AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



The problems of the dairy producers were also among the most dif- 

 ficult to come before the A.A.A.; the complexities of the industry and the 

 differences of opinion over the remedies to be applied simply added to 

 the confusion. 



In May, 1933, a committee of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics 

 that had studied the various means by which the dairy producers could 

 be helped said that the best immediate prospect for helping them was 

 in the marketing of fluid milk. No branch of the industry appeared to 

 favor production-control measures. A committee that had been appointed 

 to study the subject said that "voluntary and individual adjustment 

 through educational methods was preferable, perhaps accompanied by 

 efforts to increase consumption." Marketing agreements were given much 

 attention, but there was little thought given to production-adjustment 

 measures. 



By August, 1933, new difficulties faced the administration. The prices 

 of butter and cheese had dropped sharply and action was necessary to 

 keep them up. Late that month a committee representing milk producers 

 and creamery and cheese-factory representatives met with leaders of the 

 administration for this very purpose. Even when faced with this crisis, 

 leaders of the dairy industry were reluctant to advocate production con- 

 trol, preferring instead the stabilization methods that had been used by 

 the Federal Farm Board. This might have been satisfactory to the dairy 

 industry, but it was nothing of the kind in so far as the administration 

 was concerned. The administration favored a program of production con- 

 trols, but it held the plan in abeyance while the various producers, dis- 

 tributors, and manufacturers arranged their marketing agreements. 9 



By mid-September the administration was knee-deep in troubles. To 

 many what prospects there had been of re-establishing the "Arcadian 

 parity of 1909-1914" had vanished. Among wheat, hog, and dairy pro- 

 ducers the problems were pretty much the same. Wheat prices had been 

 rising altogether too slowly to please the growers, while the prices of the 

 goods they bought were going up fast. The corn and hog producers had 

 their troubles too. For a while they had deluged the market with pigs and 

 sows, but when this was over it developed that they had held back "piggy- 

 sows" and had thus endangered the entire program with the probability 



9. U. S. Dept. Agri., A.A.A., A.A.A., May, 1933, to February, 1934, pp. 152-59. 



