374 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



measures demonstrated their utter futility as price-raising or stabilizing 

 influences, but they nonetheless were reflective of the thinking of many 

 farmers who had become convinced that something more than the tradi- 

 tional tariff was needed to make protection work for them. 



In the midst of the drastic price drops of 1920 and 1921, both farmers 

 and their spokesmen seem to have recalled past arguments to the effect 

 that the raising of duties would help to protect domestic producers. It was 

 reasoning such as this that prompted President Harding, in his first mes- 

 sage to Congress, to urge protection for the farmers as well as for indus- 

 try. As a result, on May 27, 1921, an emergency tariff put high duties on 

 wheat, corn, meat, sugar, and wool, with the proviso that these duties 

 would remain in force for six months only. But on November 16 the 

 measure was extended until otherwise provided for by law. 



This act had great political significance. The agriculturists, by support- 

 ing it, committed themselves to a policy of high and ruthless protection, 

 and in return got a carte blanche right to fix duties pretty much as they 

 pleased on their products. When it came to the duties on manufactured 

 articles, they could not oppose them as they had done in 1909. Thus no 

 moderating influence was of avail in the Sixty-seventh Congress. The 

 net result was a tariff with rates higher than those of 1890, 1897, an d 

 1909. 



The duties provided for in the Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922 had in 

 them economic jokers that were typical of past tariff legislation. Wheat 

 had on it a duty of thirty cents a bushel as compared with twenty-five 

 cents in the act of 1909; the ten-cent duty on rye was now fifteen, and 

 corn also bore a tariff of fifteen cents a bushel; beef was taxed at three 

 cents a pound and lamb at four as compared with one and a half and two 

 cents in 1909. Then there was the usual list of petty and innocuous duties 

 that ranged "from eggs to reindeer meat, peanuts to acorns." 



Other concessions appeared on the free list. Agricultural implements 

 such as plows, harrows, headers, reapers, cotton gins, even wagons and 

 carts, were admitted duty free, duplicating in large measure the provisions 

 of the act of 1913. These articles, in almost every case, were made cheaper 

 in the United States than abroad, and only small quantities of foreign- 

 made machinery managed to find their way into the country. 7 



7. Ibid., pp. 4-9. 



