258 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



hard to prove, it did say that it represented one-third of the farms of the 

 country and that it had plans to create a fund of $8,500,000 to carry on 

 its work. 5 



Precisely what happened to the National Board of Farm Organizations 

 is uncertain, but the fact is that it was completely obscured by the rise 

 of the more aggressive American Farm Bureau Federation. The Bureau 

 sponsored a program that highly reflected the postwar reaction; it was 

 built upon well-organized county units and state federations, was much 

 better financed than any previous attempt to organize the farmers, em- 

 ployed methods that were used by business interests, and gave definite 

 evidence of becoming one of the most powerful pressure groups that the 

 country had ever known. 



The fear of radicalism, industrial unrest, labor disturbances, and the 

 prospects of a farmer-labor alignment, remote though it was, were fore- 

 most among the reasons for the formation of the national organization. 

 A long list of public statements, resolutions adopted in conventions, and 

 printed material supports these fears of radicalism. For instance Henry J. 

 Sconce, president of the aggressive Illinois Agricultural Association the 

 farm bureau in Illinois in his keynote address in the meeting in Chicago 

 on November 12 and 13, 1919, described the first national meeting of 

 the state farm bureaus as a timely one because of the need for taking action 

 against the industrial unrest that had been plaguing the nation since the 

 armistice. "Is it any wonder," he asked, "that production has dwindled and 

 the cost of living has so greatly increased ? ... It is our duty in creating 

 this organization to avoid any policy that will align organized farmers 

 with the radicals of other organizations. The policy should be thoroughly 

 American in every respect ... a constructive organization instead of a 

 destructive organization." 6 Early in January, 1920, James R. Howard, the 

 first president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, called attention 

 to the conflict between capital and labor and the need for organized agri- 

 culture to strike a balance of power between the two : ". . . Capital, which 

 is ever monopolistic in tendency and inclined to be oppressive, is opposed 

 to an organized labor which is becoming very defiant and very domineer- 

 ing in its demands upon the general public. Apparently there is no hope 



5. Nation's Business, VII (November, 1919), p. 17. 



6. Kile, The Farm Bureau Movement, pp. 116^17. 



