256 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



new superorganization could best be built around the county agents. 1 

 Even though the Farm Bureau gained a large membership in other 

 parts of the country, its leadership and its legislative and economic de- 

 mands were just as reflective of the sentiments of the western Middle 

 West as of those of any other section of the country, if not more so. Its 

 membership, its cooperative buying and selling associations, and its or- 

 ganizational activities in general, over the period from 1920 to 1933, were 

 more permanent and numerous in Illinois, Iowa, and the adjoining states 

 than in most other areas. Bureau spokesmen from the western Middle 

 West took a leading role in the McNary-Haugen movement of the 

 twenties. Other evidences of this regional influence are shown in the 

 facts that Chicago became and remained the headquarters of the national 

 organization and that two of the first three national presidents were from 

 Iowa and Illinois. 2 



The Farm Bureau can hardly be credited with originating the idea of 

 federating existing farm groups into one major body. There were various 

 attempts at it, at least two major ones just before the American Farm 

 Bureau was organized the Farmers' National Headquarters and the 

 National Board of Farm Organizations. Neither of these originated in 

 the western Middle West even though both sponsored legislation that 

 had found great support there. But both, by trying to bring about a 

 federation of existing farm groups, were seeking to do for agriculture 

 what the American Federation of Labor years ago had done for labor. 

 Also, by virtue of their being more or less a part of the progressive move- 

 ment of the pre- World War I period, both found themselves completely 

 out of step with the conservatism of the postwar era. 



The Farmers' National Headquarters came into being in 1910, when 

 a number of state organizations "of progressive or radical tendencies" 



1. B. H. Hibbard, "American Farm Bureau Federation," Encyclopaedia of the 

 Social Sciences (15 vols., New York, 1937), VII, 105-6; Orville M. Kile, The Farm 

 Bureau Movement (New York, 1921), pp. 54-93, 233-43; Iowa Farm Bureau 

 Messenger (Waterloo), February 7, 1920. 



2. DeWitt C. Wing, "Trends in National Farm Organizations," U. S. Dept. Agri. 

 Yearbook, Farmers in a Changing World (Washington, 1940), pp. 963-64. For a 

 historical resume of the most powerful of the state associations, see The Illinois 

 Agricultural Association Record, XIX (January, 1941) for an account of twenty-five 

 years of activities. See also Ralph Russell, "Membership of the American Farm 

 Bureau Federation, 1926-1935," Rural Sociology, II (March, 1937), pp. 29-35. 



