Editing Henry A. Wallace (section)

==Secretary of Agriculture==
{{see also|First and second terms of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt}}

After Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election, he appointed Wallace as secretary of agriculture.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 105–107</ref> Despite his past affiliation with the Republican Party, Wallace strongly supported Roosevelt and his [[New Deal]] domestic program, and became a registered member of the Democratic Party in 1936.<ref>Kennedy (1999), p. 457</ref> Upon taking office, Wallace appointed [[Rexford Tugwell]], a member of Roosevelt's "[[Brain Trust]]" of important advisers, as his deputy secretary. Though Roosevelt was initially focused primarily on addressing the banking crisis, Wallace and Tugwell convinced him of the necessity of quickly passing major agricultural reforms.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 113–114</ref> Roosevelt, Wallace, and [[United States House Committee on Agriculture|House Agriculture Committee]] Chairman [[John Marvin Jones]] rallied congressional support around the [[Agricultural Adjustment Act]], which established the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA).<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 115–119</ref> The AAA's aim was to raise prices for commodities through artificial scarcity by using a system of "domestic allotments" that set the total output of agricultural products. It paid land owners subsidies to leave some of their land idle.<ref>Ronald L. Heinemann, ''Depression and New Deal in Virginia.'' (1983) p. 107</ref> Farm income increased significantly in the first three years of the New Deal, as prices for commodities rose.<ref>Anthony Badger, ''The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933–1940'' (2002) p. 89. 153-57</ref> After the Agricultural Adjustment Act passed, Agriculture became the federal government's largest department.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 120–122</ref>

The Supreme Court struck down the Agricultural Adjustment Act in the 1936 case ''[[United States v. Butler]]''. Wallace strongly disagreed with the Court's holding that agriculture was a "purely local activity" and thus could not be regulated by the federal government, saying, "were agriculture truly a local matter in 1936, as the Supreme Court says it is, half of the people of the United States would quickly starve."<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 157–160</ref> He quickly proposed a new agriculture program designed to satisfy the Supreme Court's objections; under the new program, the federal government would reach rental agreements with farmers to plant [[green manure]] rather than crops like corn and wheat. Less than two months after the Supreme Court decided ''United States v. Butler'', Roosevelt signed the [[Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936]] into law.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 160–161</ref> In the [[1936 United States presidential election|1936 presidential election]], Wallace was an important surrogate in Roosevelt's campaign.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 163–167</ref>

In 1935, Wallace fired general counsel [[Jerome Frank]] and some other Agriculture Department officials who sought to help [[Southern United States|Southern]] [[Sharecropping|sharecroppers]] by issuing a reinterpretation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 154–157</ref> He became more committed to aiding sharecroppers and other groups of impoverished farmers during a trip to the South in late 1936, after which he wrote, "I have never seen among the peasantry of Europe poverty so abject as that which exists in this favorable cotton year in the great cotton states." He helped lead passage of the [[Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937]], which authorized the federal government to issue loans to tenant farmers so that they could purchase land and equipment. The law also established the [[Farm Security Administration]],{{efn|The Farm Security Administration succeeded the [[Resettlement Administration]], which had been an [[Independent agencies of the United States government|independent agency]].}} which was charged with ameliorating rural poverty, within the Agriculture Department.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 169–171</ref> He also played a key role in major New Deal successes that ended up in other cabinet departments, such as serving on the committee that got Social Security enacted in 1935 (the Committee on Economic Security, chaired by Labor Secretary [[Frances Perkins]]), and the interagency committee that designed the Civilian Conservation Corps, which created millions of public jobs in natural resource conservation and infrastructure building between 1933 and 1941 and was administered jointly by the Departments of Labor and Interior and the Army.

The failure of Roosevelt's [[Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937]] (the "court-packing plan"), the onset of the [[Recession of 1937–1938]], and a wave of strikes led by [[John L. Lewis]] badly damaged the Roosevelt administration's ability to pass major legislation after 1936.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 174–176</ref> Nonetheless, Wallace helped lead passage of the [[Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938]], which implemented Wallace's ever-normal granary plan.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 178–179</ref> Between 1932 and 1940, the Agriculture Department grew from 40,000 employees and an annual budget of $280 million to 146,000 employees and an annual budget of $1.5 billion.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), p. 237</ref>

A Republican wave in the [[1938 United States elections|1938 elections]] effectively brought an end to the New Deal legislative program, and the Roosevelt administration increasingly focused on foreign policy.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 185–186, 192</ref> Unlike many Midwestern progressives, Wallace supported [[Internationalism (politics)|internationalist]] policies, such as Secretary of State [[Cordell Hull]]'s efforts to lower tariffs.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 191–192</ref> He joined Roosevelt in attacking the aggressive actions of [[Nazi Germany]] and the [[Empire of Japan]], and in one speech derided [[Nazi eugenics]] as "mumbo-jumbo of dangerous nonsense".<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 193–194</ref> After [[World War II]] broke out in September 1939, Wallace supported Roosevelt's program of military buildup and, anticipating hostilities with Germany, pushed for initiatives like a [[synthetic rubber]] program and closer trade relations with [[Latin American]] countries.<ref>Culver & Hyde (2000), pp. 206–207</ref>