MCNARY-HAUGEN MOVEMENT 



vention in Chicago. Differences developed, but in due time Governor 

 Hammill became head of the conference and suspicion was allayed. 44 



On January 28, 1926, another convention, the Corn and Agricultural 

 Area Marketing Conference, met in Des Moines. One hundred and forty 

 delegates were present from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, 

 Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa. North 

 Dakota joined the convention later. This conference granted that co- 

 operative marketing was "a good thing," but in so far as the "present 

 situation" was concerned it was only "a gesture," and asked that the 

 government be either taken out of "other business," or else placed in "the 

 farming business." Bill Hirth, president of the Missouri Farm Associa- 

 tion, editor of the Missouri Farmer, and chairman of the Corn Belt Com- 

 mittee, warned that if the farmers did not receive protection, agriculture 

 would turn its forces loose upon "the tariff itself." "The wheat country, 

 the cattle-hog country and the cotton country will be driven to join in 

 the common cause. There is enough dynamite in this to change the 

 political map for the next fifty years." 



Congressman Lester J. Dickinson and former Governor Frank Lowden 

 of Illinois attended the conference and were warmly received. Dickinson 

 explained his bill which was before Congress calling for the appointment 

 of a commission to look after the surplus. 45 Frank Lowden, perhaps 

 the most popular man in attendance, also spoke of the need for an effective 

 tariff for farm products as a means for re-establishing the purchasing 

 power of the farmer. He, likewise, stressed the need for an agricultural 

 board to handle surpluses in periods of abnormally high yields. Both 

 Dickinson and Lowden were of the opinion that cooperative marketing 

 associations should be used in handling the surplus. 



The conference, besides endorsing the essential features of the Dickinson 

 bill, recommended the wider use of corn and appointed a Committee of 

 Twenty-Two to press Congress for immediate action. The leaders of the 



44. Henry C. Taylor, "The Iowa Movement," American Review of Reviews, 

 LXXIII (March, 1926), pp. 271-72. 



45. The Dickinson bill was a modified version of the McNary-Haugen bill that 

 had been rejected in the House in June, 1924. This bill provided for the handling 

 of the surplus by cooperatives wherever possible. Nebraska Union Farmer (Omaha), 

 February 10, 1926, p. 3; Black, in American Economic Review, XVIII (September, 

 1928), p. 407. 



