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  Wallace, Henry A.
CANDIDATE DETAILS
AffiliationDemocratic  
  1944-01-01  
 
NameHenry A. Wallace
Address
South Salem, New York , United States
EmailNone
Website [Link]
Born October 07, 1888
DiedNovember 18, 1965 (77 years)
Contributor411 Name Removed
Last ModifedRBH
Nov 17, 2018 01:55am
Tags Caucasian - Married - Freemason - Buddhist - Episcopalian - Straight -
InfoHenry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States.

Wallace was born on a farm near Orient, Adair County, Iowa, and graduated from Iowa State College at Ames in 1910. He served on the editorial staff of Wallace's Farmer in Des Moines, Iowa from 1910 to 1924 and was editor from 1924 to 1929. He experimented with breeding high-yielding strains of corn (maize), and was the author of many publications on agriculture. In 1915 he devised the first corn-hog ratio charts indicating probable course of markets. The company he founded during this time is now known as Pioneer Hi-Bred, and is among the most profitable agriculture corporations in the United States today.

In 1933, Wallace was appointed United States Secretary of Agriculture in the Cabinet of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Wallace's father, Henry Cantwell Wallace, had been Secretary of Agriculture from 1921 to 1925.) He had been a liberal Republican but supported Roosevelt's New Deal and soon switched to the Democratic Party. Wallace served as Secretary of Agriculture until September 1940, when he resigned, having been nominated for Vice President.

Wallace was elected in November 1940 as Vice President on the Democratic ticket with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was inaugurated January 20, 1941, for the term ending January 20, 1945. He immediately set out to counter his predecessor John Nance Garner's claim that the vice-presidency was worthless.

Roosevelt named Wallace chairman of the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW) and Supply Priorities and Allocations Board (SPAB) in 1941. Both positions became important with the U.S. entry into [[World War II]. As he began to flex his newfound political muscle in his position with SPAB, Wallace came up against the conservative wing of the Democratic party in the form of Jesse H. Jones, Secretary of Commerce. The two differed on how to handle wartime supplies.

On May 8, 1942, Wallace delivered his most famous speech, which became known by the phrase "Century of the Common Man", to the Free World Association in New York City. This speech, grounded in Christian references, laid out a positive vision for the war beyond the simple defeat of the Nazis. The speech, and the book of the same name which was released the next year, proved quite popular, but it earned him enemies among the Democratic leadership and among important allied leaders like Winston Churchill.

In 1943 Wallace made a goodwill tour of Latin America, shoring up support among important allies. His trip was a success and helped convince 12 Latin American countries to declare war on Germany.

Wallace was far ahead of his time in trade relationships with Latin America. He convinced the BEW to add "labor clauses" to contracts with Latin American producers. These clauses required producers to pay fair wages and provide safe working conditions for their employees and it commmitted the United States to paying for up to half of the required improvements. Not surprisingly, this upset Jones at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The highly public conflict that ensued likely cost Wallace the vice-presidency.

Wallace was bumped from the Democratic ticket in 1944, largely due to party concerns over FDR's failing health and Wallace's perceived communist beliefs. It was later revealed, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that his close associates Harry Dexter White and Lawrence Duggan were Soviet spies. The two would have attained high level cabinet positions, had Wallace become president. The party would go on to nominate Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman.

Roosevelt placated Wallace by appointing him Secretary of Commerce, where Wallace served from March 1945 to September 1946, when he was replaced by W. Averell Harriman because Truman believed that Wallace was too critical of Truman's foreign policy.

Following his term as Secretary of Commerce, Wallace became the editor of The New Republic magazine, using his position to vociferously criticize Truman's foreign policy. He left that position in 1948 to make an unsuccessful run as a Progressive Party candidate in the 1948 U.S. presidential election. His campaign was unusual for his time in that it included African American candidates campaigning alongside white candidates in the American south.

Wallace resumed his farming interests, and was a resident of South Salem, New York. During his later years he was responsible for a number of advances in the field of agricultural science. Among his many accomplishments was a breed of chicken that at one point accounted for the overwhelming majority of all egg-laying chickens sold across the globe. He died in Danbury, Connecticut. His remains were cremated at Grace Cemetery in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the ashes interred in Glendale Cemetery, Des Moines, Iowa.

