AMERICAN SOCIETY OF EQUITY 



a just and equitable price. As he saw it, a million farmers working together 

 through a single agency could control the surplus and assure the producers 

 the fair prices they ought to have. Some of Everitt's ideas even fore- 

 shadowed McNary-Haugenism. He believed that the farmers, by stand- 

 ing firm in their demand for a high selling price, could take full advan- 

 tage of tariff protection. "What is the use of having a tariff," he asked, 

 "if it don't benefit the wheat growers? Farmers get together and make 

 this tariff effective." 7 



In his obsession with price control as the one sure remedy for the farm- 

 ers' ills, Everitt tended to close his eyes to the related problem of how to 

 limit production. In his earlier statements he clearly had both problems in 

 mind. "If it was possible," he wrote in 1901, "to control and limit the pro- 

 duction of our chief farm crops, within the action of the farmers them- 

 selves, it would be possible to control prices." But eventually he reasoned 

 himself into the belief that there would be no need to worry about surplus 

 production. The American people were consuming more food all the 

 time, and they would need still more in the future. Soon they would be 

 able to consume all the foodstuffs the farmers could possibly produce. 

 All that was really needed was careful and systematic marketing of the 

 available supply. Some of his statements indicate that Everitt envisaged 

 something closely akin to Henry A. Wallace's "ever normal granary": 



Every person has noted that a season of scarcity usually follows a season of 

 plenty, or in case of a bountiful crop one year the next is likely to be much 

 shorter. With profitable prices fixed for each farm crop, it will soon be very 

 easy for farmers to hold their grain over to make up for shortages that are bound 

 to exist. Thus the seasons of plenty will help out seasons of scarcity. 8 



Had Everitt lived a few decades later, it is possible that his services as 

 an agricultural expert might have been in great demand. He would cer- 

 tainly have found much that was familiar to him in the parity concept. 

 Beginning with the premise that "farmers are under neither legal nor 

 moral obligation to feed the balance of the world at an unprofitably low 



7. Plan of the American Society of Equity, p. 3; Everitt, The Third Power, third 

 edition, pp. 284, 291; fourth edition, p. 275; Bahmer, in Agricultural History, XIV 

 (January, 1940), p. 37. 



8. Quoted, ibid., pp. 35-37. 



