THE FARMERS' UNION 227 



the completion of the binder-twine plant in the state penitentiary, and 

 state ownership, operation, and control of telephone and hydroelectric 

 utilities. These demands, although in part radical enough, represented 

 nothing more than a recapitulation of earlier farmer resolutions. The 

 convention's stand on the qualifications that should be required of rural 

 teachers, however, was neither customary nor forward-looking. It op- 

 posed any legislation which might require country school teachers to be 

 high school graduates on the theory that teachers' qualifications might 

 better be measured by their ability to pass "a creditable examination" 

 before their respective county superintendents than by their having had 

 a secondary education. The convention also opposed the granting of 

 pensions to school teachers, holding that they had "no more right to a 

 pension than the man who has spent the best part of his life tilling the 

 soil." 16 



As time elapsed, a strong element which was against government aids 

 of all types blossomed forth within the Nebraska Union. During the 

 twenties, for instance, it registered strong protests against all bills before 

 Congress "for the relief of the farmers"; against the creation of any new 

 state bureaus, boards, and commissions; against the enactment of a federal 

 child-labor amendment; and against government price fixing of all forms. 

 While it endorsed the plea of "equality for agriculture," this equality, it 

 held, was to be achieved not by the establishment of a government-spon- 

 sored mechanism to make effective the tariff on farm products, but by 

 lowering the excessive protection on manufactured and other nonagricul- 

 tural products. By 1933, because of the seriousness of the depression, these 

 antipathies toward government controls had vanished, and the Nebraska 

 state convention endorsed federal legislation intended to bring the farmers 

 "cost of production" for the products they had to sell. 17 



Meanwhile, repeated warnings were made of the need for safeguarding 

 the agricultural interests from the "political farmers" and nonproducers. 

 L. S. Herron, editor of the Nebraska Union Farmer, pointed to the 

 calamities that had befallen the Grangers, the Alliancemen, and other 

 groups which had heeded the "siren call" of politics. Even though the 



16. Ibid, (no bulletin number), January, 1915. 



17. The American Labor Yearboo^, 1926 (New York, 1926), p. 229; Nebraska 

 Union Farmer, January 27, 1926; January 25, 1933. 



