30 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Little else was done after these preliminary attempts, but the plan 

 loomed prominently in the mind of Wallace, as well as in those of Peek, 

 Johnson, and others. In the fall of 1923 the North Dakota Bankers' As- 

 sociation endorsed the measure; and about the same time Wallace sent 

 Henry C. Taylor into the Northwest to study the situation firsthand. Tay- 

 lor found that the Peek-Johnson plan was being widely discussed and had 

 much popular support behind it. On November 12 Wallace, in an inter- 

 view with the Associated Press in Chicago, publicly endorsed it, as he did 

 a couple of weeks later in his report to the President entitled The Wheat 

 Situation. 



Meanwhile, Charles J. Brand, a consulting specialist on marketing 

 and former chief of the Bureau of Markets, was asked by Wallace to draft 

 a bill embodying the chief features of the plan. Brand went to Illinois 

 to obtain the assistance of Peek. 19 This preliminary draft, a very involved 

 affair, was finally perfected with the aid of Senator Charles McNary of 

 Oregon and Representative Gilbert N. Haugen of Iowa, under whose 

 joint auspices this measure was to be introduced in Congress on January 

 16, 192 4 . 20 



The McNary-Haugen bill embodied the chief features of the original 

 Peek-Johnson plan, including the price-ratio provision to determine fair 

 prices, the selling of the surplus abroad at world prices, the equalization 

 fee to recoup the loss by an assessment on the domestic price, and the 

 scrip device to collect the fee. Hearings on the bill started on January 21 

 and extended through March 19, during which period representatives of 

 labor, farm organizations, bankers, grain exchanges, farmers, and others 

 were heard. Testimony was taken to the extent of 728 pages and more 

 than a month was spent in reading the bill for amendment. The House 

 Committee on Agriculture spent at least three months in daily session, 

 in which all but two days were devoted to the bill. 21 



The first McNary-Haugen bill was endorsed by more than two hun- 



19. Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa, pp. 253-54; Black, in American Economic 

 Review, XVIII (September, 1928), p. 407. 



20. Brand, in Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, XI (lanuary, 1925), 

 p. 174; Black, in American Economic Review, XVIII (September, 1928), p. 407. 



21. Report of the House Committee on Agriculture, McNary-Haugen Agricul- 

 tural Products Export Bill (68 Congress, i session, House Report 631, serial 8228, 

 Washington, 1924), p. 2. 



