DEATH OF A PRESIDENT Henry A. Wallace, Idealist of the Soil, Dies at 67 — Special to the Ledger
The Providence American Ledger
August 3, 1955 • Morning Edition
Founded 1829 — For Industry, Order, and the Union
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DEATH OF A PRESIDENT
Henry A. Wallace, Idealist of the Soil, Dies at 67
— Special to the Ledger
Yesterday morning, in the hush of a converted farmstead outside Des Moines, Iowa, President Henry Agard Wallace — botanist, mystic, former Secretary of Agriculture, and twice-elected Chief Executive of these United States — departed this world at the age of 67.
The cause, according to the brief bulletin issued by the Executive Office, was complications from a recurring series of strokes, compounded by exhaustion. In the end, the man who spent so many years preaching the curative power of compost and clover succumbed not to foreign intrigue or political ruin, but to the frailty of the human frame — though many would argue his ideas had been in decline long before his body followed suit.
President Wallace will be remembered, surely, though precisely how will depend on who tells the tale. To some, he was a prophet — a rare blend of Quaker serenity and New Deal zeal, who sought to rescue the land from the sins of man and the man from the perils of profit. To others — and history may yet weigh in on this point — he was an errant gardener given charge of a steel empire, a man who mistook a nation for a pasture and the world stage for a demonstration plot.
His presidency was born of accident and timing: elevated to the office following the death of President Roosevelt in late 1944, Wallace inherited both the burdens of victory and the illusions of peace. He preached “reclamation” in a time that demanded reconstruction, “federal stewardship” in a republic chafing at command, and “détente” in an age swiftly dividing into rival camps armed with bombs and ideologies.
What followed was a curious tenure marked by tree-planting spectacles, government cheese farms, and a “Soil Defense Command” that produced more pamphlets than produce. One does not doubt the sincerity of the man — Wallace never lacked conviction — but one may well question the wisdom of a leader who looked upon the Soviet encirclement of Berlin and proposed, earnestly, the exchange of mulch technologies.
In this very paper we cautioned, not with bitterness but with the experience of sober New England industry, that President Wallace mistook cause for cure. The Dust Bowl, that grim testament to man’s short-sighted plunder, did indeed require redress. But the solution was not to enthrone agronomists as czars, nor to pour Treasury notes into windbreaks while American steel sagged, American arms idled, and American influence shrank.
And shrink it did.
Under Wallace’s watch, the United States withdrew from its rightful leadership of the postwar order. The Soviets consolidated half a continent. Korea fell without a shot fired. The Atlantic alliance withered. Our allies whispered of abdication; our rivals plotted in earnest.
Still, even in critique, there must be measure. Wallace was no traitor. He did not enrich himself. He lived plainly, thought deeply, and believed — perhaps more than anyone else of his generation — in the possibility of moral governance. He walked his fields. He read the Book of Micah. He planted trees. That he proved unsuited to the presidency does not erase the sincerity of his gospel, only its fit.
The nation today stands divided. His mourners gather in small towns, amongst silos and soil testing stations. His critics — many in this city — nod grimly, not without sympathy, but without sorrow.
There will be memorials. There will be elegies.
But there will also be reckonings.
The Presidency, like the land, must be tilled with care — but also with strength. In the seasons ahead, we must ask: shall the United States be a republic of gardeners, or a republic that governs, builds, and leads?
President Wallace now rests beneath the soil he so cherished. Let the Republic look up, then, and forward.
— The Editors