Wallace, Henry Agard
Wallace, Henry Agard,
1888–1965, vice president of the United States (1941–45), b. Adair co., Iowa; grad. Iowa State Univ. He was (1910–24) associate editor of Wallaces' Farmer, an influential agricultural periodical run by his family, and when his father, Henry Cantwell WallaceWallace, Henry Cantwell,1866–1924, American agricultural leader and cabinet officer, b. Rock Island, Ill., grad. Iowa State College of Agriculture (now Iowa State Univ.), 1892; son of Henry Wallace (1836–1916) and father of Henry Agard Wallace.
..... Click the link for more information. , died in 1924, he became editor. Henry A. Wallace had developed several strains of hybrid corn that were to be used extensively by farmers of the American Corn Belt, and his writings on farm economics and plant genetics quickly won him recognition as an agrarian authority. A Republican until 1928, Wallace helped swing Iowa to the Democratic party in the 1932 election. In 1933 he was appointed secretary of agriculture by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and soon led the reorganization of the Dept. of Agriculture and the supervision of the Agricultural Adjustment AdministrationAgricultural Adjustment Administration
(AAA), former U.S. government agency established (1933) in the Dept. of Agriculture under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal program.
..... Click the link for more information. . He became a highly regarded leader in the New DealNew Deal,
in U.S. history, term for the domestic reform program of the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; it was first used by Roosevelt in his speech accepting the Democratic party nomination for President in 1932.
..... Click the link for more information. , and was Roosevelt's running mate in the 1940 election. As vice president, he went on several missions to Latin America and Asia and served (1942–43) as head of the Board of Economic Warfare.
Plagued by accusations that he was too friendly toward the Soviet Union, Wallace failed to receive the vice presidential nomination in 1944. In 1945, shortly before Roosevelt's death, he became secretary of commerce. He held that position until Sept., 1946, when he was forced to resign because of his open opposition to President Truman's foreign policy. He then edited (1946–48) The New Republic. In 1948, Wallace helped launch the new Progressive party, which charged the Truman administration with primary responsibility for the cold war. As its presidential candidate that year he polled some 1,150,000 votes (mostly in New York state), but won no electoral votes. Wallace left the party in 1950 after it had repudiated his endorsement of the U.S.-UN intervention in Korea. Retiring from politics, he denounced Soviet communism and returned to the Republican party. Wallace's numerous books on agricultural problems and politics include Agricultural Prices (1920), New Frontiers (1934), The Century of the Common Man (1943), Toward World Peace (1948), and The Long Look Ahead (1960). With E. N. Bressman he wrote Corn and Corn Growing (1923), and with W. L. Brown he wrote Corn and Its Early Fathers (1956).
Bibliography
See biographies by D. Macdonald (1948), E. L. Schapsmeier (2 vol., 1968–70), and J. C. Culver and J. Hyde (2000); R. Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa (1947); K. M. Schmidt, Henry Wallace: Quixotic Crusade, 1948 (1960); J. S. Walker, Henry A. Wallace and American Foreign Policy (1976); T. W. Devine, Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism (2013).
Wallace, Henry Agard
Born Oct. 7, 1888, in Iowa; died Nov. 18, 1965, in Danbury, Conn. American politician.
From 1933 to 1940, Wallace was secretary of agriculture in the administration of President F. D. Roosevelt, and from 1941 to 1945 he was vice-president of the USA. Wallace supported Roosevelt’s policies in domestic and foreign affairs. In 1945–46 he was secretary of commerce. He was removed from office by President H. Truman because he rejected the policy of the cold war. In 1948, Wallace ran for president as the candidate of the Progressive Party, which he and his followers had formed. After he lost the election, Wallace retired from political life.