COOPERATIVES, 1920-32 293 



believed that the depression would be short-lived and that such a program 

 was as feasible as any. 17 



Equally pertinent to the wheat-pooling movement were various other 

 forces beyond the political boundaries of the western Middle West. Con- 

 gress, for instance, because of the pressure from farm leaders and politi- 

 cians and the influence of Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, 

 gave the pooling movement encouragement. The coffee-valorization plans 

 of the Brazilian government, the attempts to control the production of 

 sugar in Cuba, the activities of the California raisin growers, the Canadian 

 wheat pools, and the evangelizing efforts of Aaron Sapiro stimulated 

 pooling. By 1927 the pooling movement had passed its peak, but it was 

 estimated that about one million farmers were still under contract to 

 deliver goods to associations which would pool and sell them at the 



IS 



proper time. 



The wheat-pooling movement of the twenties had its inception in the 

 western Middle West and on the Pacific Coast. One of the first of these 

 organizations was the Washington Wheat Growers' Association, incor- 

 porated in August, 1920. The Idaho Wheat Growers' Association was 

 incorporated the following month. In 1921 associations were also formed 

 in Oregon and Montana, and after that it became apparent that these 

 four groups were to be merged. The result was the Northwest Wheat 

 Growers, Associated. As long as the Northwest Wheat Growers had con- 

 fined its activities to the Pacific Northwest, it was unnecessary for it to 

 operate through an organized grain exchange, but when it reached into 

 North Dakota, as it did in 1922, it had to find such an outlet. A seat was 

 bought on the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. 



Meanwhile the National Wheat Growers' Association was functioning 

 in the Southwest. It had its beginnings in the western Middle West, hav- 



pp. 451-52; Filley, Cooperation in Agriculture, p. 126; Herman Steen, Cooperative 

 Marketing (New York, 1923), p. 212. 



17. Jesse E. Pope, "The Holding Movement in Agriculture," in Jacob H. Hol- 

 lander, ed., Economic Essays Contributed in Honor of John Bates Clar^ (New 

 York, 1927), pp. 243-46. 



18. Arthur Capper, The Agricultural Bloc (New York, 1922), an account of the 

 farm bloc by one of its members; Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa, pp. 249-58; Pope, in 

 Economic Essays in Honor of John Bates Clar\, pp. 245, 272; Harald S. Patton, Grain 

 Growers' Cooperation in Western Canada (Cambridge, Mass., 1928); Bakken and 

 Schaars, Economics of Cooperative Marketing, p. 273. 



