THE FARM BLOC, 1920-23 339 



Anderson measure had the support of the American Farm Bureau Federa- 

 tion, the Grange, and the national Farmers' Union. 



The general farm organizations felt that the Capper bill would be 

 unsatisfactory to the needs of the general run of farmers, while the Len- 

 root bill was expected to furnish funds at lower rates of interest because 

 the credit agencies set up under its provisions would have the privilege 

 of issuing tax-free securities. The provision that loans would be extended 

 from six months to three years was held to be a very satisfactory one. These 

 two features in particular attracted the support of most of the farm or- 

 ganizations and the agricultural press. Wallace supported the measure, 

 as did Hoover, who, despite this, believed that the credit needs of the 

 farmers were being greatly exaggerated. 



The Agricultural Credits Act of 1923, the bill that was finally passed, 

 was an omnibus measure that took in features of the Capper and Lenroot 

 bills and a lesser-known measure, the Strong bill. The act of 1923 was 

 passed because the time was short and the political exigencies great. About 

 all that Congress could do was to connect the several measures "end to 

 end with only a little attempt at smoothing off the edges." Despite this it 

 was passed in the closing hours of the Sixty-seventh Congress with great 



. . . -o 



majorities. 



The Agricultural Credits Act set up two fundamentally different sys- 

 tems of farm credit: the Federal Intermediate Credit Banks, a government- 

 owned, operated, and controlled system; and the National Agricultural 

 Credit Corporations, private agencies which did not operate under govern- 

 ment auspices but nonetheless were authorized by the national government 

 and received financial support from it. 



Twelve Intermediate Credit Banks were established in the same cities 

 as the twelve Federal Land Banks. The Federal Farm Loan Board was 

 given supervision over them, subject to the provisions of the Agricultural 

 Credits Act. In this manner it was felt that the organization could be 

 kept up at very little expense in periods when the demand for their serv- 

 ices was small and expanded when the demand for short-term credits 



52. Baird and Benner, Ten Years of Federal Intermediate Credits, pp. 67-82; 

 Claude Benner, The Federal Intermediate Credit System (New York, 1926), pp. 

 103-23; G. C. Henderson, "The Agricultural Credits Acts of 1923," Quarterly Jour- 

 nal of Economics, XXXVII (May, 1923), pp. 518-22. 



