252 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



enabled it to enroll members in areas where other groups had failed. In 

 1934, it was observed that ". . . the Farmers' Union now has properties 

 running into the millions. In Nebraska its annual business is second only 

 to the Union Pacific Railroad. In North Dakota, its gasoline business is 

 second only to the Standard Oil. Its executives are men whose keenness 

 and intelligence would startle the urban dweller, accustomed to think 

 of the farmer as an economic illiterate." 79 



The Farmers' Union Central Exchange had built up a business, through 

 affiliated local cooperatives, which amounted by the end of the 1930'$ to 

 almost $5,000,000 annually. Farmers' Union cooperatives could be devised 

 by this time to meet almost any emergency. When the Farmers' National 

 Grain Corporation withdrew from active service on May 31, 1938, the 

 Farmers' Union Terminal Association took over. Within a year after its 

 organization, it had affiliated 83 new cooperative elevators, bringing the 

 total of such subsidiaries up to 220. More than 250 locals marketed their 

 grain through this association. In 1940 it was pronounced the largest 

 grain-marketing cooperative in the world. 80 



In spite of its rather considerable successes, the Farmers' Union itself 

 was never a well-integrated body. A national president once described it 

 as "a loose federation of state organizations." As to type and function, 

 there were almost as many different patterns as there were state organiza- 

 tions. In Alabama the organization was principally one of sharecroppers 

 and tenant farmers; in Ohio it was composed of farm owners who did 

 not belong to the Farm Bureau; while in California, although it was 

 mainly inactive, it participated through some of its members in the ultra- 

 conservative Associated Farmers. 81 



The attitude of the Farmers' Union toward labor, with a few minor 

 exceptions, was persistently friendly throughout this period. The Union 

 expressed its gratification in 1937 because the national convention of the 

 C.I.O. had endorsed the cost-of-production principle. Again in 1940, the 

 Union thanked organized labor for the support which it had given to 

 farm legislation. The Union asked farmers and workers to join hands 



79. R. H. Peters, "The Farmer's Way to Recovery," The Forum and Century, 

 XCI (April, 1934), p. 233. 



80. U. S. Dept. Agri. Yearbook, Farmers in a Changing World (Washington, 

 1940), p. 955. 



81. Farmers' Union Herald, January, 1941. 