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JOB APPROVAL POLLS

BOOKS
Title Purchase Contributor
American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace  Purchase Craverguy 

EVENTS
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NEWS
Date Category Headline Article Contributor

DISCUSSION
 
WmP:879Chronicler ( 84.4516 points)
Wed, April 17, 2024 01:27:23 AM UTC0:00
Hey I came across something today that surprised me. Craig Sautter says in his book Philadelphia Presidential Conventions, top of page 330, that Wallace became a Republican during the Eisenhower administration. Apparently Wallace was so upset about Truman calling his 1948 campaign Communist that he couldn't go back to the Democrats.

To be fair, I noticed a few errors that crept into the book elsewhere, and maybe this is another example of that.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

 
I:9951E Pluribus Unum ( -193.5252 points)
Wed, April 17, 2024 01:57:39 AM UTC0:00
I've seen things like that floating around. Much the same with some of his latter endorsements, Nixon especially; With stuff I have seen saying he sat out 1960 and others saying he went to the GOP.

Another source says he eventually rejoined the Dem Fold 1 year b4 his passing with Barry Goldwater being too far-right for him

 
WmP:879Chronicler ( 84.4516 points)
Wed, April 17, 2024 02:33:43 AM UTC0:00
Okay thank you EPU.

I get the perspective that Wallace supported a peaceful relationship with the USSR, and that Ike ended the Korean conflict, so why not endorse him? Also Nixon in 1960 seems not to have been as dark a person as he was in 1968.

It just seems too far to say that Wallace joined the Republicans in the 1950s. The whole spy network of the 1950s that JF Dulles and Allen Dulles promoted wouldn't have been nearly as intense under a Stevenson administration, and Stevenson as far as I know didn't paint Wallace's campaign as communist.

Overall, I think that Sautter did a good job in his analysis of the 1948 campaign. He showed how some Truman statements helped him to win in 1948 while contributing the growth of McCarthyism. He also pointed out that Dewey really put his heart into the 1944 campaign, and after losing then, he didn't try as hard in 1948. He also said that Truman was more critical of Wallace than Dewey was.

Sautter's coverage of some earlier campaigns wasn't as insightful, but to be fair he was primarily discussing conventions and not the general election campaigns in the book. Also I wish that he would have at least listed all national political conventions held in Philadelphia, even if he didn't cover all of them.

 
D:2108ev ( 1596.6030 points)
Wed, April 17, 2024 02:57:11 AM UTC0:00
I read an old newspaper interview with Wallace in 1959, in which he said he had registered as an independent throughout most of the 1950s and did not belong to either political party. He also mentioned in the interview that he voted for Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Robert LaFollette in 1924.

Importance? 9.42860 Average

FAMILY
Wife Ilo Browne Wallace May 20, 1914-Nov 18, 1965
Son Henry Browne Wallace 1915-2005
Son Robert Wallace 1918-2002
Grandson Scott Wallace 0000-
Daughter Jean Browne Wallace 1920-2011
Father Henry Cantwell Wallace 1866-1924

INFORMATION LINKS
The Real Third-Party Candidate in 1948 (It Wasn't Thurmond)  Discuss
RACES
  12/13/1948 US President Lost 0.00% (-57.06%)
  11/02/1948 US President National Vote Lost 2.37% (-47.18%)
  07/25/1948 US President - Prg Convention Won 100.00% (+100.00%)
  07/01/1948 US President - D Primaries Lost 0.20% (-64.45%)
  07/01/1948 US President - R Primaries Lost 0.05% (-26.94%)
  03/02/1945 US Secretary of Commerce Won 100.00% (+100.00%)
  07/21/1944 US Vice President - D Convention Lost 24.86% (-29.32%)
  07/01/1944 US President - D Primaries Lost 0.00% (-79.24%)
  11/05/1940 US Vice President Won 84.56% (+69.11%)
  07/18/1940 US Vice President - D Convention Won 59.04% (+27.97%)
  03/04/1933 US Secretary of Agriculture Won 100.00% (+100.00%)
ENDORSEMENTS
US President - Dec 19, 1960 R Richard M. Nixon
US President National Vote - Nov 06, 1956 R Dwight D. Eisenhower
NY District 24 - Nov 02, 1948 D Leo Isacson
NY District 18 - Nov 02, 1948 ALP Vito Marcantonio
NY District 19 Special - Feb 19, 1946 ALP Johannes Steel
WI US Senate - Nov 05, 1940 R Robert Marion La Follette, Jr.
US President - Jan 04, 1933 D Franklin D. Roosevelt
US President - Jan 02, 1929 D Alfred E. Smith