MCNARY-HAUGEN MOVEMENT 399 



advances to cooperatives to enable them to withhold nonperishables from 

 market whenever a surplus "above world requirements" threatened to 

 depress prices below the level of "cost of production plus a reasonable 

 profit." 74 



The revised McNary-Haugen bill again came up for a vote in February, 

 1927. The new measure provided for an equalization fee for cotton that 

 was to apply at once to help in collecting funds for a "holding move- 

 ment"; rice was added to the list of basic commodities, but cattle and 

 butter were dropped; the operation of the plan was "dependent upon 

 a vote in favor of it by representatives of a half of the product;" an 

 advisory commodity council was to be set up for each of the commodities; 

 and loans were to be extended to cooperatives to purchase and construct 

 storage facilities. The bill passed both houses the Senate by a vote of 51 

 to 43, and the House by 214 to lyS. 75 On February 25 President Coolidge 

 vetoed it. 



The Coolidge veto message, though not unexpected, was a conglomerate 

 mass of the charges that already had been advanced by the opponents of 

 the measure. One Coolidge critic called it "a congeries of adverse opin- 

 ions and objections from several different sources thrown together with- 

 out definite sequence and with much repetition of points." His analysis 

 was both shrewd and naive. The McNary-Haugenites analyzed the Presi- 

 dent's message and proceeded to remove some of the objections "without 

 sacrificing the essential equalization fee principle." 76 



But invective, sarcasm, bitterness came forth from the pens of farm 

 journalists in a fashion that had seldom been equaled. No words were 

 spared in attacking Coolidge. One farm columnist wrote: 



On the day of his courageous act, he issued a proclamation increasing the tariff 

 on pig iron 50 per cent. Who says that was not an exhibition of intrepidity, 

 when he signed it as all the world must know that by the signing he increased 

 the cost of every binder, every threshing machine, every tractor and farm imple- 

 ment; that it increased the cost of locomotives, rails, and steel cars and thus 

 increased the freight rates to the farmer. 



74. Black, in American Economic Review, XVIII (September, 1928), p. 265. 



75. Ibid., pp. 409-11. 



76. Ibid., p. 411. See the Congressional Record, 69 Congress, 2 session, Vol. 

 LXVIII, Part 5 (1927), pp. 4771-73, for a complete text of the Coolidge veto mes- 

 sage. 



