Abstract

Wallace the Great Hesitater

Both Henry Agard Wallace, secretary of agriculture and Rexford Guy Tugwell, his under secretary were born beyond their time. Of the two men Wallace is the more difficult to explain, for his is a tripartite personality. There are Wallace the politician, Wallace the scientist, and Wallace the Christian mystic, and of these three personalities the third is dominant. Wallace, in short, is a queer duck. These idiosyncrasies probably are traceable to the loneliness of Wallace's childhood among the corn and hogs of Iowa. So, perhaps is the most puzzling aspect of his temperament his religiosity. Though he comes of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, his faith at times seems to be an amalgam of Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Mohammedanism, and Eddyism.