THE FARM BLOC, 1920-23 33 1 



Besides liberalizing the facilities of the War Finance Corporation, there 

 were changes in the Federal Land Bank System. Once the Supreme Court 

 upheld the constitutionality of the Federal Farm Loan Act, new bond 

 issues were floated, and lending operations were resumed. Still another 

 change was an act authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to place addi- 

 tional deposits in the Federal Farm Loan Banks to provide them with 

 capital, pending the issuance of land bank bonds. Authority was also 

 granted to raise the interest to be paid on land bank bonds from 5 to 5^2 

 per cent, until June 30, 1923, hoping that this would make the bonds more 

 marketable and thus help make the Land Bank System of greater use. 31 



What sympathies one had toward the farm bloc were pretty much a 

 matter of "occupation and geography." 32 Opposition toward it was great 

 in prominent financial and commercial circles, and President Harding 

 and his administration were opposed to it. What had stirred up this opposi- 

 tion was the unwillingness of the westerners to vote for lower surtax rates. 33 

 Bloc tactics were hypocritically denounced as "un-American" and "a 

 vicious European practice," especially by those who had been in the habit 

 of receiving legislative favors. 34 Otto Kahn, a New York banker, was 

 reportedly organizing a committee of businessmen to fight the demands 

 of farm representatives in Congress and in the state legislatures. 33 A New 

 York congressman introduced a bill aimed to outlaw all blocs, combina- 

 tions, or agreements organized by congressmen who represented special 

 or sectional interests. 36 New Hampshire-born Secretary of War John W. 

 Weeks, a banker and broker by profession, saw in the bloc a real menace to 

 American institutions. But one eastern paper, the New Yor\ Globe, took 

 issue with Weeks, charging that he objected not so much to the bloc itself 

 as to the fact that farm spokesmen finally had perfected a device that 

 others had used with some success. After all, "Secretary Weeks has never 



31. The New International Year Boo\, 1921, p. 23; Clara Eliot, The Farmers' 

 Campaign for Credit (New York, 1927), pp. 74-75. 



32. Literary Digest, LXXI (December 24, 1921), p. 10. 



33. Graper, in Current History, XIX (February, 1924), p. 821; J. D. Beck, "The 

 Farmers' Bloc," La Follette's Magazine, XIV (January, 1922), p. 3; Bradley, in 

 Journal of Social Forces, III (May, 1925), p. 717. 



34. World's Wor\, XLIII (December, 1921), p. 164. 



35. Beck, in La Follette's Magazine, XIV (January, 1922), p. 3. 



36. The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, CXIII (December 24, 1921), p. 

 2646. 



