422 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



was running into the opposition of the wheat growers themselves, who 

 were hostile to its acreage-curtailment recommendations. 62 



The results of the acreage-reduction campaign were pretty much what 

 one would have expected. The Board, by its own admission, conceded: 



The 1930 spring wheat acreage showed little, if any, effect of this campaign. 

 The net reduction was only two per cent. Winter wheat plantings for 1931 as a 

 whole were not reduced except in the soft winter-wheat areas. Spring wheat 

 acreage for 1931 harvest was reduced 4,000,000 acres or nineteen per cent. Winter 

 wheat came through the winter with only a four per cent loss from abandon- 

 ment as compared with an average of eleven per cent and together with ex- 

 ceptionally heavy yields in the main winter regions, this resulted in a large 

 crop in spite of reduced acreage, drought, and low yields for spring wheat. 63 



This statement tended to confirm the view that whenever general advice 

 was given to reduce, many farmers actually increased their acreage with 

 the full expectation that their neighbors would reduce their plantings. 

 In the spring of that year the United States Chamber of Commerce 

 turned its guns on the Farm Board and met the equally deadly fire of its 

 officials, including Legge and Hyde. Legge reminded his critics that 

 chamber spokesmen had endorsed the agricultural act while it was being 

 considered by a committee of the House of Representatives. He added that 



. . . there has been considerable evidence the past several months that entirely too 

 many of your members were for the principle of cooperation so long as it did 

 not work. 



I do not recall in years gone by of hearing you men making any such com- 

 plaint against government aid that was extended to the manufacturing industry, 

 to transportation and to finance. And these all played their part in adding to 

 the disadvantages of the farmer, as did also the preferential treatment to labor 

 through immigration and other measures. 64 



The general belief in many quarters was that these blasts had been en- 

 gineered by the old-line grain interests and the chambers of commerce in 

 those cities in which the grain trade influence was strong, and that they 

 were going to solidify farmer sentiment in support of the Board. 65 



62. "The Farm Board Troubles," New Republic, LXIII (July 23, 1930), p. 274. 



63. Second Annual Report of the Federal Farm Board (Washington, 1931), p. 63. 



64. "Business Attacks the Farm Board," Literary Digest, CV (May 31, 1930), 

 p. 9. 



65. Ibid. 



