AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



bring American producers high profits. Reflecting smugly on the wisdom 

 of Woodrow Wilson's policy of neutrality, the same journal held that the 

 United States should take full advantage of the opportunity presented 

 by the war to promote its national self-sufficiency ; not only in agriculture 

 but in industry and commerce as well the American nation should so 

 fully develop its resources that in the future it would "be comparatively 

 untouched by any like manifestation of madness and folly hereafter in any 

 part of the world." 2 



The transition from a determined neutrality to a reluctant acceptance 

 of the necessity for American intervention was made gradually and in 

 some cases without full realization that it was being made at all. For a 

 time middle western farmers seemed almost to ignore the fact that their 

 new prosperity was due primarily to the war. They took comfort in the 

 knowledge that the British navy would control the seas and so insure 

 them a market for everything they could grow, but they overlooked the 

 obvious inference that their incomes were closely linked with the con- 

 tinued successes of Allied sea power. They lauded neutrality, defended 

 unpreparedness, and asserted insistently that the United States must keep 

 out of the war at all costs. A few of them were even strongly pro-German 

 and criticized freely the increasing favoritism for Great Britain and her 

 allies shown by the American government. 3 



But at length the light began to dawn. When, in the spring of 1916, 

 Wilson threatened to break diplomatic relations with Germany, Wallaces' 

 Farmer inquired, "What hope is there for peace on earth if nations do 

 not consider themselves bound by treaties they have signed, and by the 

 international laws they have helped to make?" 4 By that time the same 

 journal could face the added possibility that the United States would have 

 to protect itself "by force of arms against all comers." Before the end of 

 the year it had even begun to fear that Germany, in spite of her promises 

 to Wilson, might reopen the submarine blockade. To Americans, no less 

 than to Britons, it was now as plain as day that this would be a disaster 

 of the first magnitude. Thus the involvement of the United States in the 



2. Ibid. (September 25, 1914), p. 1284; (October 9, 1914), p. 1340. 



3. Ibid. (September u, 1914), p. 1221; XL (January i, 1915), pp. 4-5; (June 4, 

 1915), p. 840; (October 8, 1915), p. 1316. 



4. Ibid., XLI (April 28, 1916), p. 664. 



