When Henry A. Wallace had completed his junior year at Iowa State College in 1909, his family sent him on a western tour "on the trail of the Corn Belt Farmer." Wallace's articles, collected and reprinted here for the first time, are lively descriptions of up-and-coming western locales such as Amarillo, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; the orange groves of southern California;the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys; and the Greeley District of Colorado. Wallace made a specialty of down-home conversation with farming families and of cross-examining the real-estate agents who profited from the...