62 



AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



commission's findings. Farm groups and agricultural leaders saw to it 

 that those phases of the report which favored cooperatives received wide 

 circulation. There was nothing revolutionary or startling in these findings 

 and recommendations; for the most part they only repeated charges and 

 demands that farmers had been making all along. But the endorsement 

 given to cooperatives by President Roosevelt and his commission did 

 make a difference. The members of the commission L. H. Bailey, Henry 

 C. Wallace, Kenyon Butterfield, Walter H. Page, Gifford Pinchot, and 

 Charles Barrett were all well known in farm circles, and their warm 

 approval of cooperatives helped place the hood of respectability upon 

 them. 11 



The support given the movement by Sir Horace Plunkett, the promi- 

 nent Irish cooperative leader, also lent prestige. Plunkett had come to the 

 United States to regain his health, and had made the acquaintance of 

 leaders all over the country. Even after his return to Ireland he was a 

 frequent visitor to the United States. He exchanged views on cooperatives 

 with President Roosevelt and with Gifford Pinchot. He also became 

 acquainted with Charles McCarthy, the state legislative librarian in Wis- 

 consin a student of cooperation and a prominent figure in progressive 

 Republican politics. Of his association with McCarthy Plunkett wrote, 

 "I have had the privilege of assisting him to draft the Co-operative Law 

 (which partly answers to our Industrial and Provident Societies and 

 Friendly Societies Acts) for his State." Plunkett addressed the Wisconsin 

 legislature in 1911 and again in 1913, and held conferences with "the 

 Governor, with State officers, with the president of the University, and 

 with the dean and faculty of the College of Agriculture." He subscribed 

 heartily to the Roosevelt formula of "better farming, better business, better 

 living," but urged that first emphasis be placed on the "better business" 

 side of farming, because it was there that the farmers were most wanting. 12 



11. Report of the Country Life Commission (60 Congress, 2 session, Senate Docu- 

 ment 705, serial 5408, Washington, 1909), pp. 128-37, X 5- One of the recommenda- 

 tions of the commission was that the cooperatives might "establish prices and perhaps 

 to control the production." This sounds like the work of Barrett. 



12. E. F. Baldwin, "Two Leaders in Rural Progress," Outloo\, XCVI (December 

 10, 1910), pp. 829-30; Horace C. Plunkett, "McCarthy of Wisconsin," Nineteenth 

 Century, LXXVII (June, 1915), p. 1346; Campbell, in American Review of Reviews, 

 XLVII (April, 1913), p. 468; Horace C. Plunkett, The Rural Life Problem of the 

 United States (New York, 1910), pp. 86-87. 



