MCNARY-HAUGEN MOVEMENT 379 



about his further move toward Equality for Agriculture." He wanted a 

 "conference about fair-ratio prices." 



Finally, Wallace got permission from Harding to call the conference 

 that met in the office of the Secretary of Agriculture. The list of con- 

 ferees invited was "quite properly, nicely weighted with those who ad- 

 hered to Hoover's ultraconservative view." In addition to Peek and John- 

 son, James R. Howard, president of the American Farm Bureau Federa- 

 tion, and Gray Silver, the Bureau's Washington representative, the con- 

 ferees were Fred Wells from Minneapolis, General Charles G. Dawes 

 from Chicago, Otto Kahn from New York, Judson C. Welliver, represent- 

 ing the President, and Julius Barnes, representing (as the Wallace element 

 wryly put it) Herbert Hoover. Lord's account of the meeting says that . . . 



the group exhibited a preponderantly hostile and critical attitude toward the 

 Peek-Johnson proposal. As General Johnson said years later, "Harry Wallace was 

 the only man at either of those first two price-ratio conferences who would 

 give us as much as a pleasant look." Otto Kahn was more sympathetic than most 

 of them; he granted that the plan had some merit but he urged that nothing 

 be done for six months or so, in which time things might pick up. Howard 

 and Silver played cagey. Julius Barnes said bluntly that he had his opinion of 

 a Secretary of Agriculture who would take the time of busy men in considering 

 such a plan. 16 



Herbert Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce, who was intent on building 

 up American export trade, was strongly opposed to any plan which raised 

 the cost of American industrial products. Hoover fought the equalization 

 fee plan and clashed with Wallace over it. 17 



Peek and Johnson also took their plan to Congressman Sydney Ander- 

 son of Minnesota, who was serving at the time as chairman of the Joint 

 Commission of Agricultural Inquiry, as well as of President Harding's 

 agricultural conference. They proposed to Anderson that "the export sur- 

 plus was the only controlling fact in the problem of farm distress. He 

 frankly told us that if we tried to raise this point in that convention, he 

 would steam-roller us all of which he faithfully and artistically did." 18 



1 6. Russell Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa (Boston, 1947), pp. 238-40. 



17. Black, in American Economic Review, XVIII (September, 1928), pp. 406-7; 

 Johnson, The Blue Eagle, p. 105. 



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

 p. 569. 



