MCNARY-HAUGEN MOVEMENT 377 



labor, and to make effective the work of their organizations in holding 

 up the prices of their commodities and services." ' 



During the early days of the farm bloc, agitation for protection received 

 no more special attention than did measures to regulate the packers, to 

 legalize cooperatives, and to extend more liberal credit facilities. It re- 

 mained for two gentlemen, not farmers by vocation, George N. Peek and 

 Hugh S. Johnson, who had seen their farm-machinery business wither 

 away in the depression, to start the tariff on farm products on its way to 

 popularity. 



Peek and Johnson had become close friends during the war years while 

 both worked on the War Industries Board. Peek formerly had been in the 

 farm-implement business, but he had indicated that he had no inten- 

 tions of returning to it when the war ended. Among his business associates 

 was John Willys, the manufacturer of an automobile bearing his name, 

 who recently had acquired the Moline Plow Company. Peek described 

 the Moline Plow Company as "a terrible lemon"; it had failed to make 

 money for years, and did not show the slightest indications of ever doing 

 so. Willys, nevertheless, asked Peek to head his new company, which 

 the latter finally consented to do, taking Johnson with him as his assistant 

 and general counsel. 



An inquiry into the financial status of the company revealed its actual 

 impoverished condition. For a while the company was caught in the brief 

 postwar inflation period, and was financed by Willys down to the begin- 

 ning of the depression. However, when the depression came Willys, the 

 Moline Plow Company, and all were caught in the impasse. Peek and 

 Johnson soon became convinced that "there can't be any business until the 

 farmer is on his feet. There is nothing we can do here let's find out 

 what is the matter with agriculture." ] 



Meanwhile, Peek and Johnson had written a pamphlet called Equality 

 For Agriculture. It first apeared in 1922 as an anonymous publication, 

 but later that same year a second edition was issued bearing the name of 

 the joint authors and addressed to James Howard, the president of the 



13. Peek, in Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, XII (January, 1927), 

 pp. 568-69. 



14. Hugh S. Johnson, The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth (New York, 1935), 

 pp. 103-4. 



