AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



duction control, farm contract, and cash benefit features that earlier 

 plans had lacked." Wilson was given the task of appointing a committee 

 to draft a bill and seek its passage. 8 



Shortly another farm-relief proposal, but by no means as important 

 as the domestic allotment plan the so-called Rainey bill was brought to 

 the attention of Congress. According to George Peek, Congressman Henry 

 T. Rainey of Illinois, the Democratic House leader in the Seventy-second 

 Congress, wanted legislation passed that would at least aid the farmers 

 during the 1932 season. Rainey contacted Earl Smith, the head of the 

 Illinois Agricultural Association, and asked him if an emergency meas- 

 ure effective for only one year could be drafted. Smith turned to Peek 

 for advice and they in turn asked Fred Lee, a legal expert, to come to 

 Chicago from Washington to help them draft a bill. After drafting a 

 measure they asked "Chester Davis, Alexander Legge, Clifford Gregory 

 and a few others whose views they respected" to pass judgment on the 

 bill. Peek said they all approved it. 



The Rainey bill contained a processing tax levied as an excise tax, at 

 least according to Peek, and provided that benefit payments be made to 

 producers on "the domestic percentage" of the crop. Senator Peter Nor- 

 beck of South Dakota introduced the measure in the Senate late on the 

 evening of June 29, 1932, and it was then referred to the Committee 

 on Agriculture and Forestry. Meanwhile the Farm Bureau prevailed 

 upon President Hoover to use his influence to pass some farm-relief meas- 

 ure before Congress adjourned. Edward A. O'Neal, the president of the 

 Farm Bureau, advised that the bill, "which undoubtedly will benefit prices 

 on hogs, cotton, and wheat three basic farm commodities of interest to 

 the whole Nation be enacted before adjournment." The measure was 

 passed "on a day when a number of Administration senators were absent." 

 It was brought up again in the Senate, reputedly at the request of the 

 White House, and was defeated. No action was taken in the House. 9 



8. Davis, Wheat and the AAA, p. 31. For a lengthy account of the activities of 

 M. L. Wilson, see Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa, pp. 292-311. 



9. George Peek, Why Quit Our Own (New York, 1936), pp. 51-52; Nourse, 

 Davis, and Black, Three Years of the A.A.A., pp. 13-14 n. Congressional Record, 72 

 Congress, i session, Vol. LXXV, Part 13 (1932), p. 14358; ibid., Part 14, p. 15194; 

 New Yorf( Times, July 12, 1932; Illinois Agricultural Association Record, 2$th 

 Anniversary Edition, XIX (January, 1941), p. 29. 



