MCNARY-HAUGEN MOVEMENT 391 



carrying on a correspondence with Sir Josiah C. Stamp, the British eco- 

 nomist, with Vice-President Charles G. Dawes serving as intermediary, 

 over the relative merits of the McNary-Haugen proposal. As a result, 

 Dawes was swamped with requests for the publication of their statements. 

 Permission was obtained from Stamp to publish their views and shortly 

 these found their way into the press. They were conspicuously presented 

 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, one of the most active supporters of the 

 equalization fee. 49 



Southern farm leaders had shown little interest in the McNary-Haugen 

 proposal; in fact, their representatives in Congress had voted against the 

 first measure in June, 1924, and there was little evidence that they had 

 supported the abortive measure of 1925. But by early 1926 they appeared 

 to be in a more receptive mood. The cotton acreage had expanded con- 

 siderably in 1925 and a surplus had accumulated to threaten the price of 

 the 1926 crop; hence the idea of a South- West alliance was revived. A 

 joint conference finally was held in Memphis in January, 1926, where both 

 agreed to draft a measure modeled after the Dickinson proposal. 50 As a 

 result of this maneuver, cotton leaders appeared in Washington before 

 committees in support of the revised McNary-Haugen measure. Cotton 

 and corn were included in this bill but with the proviso that no equaliza- 

 tion fee was to be collected on either one for a period of three years. This 

 period of grace was extended to cotton largely because the southerners 

 were not ready for the fee portion of the program, but they were willing 

 to content themselves with the benefits of the orderly handling of exports 

 through the corporation. 51 



Meanwhile, the agitation for McNary-Haugenism continued unabated. 

 Delegates representing the American Council of Agriculture, the Com- 

 mittee of Twenty-Two, the Farm Bureau, the Grange, the Farmers' Union, 

 and others visited Washington and made known their demands for legis- 

 lative aid. 52 



These McNary-Haugen demands became so loud and at times so threat- 

 ening that the editors of the World's Wor\ penned "An Open Letter to 



49. Pioneer Press, January 6, 1926. 



50. Black, in American Economic Review, XVIII (September, 1923), pp. 407-9. 



51. Pioneer Press, February 9, April 6, 1926. 



52. Minnesota Farm Bureau News, April i, 1926. 



