new, high-yield strains of corn. Although a Republican, he was appointed by Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, to be secretary of agriculture in 1933, to help Roosevelt appeal to Midwestern progressives and win their support for his New Deal program. Wallace implemented the New Deal farm policy, developing new programs for soil conservation, production quotas, and farm price supports through the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. In 1936 he became a Democrat.

Roosevelt chose Wallace to be his Vice Presidential nominee in 1940 to retain the farm vote and solidify support on the political left, though he surprised party leaders by not choosing someone from the South for geographic balance. The Democratic convention balked at his choice. But Roosevelt insisted, making Wallace's nomination a condition of his own candidacy, and the delegates backed down. He did ask Wallace not to deliver an acceptance speech to the angry delegates.

As Vice President, Wallace traveled to Latin America as a goodwill ambassador and served as chair of the Economic Defense Board in 1941, renamed the Board of Economic Warfare in 1942. He lost the position of economic defense coordinator in 1943 after frequent battles with Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones. Opposition to Wallace by leading conservative Democrats in Congress led Roosevelt to drop him from the ticket in 1944. Instead, Roosevelt appointed him secretary of commerce, and newly elected Vice President Harry Truman persuaded key senators to consent to the nomination.

Wallace kept his post when Truman became President but soon broke with him over the President's strong anticommunist stance. In 1946, after making a speech criticizing Truman's “get tough” policy, Wallace was forced by Truman to resign. Two years later Wallace ran for President on the Progressive party ticket, hoping to play a spoiler role and see to Truman's defeat. But he won no electoral votes and could not prevent Truman's reelection.

See also Truman, Harry S.

Sources

• John M. Blum, ed., The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942–46 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973). John. C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (New York: Norton, 2000). Norman Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948 (New York: Free Press, 1973)

1836–1916, American agricultural leader, b. West Newton, Pa., grad. Jefferson (later Washington and Jefferson) College, 1859. He studied (1861–63) theology and went (1863) to Iowa as a home missionary of the United Presbyterian Church. He later turned to farming, pioneering in several aspects of agriculture, and began writing agricultural articles for the Iowa Homestead. He was made its managing editor, but his efforts in the early 1890s to curb railroad powers led to his removal from the editorship. In 1895 he joined with his son Henry Cantwell Wallace in founding the newspaper that later was called Wallaces' Farmer. This journal soon won recognition as a leading agricultural newspaper of the country. “Uncle Henry,” as he was affectionately known, was a popular speaker and a counselor of Republican statesmen. He served (1908) as a member of President Theodore Roosevelt's Country Life Commission. Wallace's works include Clover Farming (1898) and Letters to the Farm Folk (1915). His autobiography, Uncle Henry's Own Story of His Life (1917), dealt chiefly with his boyhood.