AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



It was believed that such associations would not only overcome some of 

 the evils of competition but also would make it possible for the producers 

 to control the wheat market. The plan also called for the formation of 

 a national pool and the eventual joining of forces "with an international 

 pool, including Canada, Argentina, and Australia." 



Perhaps what the wheat pools had attempted to do was best expressed 

 by their leaders and advisors. For instance, in 1922 George E. Duis, presi- 

 dent of the North Dakota wheat pool, said to a convention of wheat 

 growers in Kansas City: "The ultimate aim of the wheat growers is to 

 put a price tag on a bushel of wheat." Frank O. Lowden, chairman of 

 the National Wheat Growers' Advisory Committee, was quoted as saying : 

 "If we were organized we would direct our wheat as the steel industry 

 controls the flow of its steel. We would say to our mills: 'Our wheat costs 

 us so much; there is not any more than is needed for consumption; if you 

 want to grind our wheat, you must pay our price.' That is what everybody 

 else does." As it was so aptly stated by another, the poolers proposed "to 

 do for wheat exactly what the U. S. Steel Corporation does for steel." 



The methods used in organizing these pools seemed to follow a set 

 pattern. Usually a big meeting was held; speeches were made; whirlwind 

 membership campaigns were staged; often long, legally worded contracts 

 were entered into by farmers who neither read nor understood the con- 

 tents of the documents they signed ; and an official organ was issued carry- 

 ing the familiar arguments against the middlemen, the grain merchants, 

 and the bankers. 15 



Even though the industrialists were the first to resort to pooling in 

 wholesale fashion, it can hardly be said that the farmers were unfamiliar 

 with it. It had been tried as early as the seventies, if not earlier. It also 

 had been practiced during the World War years, and was credited in 

 large part with the high prices received during that period. It appealed 

 especially to those farmers who lived in areas where the cooperative- 

 elevator movement was weak. Once the depression struck, it was natural 

 for them to look to pooling as a means for resisting low prices. 16 Many 



15. James E. Boyle, "The Farmers and the Grain Trade in the United States, An 

 Interpretation of the Present Pooling Movement," Economic Journal, XXXV (March, 

 1925), pp. 14-20. 



1 6. J. T. Horner, "The United States Government Activities in the Field of Agri- 

 cultural Economics Prior to 1913," Journal of Farm Economics, X (October, 1928), 



