232 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



farmers be able to graduate from the "sucker class," and to cease "hewing 

 wood and carrying water" for their exploiters as they had been doing 

 for centuries. The educational program of the Iowa Union was based 

 on "two fundamentals Cost of Production plus a reasonable profit, and 

 the doctrine of real Co-operation." 28 



Once headway had been made in Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa, it was 

 only natural to expect the Union to penetrate into the Dakotas, Minnesota, 

 and Wisconsin. In fact, representatives of the Equity Cooperative Ex- 

 change of St. Paul appeared before the annual convention of the national 

 Farmers' Union as early as 1922 to extend to it an invitation to organize 

 the farmers of the agricultural Northwest. More serious consideration 

 was given to this possible merger with the Equity Cooperative Exchange 

 after the Des Moines meeting of May 12, 1925, which had assembled for 

 the specific purpose of uniting the farmers in their campaign for farm 

 relief. Early that year the nearly defunct National Producers' Alliance 

 announced that it had started to coordinate its work with the Equity 

 exchange and the Farmers' Union. On November 16 and 17, the Alliance 

 committee which had considered the merger proposal with the Union 

 indicated that it had reached an agreement on four points: (i) the need 

 for creating a single powerful farm organization capable of demanding 

 a fixed price based on "cost of production"; (2) the establishment of 

 more effective marketing machinery; (3) the adoption of a name that 

 would be descriptive of such objectives; and (4) recognition of the fact 

 that the Farmers' Union, which had spread into the Mississippi Valley 

 but was ineffectively organized in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, 

 and Montana, was the organization best qualified to achieve these objec- 

 tives. Merger was acceptable to the Alliance if the Union gave assurances 

 that "cost of production" would serve as the base for determining price 

 and if it proceeded to organize the Northwest farmers. Barrett responded 

 by reminding the Alliance that the Union was organized with "cost of 

 production" as its guiding principle, and that Union representatives had 

 sponsored the call for a "cost of production" conference to assemble in 

 Des Moines on May i2. 29 



28. Farm Market Guide, May-June, 1926; Iowa Year Boo^ of Agriculture, 1927, 



PP- 35 2 ~53- 



29. Nebraska Union Farmer, March 22, 1922; Farm Market Guide, February, 



December, 1925. 



