NEW DEAL FARM PROGRAM 453 



The origins of this plan, not to be confused with the price-fixing scheme 

 of John Simpson which bore the same name, are traceable to the domestic 

 allotment plan that was first proposed by W. J. Spillman of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture in 1926 and then published the follow- 

 ing year in his book, Balancing the Farm Output? 



Spillman, whom Henry A. Wallace once branded as the "philosophic 

 father" of the Triple A, apparently had become convinced that the United 

 States was going to remain a high-tariff nation for many years to come. 

 Profitable and expanding foreign markets for the farmers were a thing 

 of the past. But by this he did not mean to suggest that the United States 

 should confine its productive powers merely to meet its internal needs. 

 More than domestic requirements had to be produced and provisions 

 had to be made to see that products raised beyond domestic needs were 

 sold at an advantage. 2 



Spillman proposed to accomplish this through his "limited debenture 

 plan," which sought to limit the amount of the product for which the 

 grower was to obtain the benefit of the tariff. He made no proposal to 

 control the output. There were to be created a central commission and 

 local organizations which would collect data relating to acreages, yields, 

 and the carry-over from earlier years, and he saw that the state agricultural 

 colleges could play a part in carrying out the plan. Finally Spillman 

 was convinced that if his plan was going to make the tariff effective on 

 that portion of the product sold by the producer, changes had to be made 

 in the allotments which would "make it impossible for a producer to 

 profit by increasing his acreage of a protected crop." 3 



Among those to be influenced by the Spillman plan were John D. Black, 

 a Harvard professor, and Beardsley Ruml. Black, who had received his 

 doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, had gone to Harvard to 

 teach farm economics after a highly successful career in the University 

 of Minnesota. During the spring of 1929 he brought the "transferable- 

 rights plan" to the attention of Congress in testimony that he presented to 

 Senate and House Committees on Agriculture and also in his book, 



1. W. J. Spillman, Balancing the Farm Output (New York, 1927). 



2. Russell Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa (New York, 1947), pp. 190, 305-7. 



3. Spillman, Balancing the Farm Output, pp. 84-104; Edwin G. Nourse, Joseph S. 

 Davis, and John D. Black, Three Years of the Agricultural Administration Act 

 (Washington, 1937), p. 13. 



