AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



discriminatory tariffs, embargoes, and other high-cost factors. This pro- 

 posed export corporation could supplement the cooperative-marketing 

 associations. More important was the fact that the export corporation 

 could be used to ship surpluses in wheat, livestock, cotton, and other com- 

 modities abroad; what losses were sustained could be charged up to the 

 entire crop. This bill was based on a modified plan proposed earlier by 

 George N. Peek which had been discussed by Henry C. Wallace in his 

 annual report. 59 In effect, this marked the start of a campaign that reached 

 a peak in 1927 and 1928. 



As a result of its aggressive program, it came as no surprise that the 

 Farm Bureau aroused the antipathies of the older farm organizations, as 

 well as of other groups. The Bureau exposed itself to such attacks partly 

 because of its professed friendliness with those business and financial 

 groups that many farmers had been taught to view with suspicion and 

 distrust. 60 



One group to lash out against the Bureau was the Nonpartisan League. 

 Some of its spokesmen openly charged that the federation had come 

 into being for the very purpose of checking the League. They accused 

 the Farm Bureau of being in "an unholy alliance" with the country 

 bankers. Stories circulated in the rural communities to the effect that 

 bankers renewed Farm Bureau memberships and even deducted dues from 

 the farmers' bank accounts without consulting the farmers. Henry G. 

 Teigan, secretary of the national Nonpartisan League and later congress- 

 man from Minnesota, said that in his state those in control of the Farm 

 Bureau were reactionaries in politics. 61 Another argument was that no 

 genuinely farmer-financed and controlled farm organization could afford 

 to maintain palatial headquarters and pay its officers the salaries that the 

 American Farm Bureau Federation did. No "dirt farmer" would tolerate 

 such expenditures. 



Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin accused some Bureau 

 leaders of having conspired with railroad, coal, steel, and lumber in- 



59. A.F.B.F., Weekly News Letter, June 18, 1929, p. 2. 



60. The American Labor Yearboot(, 1926 (New York, 1926), p. 335; Minnesota 

 Leader (Olivia), July 15, 1925. 



61. A.F.B.F., Report of the Executive Secretary, 1921, p. 8; Henry G. Teigan 

 to H. L. Keeler, February 8, 1921, in the Minnesota Historical Society. 



