MCNARY-HAUGEN MOVEMENT 395 



pay no attention to the Des Moines meeting, and otherwise will do noth- 

 ing about farm relief except to maintain its past attitude of encouraging 

 farm cooperatives." 63 And he was right, for in July an act was passed 

 appropriating $224,000 to set up the Division of Cooperative Marketing 

 in the United States Department of Agriculture. 64 



In Minnesota the defeat of the McNary-Haugen bill was the signal for 

 the formation of the Minnesota Council of Agriculture. This body was 

 organized on July 22 as evidence that Minnesota was "enlisted in a finish 

 fight to secure agricultural equality through national legislation. . . ." 6 

 Twin Cities labor leaders also enrolled in the fight to give protection to 

 agriculture. 



In challenging, melodramatic tones, and after a fashion recalling the 

 sectional controversies of the antebellum period, the Minnesota Council 

 of Agriculture resolved: 



The people of the United States are facing today the greatest issue in Amer- 

 ican history since the civil war, the emancipation of agriculture. The common 

 economic interests of the West, North and South, have for many years been 

 seriously affected and are at this time threatened with complete destruction by 

 the existence of a definite and indefensible maladjustment in the nation's eco- 

 nomic system. Thirty-five per cent of the people who are engaged in agricul- 

 tural pursuits and live in rural districts have become industrial serfs, a situation 

 forced upon them by the development of America's system of protection to 

 groups. 



The law of supply and demand has been supplanted by a law-made price 

 fixing and economic system that compels the farmer to buy what he uses in a 

 law protected market on a scale of prices more than one hundred per cent above 

 the price levels prevailing in 1914, and at the same time compels him to sell his 

 major products at the price levels prevailing in other countries, in competition 

 with the lowest paid laborer in the world and with the peasants of other lands. 

 Under the operation of economic conditions created and fostered by one-sided 

 fiscal legislation, the American farmer has been denied the benefit of existing 



63. "The New Iowa Idea," Literary Digest, XC (August 7, 1926), pp. 10-11. 



64. L. S. Tenney, "The New Cooperative Marketing Law," American Review 

 of Reviews, LXXIV (September, 1926), pp. 304-6. 



65. The conference that led to the formation of the Minnesota Council of Agri- 

 culture was called by the American Council of Agriculture, the Corn Belt Com- 

 mittee, the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, the Farmers' Union Terminal As- 

 sociation, the Equity Cooperative Exchange, and the Minnesota Wheat Growers, 

 Associated. 



