FARM BOARD TO FARM STRIKE 4 2 9 



lican took two more gubernatorial seats. The make-up of the United 

 States Senate consisted of 48 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and i Farmer- 

 Laborite; in the House of Representatives there were 217 Republicans, 

 215 Democrats, i Farmer-Laborite, and 2 vacancies. The Republicans 

 lost about 40 seats in the lower house, and in the Senate they lost ground 

 in such states as Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, and South Dakota. 77 



If there was any farm organization that was split wide-open over the 

 Farm Board, it was the Farmers' Union. The backbone of support of the 

 Farm Board within the Union came from the northwest tier of states, 

 whose membership comprised chiefly the area that formerly had been 

 covered by the Equity Cooperative Exchange, while the opposition, bitter 

 and aggressive, came mainly from the Nebraska, Iowa, and Oklahoma 

 Unions. 



The Nebraska Farmers' Union frequently out of step with the more 

 radical policies of the national organization and most of the state bodies, 

 and sporting as it did its antistatist philosophy, which in turn asked for 

 a decentralized economic order in which the cooperatives could hope to 

 play a leading role charged that the Farm Board would result only in 

 "a great bureaucracy" controlled by "a political board, answering not to 

 farmers, but to the exploitative masters of the government." 78 It was also 

 charged that cooperatives affiliating themselves with the Board were 

 placing themselves in a position where the enemies of cooperation could 

 interfere with them. 79 



Equally strong in his anti-Farm Board pronouncements was the former 

 president of the national Farmers' Union, Charles S. Barrett, who told 

 the farmers that they were being "damn badly swindled" by the creation 

 of the national marketing organizations. Milo Reno, the militant and 

 colorful leader of the Iowa Farmers' Union, predicted that the Farm 

 Board would be successful only in "peasantizing" the American farmers; 

 the elevation of Alexander Legge to the Board, a man who "made millions 

 exploiting the farmer," was advance notice of this. The livestock-market- 



77. World Almanac, 1931, pp. 236-37. 



78. Nebraska Union Farmer (Omaha), August 14, 1928, p. 4. No resolutions 

 ever passed endorsing the Farm Board. The Nebraska membership was divided, 

 but the editorial policy of the state paper was decidedly anti-Farm Board. 



79. Ibid., lune u, 1930, p. 4. 



