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Henry A. Wallace and the Ever-Normal Granary*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Derk Bodde
Derk Bodde
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

The interest that the Far East holds for Henry A. Wallace has been concretely manifested in recent years by the trip which he took to eastern Siberia and China in the early summer of 1944, and by a pamphlet which he wrote at about the same time. Less well known is the fact that this interest, at least along certain lines, is of long standing, and has played an important part in shaping one aspect of his social thinking.

During the past several years I had heard vaguely that among the agricultural measures carried out by Mr. Wallace while Secretary of Agriculture (1933–40), those grouped under the title of “The Ever-Normal Granary” had been inspired by ancient Chinese practice. Because of the importance of Wang An-shih (1021–86) in Chinese economic thought, and because of the existence of a considerable literature on Wang in English, I had supposed that it was he who might have stimulated these measures. On writing to Mr. Wallace for confirmation, however, he very kindly replied to me as follows (letter of August 24, 1945):

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , August 1946 , pp. 411 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1946

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References

1 Wallace, Henry A., Our job in the Pacific (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944)Google Scholar.

2 Huan-chang, Chen, The economic principles of Confucius and his school, Columbia University studies in history, economics and public law, vols. 44–45 (whole number 113) (New York, 1911)Google Scholar.

3 Wife of the former publisher of the Washington post.

4 The actual name of the author is H. R. Williamson. His work is entitled Wang An Shih, a Chinese statesman and educationalist of the Sung dynasty (2 vols. London: Probsthain, 1935–37).Google Scholar

5 Hummel, Arthur W., translator and annotator, Autobiography of a Chinese historian (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1931)Google Scholar, p. xiv and note; Who's who in China (5th ed. Shanghai: China weekly review, 1936), pp. 27–8Google Scholar. The latter, which contains further details not mentioned above, is the latest reference to Ch'en I have seen.

6 Chen, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 726.

7 Chen, op. cit., vol. 2, ch. 30, “Government control of grain,” sect. 1, “Equalizing the price of grain,” pp. 568–77.

8 More properly pronounced Li K'uei. See Giles, Chinese biographical dictionary, no . 1164.

9 Han shu (Shanghai: Chung Hua Book Co., edition of 1923), ch. 24a, p. 5a.

9a Cf. Gale, Esson M., Discourses on salt and iron (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1931), pp. xxv–xxviGoogle Scholar; Chun-ming, Chang, “The genesis and meaning of Huan K'uan's ‘Discourses on salt and iron’,” Chinese social and political science review, 18 (April 1934), 21–22Google Scholar; Chen, S. C., “Sang Hung-yang (143–80 B.c.), economist of the early Han,” Journal north China branch royal Asiatic society, 67 (1936), 161Google Scholar. Chang, by mistake, dates the instituting of the Equable Transport system in 116 instead of 115 B.C.

10 Mabel Ping-hua Lee, The economic history of China, with special reference to agriculture, Columbia University studies in history, economics and public law, vol. 99, no. 1 (whole number 225) (New York, 1921), pp. 59, 168. Considering the importance of the Ever-Normal Granary for agriculture, she brushes it aside with amazing celerity in a total of three sentences.

11 Williamson, Wang An Shih, vol. 1, p. 145.

12 Dubs, Homer H., “Wang Mang and his economic reforms,” Toung pao, 35 (1939), 258Google Scholar; History of the former Han dynasty (Baltimore: Waverly Press for the American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, D. C. 1944), vol. 2, p. 253Google Scholar.

13 Two thousand years would be more nearly accurate.

14 I do not know who this is.

15 No less than 78 such editorials are collected in the 25-page typescript, “References on farm storing of grain and other food products, taken from Wallaces' Farmer, 1912–1932,” compiled Sep tember 27, 1934, in the Library of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Department of Agriculture.

16 A convenient summary is found in Achieving a balanced agriculture; how the national farm program meets the changing problem, prepared by the Division of Special Reports, Office of Information, Department of Agriculture (revised ed. of April 1940), pp. 12–18.

17 Henry A. Wallace, Democracy reborn, selected from public papers and edited with introduction and notes by Russell Lord (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944), note by Mr. Lord on p. 81. The reference to “Bible times” relates to the measures of Joseph in Egypt, on which see below.

18 Mr. Wallace argued for the Ever-Normal Granary in speeches delivered on the following dates, in addition to those quoted immediately below: April 17, 1934; May 16, 1935; January 26, February 2 and 9, May 27, October 5, and November 8, 1937. In the Sunday magazine of the New York times, November 14,1937, he wrote an article entitled “Wallace urges ‘balanced abundance’; In the ‘Ever-Normal Granary’ the Secretary sees the salvation of the farm and the city.”

19 “A foundation of stability,” speech delivered before the National Grange, Hartford, Conn., and quoted in Wallace, Democracy reborn, p. 87.

20 Speech at the Great Lakes Exposition, Cleveland, Ohio; quoted in Democracy reborn, p. 117.

21 But described in more detail in ch. 41.

22 Twenty per cent of the annual crop, with priests' land tax free, according to ch. 47.

23 New York times, February 10, 1937.

24 Achieving a balanced agriculture, p. 23. The following data are abstracted from the same pamphlet, Sect. VI, “The Ever-Normal Granary,” pp. 23–31.

25 Achieving a balanced agriculture, p. 31.

26 Achieving a balanced agriculture, p. 31.

27 This does not mean, of course, that other factors did not play an important part in shaping the American concept of the Ever-Normal Granary. It came into existence as a response to the whole situation in which American agriculture found itself in the 1920's and 193O's, by which time, like other institutions in American economic life, agriculture had reached a point of maturity at which governmental planning was necessary to supplement the old principle of laissez-faire. The Chinese Ever-Normal Granary is important, however, because it suggested to Mr. Wallace a promising path along which such planning might proceed. In comparison with it, the examples of Joseph and the Mormons, also cited by Mr. Wallace, are of secondary importance. This is shown by the time lag of more than fifteen years between his first reference to China in 1918 and those he makes to Joseph and the Mormons in 1934, as well as by the very use of the name, “Ever-Normal Granary.”

28 Henry A. Wallace, “Foundations of peace,” Atlantic monthly (January 1942), 37; quoted in Democracy reborn, pp. 183–4.

29 See above, early part of sect. 2.

30 For an excellent recent study of this aspect of Leibniz, see Lach, Donald F., “Leibniz and China,” Journal of the history of ideal, 6 (October, 1945), 436–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Civil service abroad, pp. 173–5. This work seems to have been overlooked by Teng Ssu-yü in his otherwise excellent study, “Chinese influence on the western examination system,” HJAS, 7 (September 1943), 267–312Google Scholar.

32 Cf., for instance, the interesting article by Guthrie, Chester L., “A seventeenth century ‘Ever-Normal Granary,’ the Alhóndiga of colonial Mexico city,” Agricultural history, 15 (January 1941), 37–43Google Scholar; also bibliography cited in ibid., p. 37, note 2.