2 54 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Throughout the New Deal years, the northwest tier of states maintained 

 a legislative committee in Washington under the leadership of Myron W. 

 Thatcher, a keen student of the grain market and a lobbyist of no small 

 stature. This was openly acknowledged as a sectional type of representa- 

 tion, although as time elapsed, sentiment developed for the establishment 

 of "a national Farmers' Union legislative fund" and the abandonment 

 of this sectional representation. On the national scene, the Union claimed 

 partial credit for the crop insurance scheme of 1933, through which 

 A.A.A. benefit payments were paid on seeded acreage, and also for the 

 establishment of a drought-area cattle-buying fund in 1934, which covered 

 western Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and eastern 

 Montana. The Union helped save the Resettlement Administration in 

 1935 after the House had killed appropriations for its continuance; again 

 that same year it fought to prohibit the sale of the farmers' stored grain 

 by private groups. It worked in 1936 for the Commodity Exchange Act 

 and in 1938 for wheat crop insurance and the tenant purchase program 

 under the Bankhead-Jones Act. It took responsibility in 1939 for crop 

 insurance premiums and for the ruling which permitted expanded flat 

 acreage without penalties. It was likewise instrumental in securing during 

 the years 1939-40 the transfer of the Farm Credit Administration to the 

 Department of Agriculture, the halting of foreclosure proceedings, and 

 the institution of generally more lenient policies toward debtors. 85 



would not work"; it would lead to inflation and higher living costs. "What the 

 Farmers' Union wants is parity!" M. W. Thatcher, Pay Checl{ for the Wheat 

 Farmer, Crop or No Crop (St. Paul, [1939]), pp. 22-23 [booklet]. 

 85. Farmers' Union Herald, January, 1941. 



