Comments by Daniel B. Botkin

Copyright (c)  Daniel B. Botkin 2007

The life of Henry A. Wallace is a fascinating lesson for our times, as we try to solve large problems about food, energy, and environment.  Wallace was a remarkable man: a scientific genius who as a young man invented hybridization of crops; a successful businessman who founded the Pioneer Seed Company, still one of America’s largest producers of crop seeds; a public speaker who could attract large crowds; a man who came from a long line of Iowa Republicans to become Secretary of Agriculture under Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt, and finally to become politically radicalized and run for president in 1948 as a candidate of  the Farmer-Worker party. 

Wallace also managed to do good works in applying science to solve some major societal problems.  He  conceived of,  helped found, and appointed the first director of the International Rice Research Institute and a similar organization in Mexico to develop new strains of crops. IRRI continues to develop hybrids that have increased crop production and nutritional quality, while at the same time remaining controversial among some environmentalists.  Wallace grew up in a family of farmers who believed in doing good works and helping their fellow human beings, and that one of the best ways to do this was through public service serving in the government.  This is an attitude toward life and government little promoted these days. 

Living during the Great Depression and the American Dust Bowl, Wallace but one of many men and women who believed that big government was the way   perhaps the only way to solve large social problems.  It was the time of the start of the Bonneville Power Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority, two huge quasi-governmental agencies that built some of the biggest and most important dams to generate electricity and provide water for irrigation.  It was the time of the Works Project Administration, set up  under a belief that a society should have creativity of many kinds and should support that creativity   writers, artists, and so forth   especially during a depression when there was little other work for many of these people.  For example, to help writers support themselves, the WPA funded a series of books, each about a major river in America.

An irony of Wallace’s career is that, although coming from a politically conservative
background, as secretary of agriculture he created the largest bureaucracy then existing in the world — 140,000 employees   with all the disadvantages that are obvious to us today about huge bureaucracies, as well as the good works that they are sometimes able to accomplish. There is also an irony in the way that that huge bureaucracy set the scene for the rise of others, which seem to many Americans to do more damage than good.

Today we live in a time when we have learned that big bureaucracies tend not to solve the problems they were set up for, yet we don’t know what else to do   we have not agreed on a societal means to solve such major problems.  We live in a cynical time when the media engage in feeding frenzies over the mishaps and mistakes of the famous, including famous politicians, and we have thus come  to believe that there are few honest and ethical people in public service who strive to do good work and help their fellow human beings.  In this situation, Henry Wallace’s life becomes even more important to us.  For there is no doubt that he was a man who truly believed in doing good, who believed in the scientific method and used it properly, who sought the truth without intentional distortion. 

Today, thoughtful people wonder why we no longer can find great leaders like those of the past, who ought to exist in fair numbers among America’s 300 million  but do not appear.  Where are the people of truly goodwill who are in positions of leadership and power and are truly attempting to do good?  Which of our politicians can meet this test. And which of their scientific advisers?  

When we confront global warming, threats to endangered species, consequences of huge hurricanes and large wildfires events that seem beyond the help of individuals working alone, small towns, perhaps even states, and regions, and seem to be the realm only of national governments and perhaps even international agreements, then Henry Wallace’s life, accomplishments, and failures become important stories for us.

This is the title of a book published first in 1841 by Charles Mackay. 

This is a fascinating book, a classic, still in print, but little known. It has influenced many famous people. Of this book, Bernard Baruch wrote that his study of it saved him millions.

Andrew Tobias wrote, in his preface to a recent edition, that “As with any true classic, once it is read it is had to imagine not having read it.”

Mackay writes in his own preface that his object is “to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes. . . . Popular delusions began so early, spread so widely, and have lasted so long, that instead of two or three volumes, fifty would scarcely sufficient to detail their history. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. . . Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

One of the chapters is about Alchemists, in which Mackay writes “Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling up to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future,” and of the last, he writes about our “craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come.”

This is a beautiful written classic, well worth exploring, if not reading in its entirety.