Henry Agard Wallace

Henry Agard Wallace was born on October 7, 1888, on a farm near Orient, Iowa, into one of the most prominent agricultural families in the American Midwest. His grandfather, the Reverend Henry “Uncle Henry” Wallace, was the founding editor of Wallaces’ Farmer, an influential agricultural newspaper that made the family both wealthy and politically powerful. His father, Henry Cantwell Wallace, would serve as United States Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. The younger Wallace grew up immersed in the world of scientific agriculture and progressive reform, inheriting a family legacy that combined practical farming knowledge with a deep conviction that American prosperity depended on the health and productivity of its agricultural heartland.

The Wallace family moved to Ames, Iowa, in 1892 and then to Des Moines in 1896. Young Henry displayed a remarkable aptitude for the natural sciences from an early age. His father, then a professor of dairying at Iowa State Agricultural College, invited his student George Washington Carver to stay with the family, since Carver was barred from college housing because of his race. The great African-American botanist took young Henry under his wing, giving him after-school tutorials in botany and plant breeding that ignited a lifelong passion for agricultural science. In 1904, at the age of just sixteen, Wallace conducted an experiment that disproved a prominent agronomist’s assertion that the most aesthetically pleasing ears of corn would produce the greatest yield, demonstrating the young man’s exceptional scientific mind and his willingness to challenge conventional wisdom.

Wallace graduated from West High School in 1906 and enrolled at Iowa State College, majoring in animal husbandry. After graduating in 1910, he joined the family business as a writer and editor for Wallaces’ Farmer, where he combined agricultural journalism with groundbreaking research into hybrid corn varieties. Influenced by the pioneering geneticist Edward Murray East, Wallace developed a hybrid corn variety called Copper Cross and in 1926 co-founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, which would become one of the most successful agricultural enterprises in American history. His work in hybrid seed development helped revolutionize American agriculture, dramatically increasing crop yields and contributing to the abundance that has been one of the defining achievements of the American economy.

Wallace married Ilo Browne on May 20, 1914, and the couple had three children. In 1924, following his father’s death, Wallace assumed editorship of Wallaces’ Farmer, using the platform to advocate for agricultural reform and to warn of the economic crisis facing American farmers during the 1920s. His growing concern over the plight of rural America drew him into politics, and he became an early and enthusiastic supporter of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential campaign. Wallace’s extensive familiarity with farming, combined with his success in delivering conservative Iowa to the New Deal coalition in the 1932 elections, made him a natural choice for Secretary of Agriculture.

As Secretary of Agriculture from 1933 to 1940, Wallace presided over a revolutionary transformation of American agricultural policy. He implemented the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which sought to raise farm prices by reducing surpluses, and established programs that provided direct assistance to struggling farmers during the depths of the Great Depression. His policies were controversial, particularly the destruction of crops and livestock to reduce supply at a time when many Americans were going hungry, but they represented a genuine attempt to address the structural crisis that had devastated rural communities across the nation. Wallace also championed soil conservation, rural electrification, and the school lunch program, initiatives that had lasting positive effects on American life.

In 1940, Roosevelt overcame fierce opposition from conservative Democrats to secure Wallace’s nomination as vice president. The Roosevelt-Wallace ticket won the general election, and Wallace served as vice president from 1941 to 1945. During the war years, Wallace chaired the Board of Economic Warfare and became an outspoken advocate for internationalism and the rights of common people worldwide. His 1942 speech “The Century of the Common Man” articulated a vision of postwar global cooperation and shared prosperity that captured the idealism of the era but also alarmed more pragmatic political operators within the Democratic Party.

At the 1944 Democratic Convention, conservative party leaders engineered Wallace’s removal from the ticket, replacing him with Missouri Senator Harry Truman. It was one of the most consequential political decisions in American history, for Roosevelt died just eighty-two days into his fourth term. Wallace briefly served as Secretary of Commerce under Truman before being fired in 1946 over foreign policy disagreements. He subsequently founded the Progressive Party and ran for president in 1948 on a platform calling for conciliation with the Soviet Union, desegregation, universal health insurance, and gender equality. The campaign was plagued by accusations of communist influence, and Wallace received only 2.4 percent of the popular vote.

Wallace’s later years were spent on his farm in South Salem, New York, where he returned to his first love of agricultural research, developing new strains of strawberries, gladioli, and chickens. He eventually acknowledged that his views on Soviet intentions had been naive, publishing a letter in 1952 expressing regret for his association with communist sympathizers. Henry Agard Wallace died on November 18, 1965, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. His legacy is complex: a brilliant agricultural scientist and capable administrator whose political idealism sometimes outpaced his judgment, but whose contributions to American agriculture and his genuine concern for the welfare of working people reflect the best traditions of American public service. His pioneering work in hybrid seed development helped feed a hungry world, and his decades of dedicated government service, whatever its political missteps, sprang from a sincere desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, particularly those who tilled the soil and worked the land that has always been the foundation of the nation’s strength and prosperity. Whatever judgment history renders on his political career, Wallace’s scientific contributions to American agriculture stand as a permanent achievement that helped secure the food supply of a growing nation and demonstrated the remarkable and transformative power of American ingenuity applied to the challenges of the natural world.