2 74 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Grain Marketing Committee of Seventeen, the Farmers' Livestock Mar- 

 keting Committee of Fifteen, and the Farmers' Dairy Committee of 

 Eleven. The first two were the most important. 48 



Grain marketing was first on the agenda. President Howard called 

 a conference of grain growers to meet in Chicago on July 23, 1920, to 

 erect more efficient marketing machinery. About five hundred delegates 

 representing state farm bureaus, the Grange, the Farmers' Union, the 

 Equity, the United States Department of Agriculture, and numerous other 

 agencies responded. 49 A more trying period for the launching of a grain- 

 marketing program could hardly have been selected. Farm prices had 

 already started to fall; freight rates were high; industrial production had 

 started to lag; labor costs were very burdensome; and the governmental 

 guarantee on wheat and other commodities had been removed. The task 

 was a Herculean one. 50 



Besides the gathering clouds of depression, there were problems of an 

 internal nature with which the marketing conference had to deal. Various 

 groups that were represented were hesitant about losing their individuality, 

 while others with their own plans for large-scale grain-marketing associa- 

 tions did not want them jeopardized. For example, the Nebraska Farmers' 

 Union, because of its success in cooperative marketing, wanted "prefer- 

 ential treatment." So did the Equity Cooperative Exchange, with its string 

 of grain elevators throughout the agricultural Northwest and its terminal 

 marketing facilities, and the Missouri Farmers' Association, which was 

 destined to become the largest independent state farmers' organization 

 in the country, and the Farmers' National Grain Dealers Association, 

 which served as the coordinating, educational, and service agency for 

 state associations throughout the western Middle West. When President 

 Howard denied the National Board of Farm Organizations, representing 

 largely the Farmers' Union, with Charles Barrett as its chairman, the right 

 to name half of the marketing committee, it bolted the conference. 



48. Kile, The Farm Bureau Movement, pp. 148-64, 165-66. 



49. Ibid., pp. 149-50. 



50. Report of the Joint Commission of Agricultural Inquiry, The Agricultural 

 Crisis and Its Causes, Part I (67 Congress, i session, House Report 408, serial 7922, 

 4 parts, Washington, 1921-22), pp. 61-62; see Table E-2 for the relative wholesale 

 prices of groups of commodities and of specific commodities, by months, 1919-21. 

 Ibid., pp. 180-82, 224; U. S. Dept. Agri., Yearboo{, 1921, pp. 2-13. 



