AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



were stabilization operations unknown. The Equity, the Farmers' Union, 

 and the Farm Bureau, as already observed, had on various occasions tried 

 to reduce the size of the crop, to withhold crops from the market, and 

 to control the surplus as means for stabilizing prices. The various com- 

 modity pools established during the twenties also had such objectives in 

 mind. In 1926 Coolidge encouraged stabilization operations when he 

 called on Eugene Meyer to head a cotton corporation for the avowed 

 purpose of resisting further price drops. The presence of this giant govern- 

 ment-sponsored corporation ready to step in and buy up cotton at a par- 

 ticular price was held to be a stabilizing influence. 10 It also was a means 

 of keeping the cotton growers from being tossed into the open arms of 

 the McNary-Haugenites, who were seeking their support. 11 Most suc- 

 cessful in resorting to stabilizing practices were the manufacturers and 

 industrialists, who had become the envy of farm leaders seeking to dupli- 

 cate their production and pricing policies. One can hardly ignore the 

 various foreign proposals to stabilize farm prices, but at the same time 

 one must remember that stabilization operations were hardly foreign to 

 the American scene; in fact, it appears that our farmers were perhaps 

 more inspired by the practices of American industrialists. 12 



Precedents or no precedents, there were many questions to be raised 

 about the operations and functions of the Agricultural Marketing Act. 

 Was this widely publicized program of encouraging local cooperatives, 

 building national marketing machinery, and engaging in stabilization 

 operations just so much "window dressing" intended to pacify the farmers, 

 or was the administration in dead earnest? If the administration was in 



10. New Yorf( Times, November 18, 1926. 



n. "How the New Farm Relief Law Will Work," Literary Digest, CII (July 6, 

 1929), p. 10. 



12. Regarding stabilization programs abroad, see Bureau of Agricultural Eco- 

 nomics, Agricultural Economics Bibliographies 12, Government Control of Export 

 and Import in Foreign Countries (Washington, February, 1926), and 18, Price- 

 Fixing by Governments, 424 B.C. -1926 A.D. (Washington, October, 1926). For a 

 summation of some of these data, see the memorandum presented by Chester H. 

 Gray of the American Farm Bureau Federation in William R. Sutherland's A Debate 

 Handboo^ on the McNary-Haugen Agricultural Surplus Control Act (Lexington, 

 Ky., 1927), pp. 160-96. See also the report of the Royal Institute of International 

 Affairs, World Agriculture, An International Study (London, 1932), the portion 

 dealing with "Stabilization Schemes," pp. 212-34. 



