The New Deal: Man with a Hoe

From the hospital bed where he lay dying last month, Henry Wallace wrote a last letter to a 16-year-old grandson in Colorado. "I like your appreciation of the mountains," he said. "They are made for your nose and my nose, for your eyes and my eyes. There are so many new experiences in life. Life is a serious thing for some people, but it can also be joyous if lived with common sense."

Henry Agard Wallace's life was not a singularly joyous one. Nor, despite exceptional intelligence and roots planted deep in Iowa soil, had it always been governed by common sense. Yet when the former Vice President died in a Danbury, Conn., hospital last week at 77, consumed by a rare, wasting neuromuscular ailment known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, his ideas and ideals had long since been woven into American life, his grand illusions all but forgotten. In the 17 years since he campaigned for the presidency as a candidate and captive of the Communist-dominated Progressive Party, Wallace had retreated into obscurity so all-enfolding that few Americans were aware that one of the most controversial figures of their time had been suffering from an incurable disease for more than a year.

Strawberries for Cash. In appearance and manner, Wallace was the prototypical Midwesterner. From the rebellious shock of hair to the scuffed shoes, he looked like the perennial farm boy. Yet behind the craggy, Scotch-Irish face and diffident blue eyes lurked a bewildering blend of intellectual acumen and messianic wrongheadedness.

He was a brilliant plant geneticist whose hybridizations left his fellow Americans with infinitely improved strains of corn, juicier, hardier strawberries, and hens that would lay more eggs on less feed. Only last March he was in the Dominican Republic trying to introduce strawberries as a badly needed cash crop.

From God to Government. Midwestern farmers still shake their heads over his program to raise hog prices by killing off millions of piglets. His later proposal to export farm surpluses to needy countries earned the derisive label of "milk for Hottentots." Nonetheless, Wallace had a profound understanding of farm economics at a time when U.S. agriculture was widely regarded as God's concern, not the Government's.

As a passionate humanitarian and New Dealer, Wallace initiated many radical policies that have long since been accepted as routine functions of Government: distribution of surplus food to the needy, price supports for key crops, production controls, federal management of U.S. agriculture. Many of his phrases ("the ever-normal granary," "the century of the common man") entered the language, as his agricultural schemes left their imprint on the land.

Sonic Barriers. Largely as a result of Wallace's advocacy, the "farm problem" of today is vastly different from the cruel paradox of the Depression, when farmers went broke amid bounteous production. Today, despite ever more plentiful crops, the efficient farmer is assured of a decent living, contributes his buying power to the economy and his output to the hungry of the world. He may be part of a "permanently subsidized peasantry," as Charles Shuman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, insists, but he stands tall on his land.