AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



It was the emergency that had forced Peek to accept the curtailment 

 program, which he did very reluctantly. His instincts, like those of most 

 farmers, rebelled against the destruction of foodstuffs. His heart was not 

 in it. An old McNary-Haugenite, he turned to codes and marketing 

 agreements through which prices and trade practices would be regulated. 

 Peek believed that the government should maintain prices at home and 

 help the farmer dispose of his surpluses in the foreign market. 



As the A.A.A. began to establish its machinery, various groups sub- 

 mitted codes concerned with the food industries. More than four thousand 

 of these had been filed when the President decided to transfer from the 

 A.A.A. to the N.R.A. all codes save those which had to do with the first 

 steps in processing. In connection with these, differences had arisen over 

 the degree of governmental participation in enforcing them and also 

 over whether the agreements would have the desired effect of keeping 

 up the price paid the farmer for his product. Wallace, Peek, and Tugwell 

 all had a hand in formulating the agreements, but Peek had most faith 

 in them. 



A sharper conflict arose over the question of governmental control, 

 notably in the meat-packing agreement. The Tugwell group, it was said, 

 wanted the packers' books kept open for federal inspection, to which 

 Peek agreed, provided that they were kept open only for the verification 

 of reports and not for the staging of "fishing expeditions" in that or any 

 other industry. This conflict stirred up "the battered ghost of 'rugged 

 individualism' and the degree to which business men should be permitted 

 to 'run their own business.'" 32 



As 1933 turned into 1934 the A.A.A. found more difficulties tossed 

 into its lap. No sooner had the forty-five-cent loans on corn been made 

 than "the rash broke out in new spots. Trying to feed 45^ corn to $3 hogs 

 or to $5 beef cattle and come out even was a headache in itself." 33 Beef- 

 cattle men had opposed having their industry included among the basic 

 commodities when the list was drafted in the spring of 1933, partly be- 

 cause they feared that a processing tax would react against the market 

 price; but now they had undergone a change in heart. 34 



32. New Yor\ Times, December 17, 1933; see Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three 

 Years of the A.A.A., pp. 44-45, 218-19. 



33. "The Sorrows of the AAA," Business Wee\ (December 23, 1933), p. 18. 



34. Minneapolis Journal, January 2, 1934. 



