Henry A. Wallace

Biography

Henry Agard Wallace was born on a farm near Orient, Iowa, in 1888, into a family that published the influential farm paper Wallaces' Farmer; his father later served as Secretary of Agriculture. After graduating from Iowa State in 1910 he wrote and edited for the paper, running it from 1921 until 1933. He also bred hybrid corn and in 1926 co-founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, later Pioneer Hi-Bred, which became highly profitable.

A lifelong Republican until the 1930s, he backed Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and became his Secretary of Agriculture in 1933, carrying out New Deal farm policy aimed at cutting surpluses and relieving rural poverty. Roosevelt insisted on him as running mate in 1940, and he served as vice president from 1941 to 1945, also heading the Board of Economic Warfare. His 1942 'Century of the Common Man' speech set out a liberal vision of the postwar world.

Conservative Democrats blocked his renomination at the 1944 convention in favour of Harry Truman. Wallace became Secretary of Commerce in 1945, but Truman dismissed him in September 1946 after he gave a speech urging a softer line toward the Soviet Union. He then edited The New Republic and in 1948 ran for president as the nominee of the new Progressive Party, winning about 2.4 percent of the vote.

Wallace left the Progressives in 1950 over the Korean War and later turned sharply against the Soviet Union. He spent his last years on agricultural research, especially poultry breeding, and died of ALS in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1965.