AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Cooperation in production, finance, buying, and marketing had to be 

 encouraged "to the utmost practical development." 9 Herbert Hoover, his 

 Secretary of Commerce, saw eye to eye with him in this, while Henry C. 

 Wallace, who had served with Hoover under both Harding and Coolidge, 

 had more faith in surplus-control measures and McNary-Haugenism. 

 The successor of Wallace, William M. Jardine, former president of 

 Kansas State College, was very much in accord with the administration 

 viewpoint. Jardine believed that farming should be treated as a business. 

 He proposed to lend government money to farmers and their cooperatives 

 and thus aid the cooperatives to market their crops advantageously rather 

 than dumping them on the market at ruinously low prices. Jardine told 

 the farmers that their marketing machinery had to be built "along the 

 same lines that industry and other lines of business have found to be 

 effective." 10 



In the presidential campaign of 1928, Hoover renewed his faith in co- 

 operative marketing and vigorously denounced the equalization-fee 

 principle of the McNary-Haugen bill. 11 His promise was translated into 

 legislation with the passing of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929. 

 This was the most important single piece of legislation ever enacted in 

 behalf of cooperative marketing. It called for the creation of a federal 

 farm board, the appointment of committees to advise on marketing, and 

 the setting up of a revolving fund of $500,000,000 to help cooperatives 

 and to engage in price-stabilization operations. 12 



The aid given the cooperatives by the Republicans was one of the few 

 achievements of the otherwise lethargic administrations of Harding, 

 Coolidge, and Hoover. But it appears that when the Republicans com- 



9. Gee, American Farm Policy, p. 38; "President Coolidge Outlines Agricultural 

 Policy," Congressional Digest, IV (October, 1925), p. 261. 



10. John D. Black, "Progress of Farm Relief," American Economic Review, XVIII 

 (June, 1928), p. 268; George Soule, "Herbert Hoover, Practical Man," New Republic, 

 LIII (December 28, 1927), p. 159; James E. Boyle, "Our Three Wallaces," American 

 Mercury, XXXIV (March, 1935), p. 321; "Secretary Hoover Analyses Waste in 

 Marketing," Congressional Digest, IV (October, 1925), p. 262; Russell Lord, The 

 Wallaces of Iowa (New York, 1947), pp. 230-58, 261-62; Outloof^, CXXXIX 

 (February 25, 1925), p. 286; "Dr. Jardine's Farm Prescription," Literary Digest, XC 

 (September 25, 1926), pp. 12-13. 



11. Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa, pp. 275-80. 



12. See Ellis A. Stodyk and Charles West, The Federal Farm Board (New York, 

 1930), for an early analysis of the act and the problems facing the Farm Board. 



