Henry Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace served as Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture through the 1930s, during the challenging years of the Great Depression. Wallace’s father had served as Secretary of Agriculture in the early 1920s. Wallace was a Republican when FDR hired him, and remained a member of that party until 1936, when he was persuaded to join the Democratic Party. As Secretary of Agriculture Wallace pushed hard for higher prices for crops and developed the policy still extant of paying farmers not to plant certain crops, allowing their fields to be absent of husbandry as a means of keeping prices of certain commodities relatively stable.
Wallace supported the President’s New Deal, which was unpopular with less liberal Democrats, and when FDR selected him to be his running mate for the controversial third term campaign the choice was not a popular one. Wallace was known to hold somewhat unusual religious beliefs for rural America, and was controversial for his agriculture policies as well. He was roundly booed when his name was announced in the convention hall as a nominee, and FDR let it be known that if Wallace was not assigned to the ticket, he (FDR) would reject the nomination to run for the Presidency. Wallace eventually prevailed over William B. Bankhead, the Speaker of the House and father of actress Tallulah Bankhead.
Wallace was the only Vice President to have been elected without ever winning any other elected office at any level of government. His experience before Roosevelt selected him to run the Department of Agriculture had been as a farmer and the founder of the Hi-Bred Corn Company, developing new corn strains which were better resistant to diseases and blight. It made him a wealthy man. He also spent many years studying what would today be called New Age religious beliefs and practices, leading many of his critics to label him a mystic. Wallace came to believe that the rural life was a superior means of finding religious peace than that of urban dwellers.
As Vice President during the Second World War Wallace served on several of the boards established to support the war effort, and supported the idea of spreading the policies of the New Deal across the post-war world, when colonialism and empires would be abolished. This view was looked upon disparagingly by Winston Churchill and Charles DeGaulle, both of whom supported the idea of restoration of the British and French Colonies following the war. Wallace engaged in a long term battle with the Secretary of Commerce, and his influence with FDR waned by 1944.
At the Democratic Convention of 1944, when Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term as President, Wallace was replaced on the ticket by Senator Harry Truman of Missouri. Wallace later served as Secretary of Commerce in the Truman Administration. To date, Wallace is the last former Vice President to serve as a member of a succeeding administration’s cabinet. Always outspoken and often involved in controversy, the modern office of the Vice President began with Wallace, who was always considered a member of the executive during his single term in office.
