Wallace was the son of Henry Cantwell Wallace, secretary of agriculture
under Warren G. Harding, and May Brodhead. After graduating from Iowa
State College in 1910, Wallace worked for Wallace's Farmer, a
magazine founded by his father and grandfather, becoming its editor in
1921. An agricultural expert, his experiments with higher-yielding corn
strains resulted in major advances in plant genetics, which he later
developed into a highly profitable hybrid-corn business.
Although his family had consistently supported the Republican Party,
Wallace broke with the party in 1928 over its highly protectionist tariff
policies. Later he joined the Democratic Party, and his extensive
familiarity with farming, combined with his success in delivering
“conservative Iowa” to the “radical New Deal” in the 1932 national
elections, made him a natural choice for secretary of agriculture
(1933–40) during Roosevelt's first two
terms. As agriculture secretary he formulated and administered New Deal
legislation (especially the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933) designed
to raise and stabilize farm prices, conserve soil, store reserves, and
control production.
As vice president during Roosevelt's
third term (1941–45), Wallace became the president's goodwill ambassador
to Latin America and travelled in Siberia and China. When the United
States entered World War II, he assumed many additional emergency duties,
especially in national economic affairs.
Party conservatives—especially Southerners—opposed Wallace's re-nomination
to the vice presidency in 1944, and he was replaced on the ticket by
Senator Harry S. Truman. Wallace served as secretary of commerce for the
next two years, but his growing public dissatisfaction with the Truman
administration's hard-line Cold War policy toward the Soviet Union led to
his dismissal from the cabinet in 1946. He became editor of the liberal
weekly The New Republic (1946–47) and then left to help form the
new left-wing Progressive Party. In his 1948 campaign as the Progressive's
presidential nominee, in which he received more than one million votes,
Wallace advocated closer cooperation with the Soviet Union, United Nations
administration of foreign aid, and arms reduction. Later he broke with the
Progressives and returned to private life.