228 



AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Nebraska Union did not enter "the hurly-burly of political campaigns," 

 it did adopt legislative recommendations and encouraged its members to 

 vote for candidates who promised to support them. It also opposed such 

 measures as it considered to be detrimental to agricultural interests and 

 agitated earnestly for cooperative legislation. 18 



If legislation was of secondary importance to the Nebraska Union, the 

 spread of cooperative sentiment and the building of cooperative associa- 

 tions were not. In fact, many Nebraskans believed that this promised the 

 best means for bringing "greater equality and prosperity for the farmers." 

 Cooperatives, according to Herron, had the healthful effect of encouraging 

 the type of competition that held profit-seeking business in check. It fol- 

 lowed, then, according to this line of reasoning, that cooperatives, free 

 competition, and conceivably the breaking up of the large corporate units 

 into small ones had more to offer agriculture than did any other formula. 19 



This antistatist philosophy, coupled with a well-defined superiority 

 complex, gave to the Nebraska Farmers' Union a conservative aggressive- 

 ness which made it contrast markedly with the other state organizations 

 of the Farmers' Union and with the parent organization itself. While all 

 the various units favored cooperatives, most of them, including the na- 

 tional, leaned heavily on the hope of legislative action and urged govern- 

 ment assistance as the chief means for the relief of agriculture. 



This difference in point of view often made relations between the 

 Nebraska Union and the national Union anything but harmonious. 

 Many Nebraskans were unhappy that their Union belonged to the na- 

 tional organization at all. They were proud of their success in business, 

 and they believed that the voting in the national conventions should be 

 changed to give to the Nebraska unit a greater voice in national affairs. 

 The Nebraska Union even threatened, in 1920, to withdraw from the 

 national unless there could be devised a fairer basis for voting, but it left 

 to the state board the question of deciding whether to pay dues and send 

 delegates to the national convention. This question came up again in 1934 

 when the national Union suspended the Nebraska Union for failure to 

 pay dues and then filed suit in Douglas County, Nebraska, to recover 



18. Ibid., February 24, 1915; August 24, 1932; F.E.C.U. Nebraska, The Farmers' 

 Union, pp. 3-4. 



19. Ibid.; Nebraska Union Farmer, April 27, 1932. 



