AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION 273 



Bureau members, the rank and file, were hardly the land moguls that 

 their enemies made them out to be. Common sense would tell anyone 

 that the claim that the membership of the American Farm Bureau Federa- 

 tion in 1921 well over a million consisted mostly of large landowners 

 was ridiculous. There never were that many large landowners in the 

 country; and if there had been, the chances are that they would have 

 known better than to organize on such a basis. 



These charges were popularized by those who either had nothing but 

 contempt for the conservative leadership or were unaware of or indifferent 

 to the fact that the average American farmer was conservative. Bureau 

 leadership was far more representative of the American farmer than its 

 left-wing critics cared to admit. They would have been far nearer the 

 truth had they said that the Bureau did not have as many substantial 

 farmers belonging to it as did the Grange, but that it had far more than 

 did other groups. But even this was a far cry from its being an organiza- 

 tion of and by large landowners and farmers. 45 



No doubt there is much truth, however, to the charge that the Bureau 

 had admitted into membership many who had had "no sympathy with 

 the working farmer and his problems. Men with political ambitions who 

 happen to own some land, conservative men of wealth whose money is 

 mainly invested in farm property and professional men of the extension- 

 worker type have seized important positions in the organization and have 

 to some extent dictated its policies." 48 



Cooperative marketing, and to a lesser degree cooperative purchasing, 

 always formed a prominent part of Bureau activities. This was especially 

 true during the period from 1920 to 1924, when cooperatives were looked 

 upon by the Bureau as the big hope of the farmer. After that time the 

 Bureau veered off in the direction of McNary-Haugenism and the equali- 

 zation-fee principle, but even so, it never failed to encourage the coopera- 

 tive movement. 47 



The concern of the American ^arm Bureau Federation with large-scale 

 marketing began to take concrete form early in 1920 with the appoint- 

 ment of marketing committees. Three of these stood out: the Farmers' 



45. Hibbard, in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, VII, 106. 



46. Iowa Farm Bureau Messenger, January i, 1924. 



47. Wing, in Farmers in a Changing World, pp. 964-65. 



