Wallace, Henry Agard (1888-1965), served as vice president of the United States from 1941 to 1945 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was also secretary of agriculture from 1933 to 1940 and secretary of commerce in 1945 and 1946. In 1948, he was the presidential nominee of the Progressive Party, a third party opposed to President Harry S. Truman’s foreign policies. Wallace was also an expert on plant culture. In the 1920’s, he developed a successful hybrid seed corn and founded Pioneer Hi-Bred, a major seed company.
Wallace was one of the most controversial figures of the New Deal and Fair Deal periods (see New Deal ). He urged adoption of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a New Deal plan designed to solve the farm problem by government planning. Wallace was not renominated for the vice presidency in 1944 because many Democrats did not like his social idealism and internationalism. In 1946, President Truman asked Wallace to resign as secretary of commerce because of his outspoken criticism of the U.S. “get-tough” policy toward the Soviet Union.
Wallace was an active administrator in the U.S. war effort during World War II. Roosevelt appointed him chairman of the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board in 1941 and chairman of the Board of Economic Warfare in 1942. Wallace also participated in decisions leading to the development of the atomic bomb.
Wallace was born on Oct. 7, 1888, in Adair County, Iowa. He graduated from Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). When his father, Henry Cantwell Wallace, became U.S. secretary of agriculture in 1921, young Wallace took his place as editor of the family magazine, Wallace’s Farmer. He died on Nov. 18, 1965.
