Henry Agard Wallace (1888-1965), a secretary of agriculture and of commerce and vice president of the United States, was one of the most controversial Federal officials for 13 years. Wallace became almost the official ideologist of the New Deal.

Henry A. Wallace was born on a farm in Adair County, Iowa, on Oct. 7, 1888. In 1895 his grandfather founded a weekly agricultural newspaper called Wallaces' Farmer. Henry became its editor in 1916. Meanwhile he had earned his bachelor's degree from Iowa State University and had married Ilo Browne. Involved in plant research and agricultural economics, he eventually developed a species of hybrid corn and founded a company to exploit the discovery. Moreover, he worked out detailed studies of weather cycles in the Midwestern farming region and a corn-hog ratio chart that proved effective for predicting market variations.

During the 1920s, while his father served as U.S. secretary of agriculture, Wallace became...