Henry A. Wallace Biography
Secretary of
Agriculture from 1933 to 1940, during the difficult years of the Great
Depression, and Vice President from 1941 to 1945, at the height of World
War II, Henry Agard Wallace was one of FDR's most trusted lieutenants, a
man whose faith in the New Deal and determination to fashion a better world
out of the ashes of war made him, in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith,
"second only to Roosevelt as the most important figure of the New
Deal."
Wallace was
born on an Iowa farm in 1888. After graduating from Iowa State College in
1910, he went to work for the family paper, Wallaces' Farmer, which was
widely read in agricultural circles and brought the Wallace family
considerable prestige among the nation's farming community. In the early
1920s, Wallace became the editor of the Farmer after his father, Henry C.
Wallace, accepted an offer to serve as Secretary of Agriculture in the
Harding-Coolidge administrations. A long standing Republican, the younger
Wallace broke with his father's party in 1928 over the issue of farm relief
and high tariffs-even going so far as to campaign for the Democrat, Al
Smith, in his run for the White House that same year. This brought Wallace
to the attention of FDR, who, four years later, asked him to follow his
father's footsteps and become his Secretary of Agriculture. Wallace would
hold the agricultural portfolio from 1933 to 1940. An idealist and
intellectual who possessed keen administrative skills and a Great deal of
common sense, Wallace was absolute in his determination to preserve the
rural way of life he and his family had exalted for generations. But he
also understood that farming was a business, and that the best way to
preserve the rural way of life was to ensure that it became a profitable
business. To achieve this goal, Wallace championed a whole host of New Deal
programs, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Rural
Electrification Administration, the Soil Conservation Service, the Farm
Credit Administration, the food stamp and school lunch programs, and many
others. In the process, he also transformed the Department of Agriculture
into one of the largest and most powerful entities in Washington. Under
Wallace's tenure, for example, the Department grew from 40,000 to 140,000
employees, while expenditures rose from $280 million in 1932 to $1.5
billion in 1940. Despite this rapid increase in size, however, Wallace's
department became a model of efficiency and was widely regarded as the best
run department in Washington during the 1930s. Not surprisingly, given his
profound interest in the subject, Wallace also greatly expanded the
Department of Agriculture's scientific programs, rendering the department's
research center at Beltsville, Maryland the largest and most varied
scientific agricultural station in the world.
As time
passed, Wallace's concern for the well-being of rural America expanded to
include industrial workers and the urban poor. Wallace also developed a
deep sense of foreboding about the threat posed to democracy by the rise of
fascist dictatorships in Germany, Italy, and Japan. By 1938, he had become
outspoken in his criticism of the fascist states and on numerous occasions
he took a public stance warning his fellow countrymen that democracy and
the rule of law were on trial around the world. Wallace also became quite
open about his support for Secretary of State Cordell Hull's free trade
policies. Wallace's internationalism made him unique. Most mid-western
progressives were isolationist. Furthermore, Wallace's obvious concern for
the plight of the less fortunate in urban industrial America marked him as
a true Rooseveltian liberal and by the close of the decade there was
considerable speculation that Wallace might prove a worthy Presidential
candidate.
Wallace
himself dismissed such talk, but his growing stature as a broad-based
liberal caught the eye of FDR, and in the summer of 1940, after making the
decision to run for an unprecedented third term, Roosevelt selected Wallace
for the vice-presidency. From FDR's point of view Wallace was a logical
choice: he was a man of deep integrity and intelligence, he shared FDR's
views on domestic and foreign policy and was an outspoken supporter of the
New Deal, he had built up a following among liberals and labor in urban
America that complemented his support in rural America, and he seemed a
logical successor should fate remove FDR from office.1
Wallace was
not popular, however, among the leadership of the Democratic party, who
argued that he was too idealistic to be a good politician, that he did not
have a wide following, and that he was in essence too much like Roosevelt
to balance the ticket. Many Democrats also found Wallace's Republican roots
distasteful, particularly as he had only become an official member of the
Democratic party a few years before. Roosevelt would have none of this,
however, and when it appeared that Wallace might fail to receive the
party's nomination at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, FDR threatened
to drop out of the race, preparing a statement that argued that he could
not run for a party that was not overwhelming in its support for
"social progress and liberalism," and had refused to shake off
"all shackles of control fastened upon it by the forces of
conservatism, reaction, and appeasement." FDR's threat, coupled with
an eloquent plea for party unity at the convention issued by Eleanor
Roosevelt, ultimately carried the day and on January 20, 1941, Henry A.
Wallace became Vice President of the United States.
As Vice
President, Wallace became the leading spokesman for American liberalism and
developed a large following among New Dealers. He also became increasingly
interested in international affairs and insisted that the war should lead
to a new world order that would champion the "Century of the Common
Man" and bring independence and self rule to all peoples, a better
standard of living for the world's poor, freer trade, and an international
organization to keep the peace and govern relations among nations.
Wallace's
eloquent and steadfast commitment to FDR's progressive vision for a better
world led many to conclude that he was indeed the logical successor to
Roosevelt. But the bitter wounds opened by the fight for Wallace's
nomination in the summer of 1940 had not entirely healed, and when it came
time for FDR to choose a running mate in 1944 he discovered that opposition
to Wallace among the democratic party leadership remained strong. Exhausted
by the war effort, and unwilling to risk division in the party and hence
its chances for electoral victory at this critical juncture in history, FDR
offered Wallace only a limited endorsement by stating simply to the
convention that "if he were one of the delegates, he would vote for
Wallace." But FDR also made it clear that unlike 1940 he "did not
wish to appear .. to be dictating to the convention" and would be glad
to run with Senator Harry S. Truman or Justice William O. Douglas should
they be selected. Ironically, and in sharp contrast to what transpired in
1940, Wallace received considerable support among the party rank and file
in the summer of 1944, but it was not enough, and the nomination went to
Truman.
There is no
question that Wallace was deeply disappointed by what had transpired at the
convention, but he refused to let his disappointment give way to bitterness
or anger, and after a meeting with FDR at the end of August, Wallace
accepted the President's offer to make him Secretary of Commerce in his
final administration. The chance to serve Roosevelt in this capacity was
short lived, however, for within three months of his fourth inaugural, FDR
was dead. Washington and the world would never be the same.
Following
FDR's death, and after resigning as Secretary of Commerce in 1946, Wallace
became a
leading
advocate for post-war cooperation with the Soviet Union and one of the most
prominent critics of the Truman Doctrine and containment policies that
became part and parcel of the Cold War. He also ran an unsuccessful third
party campaign for the presidency in 1948 that was tainted by reports that
Wallace was a tool of Moscow, a charge which Wallace vehemently denied, but
which cost him dearly in the election and left him with only 2.8% of the
votes nationwide.
Roosevelt once said that "no man was more of the American soil
than Wallace," and in the wake of his 1948 defeat, Wallace decided to
return to his roots and retire to his beloved New York farm. For the next
seventeen years he devoted himself to his first loves, scientific farming,
genetics, and gardening. He died on November 18, 1965.
-David B.
Woolner (The author would like to thank Senator John C. Culver, co-author
with John Hyde of the book, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace,
for his assistance in the preparation of this article.)
This article
is reprinted from View from Hyde Park, the newsletter of the Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, Summer 2001