AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



ment against fire, flood, thefts, riots and strikes," but "nothing tangible 

 [had] yet been accomplished toward modifying [the] risks of farming, 

 one of the most speculative of enterprises." 



Crop insurance was hardly a new proposal. Private insurance com- 

 panies had given it serious consideration, but were very skeptical over its 

 working because of past experiences. The United States Department of 

 Agriculture, in a more optimistic frame of mind, had been studying crop 

 insurance over a period of years and had backed bills in Congress that 

 aimed to put such a program into operation, but nothing had ever come 

 of them. The big difficulty facing the government, and the private com- 

 panies as well, was the actuarial problem of determining the rates on 

 acreages that were subject to drought, insects, and plant blights. 



But this time the administration gave more than passing notice to the 

 plan. Roosevelt believed that at first it would be wise to limit it to a few 

 crops, possibly corn, cotton, or wheat. With this in mind, he appointed 

 two committees: one to draft a crop-insurance program, and a second to 

 work out a long-term drought-adjustment scheme. Wallace had hopes 

 that the crop-insurance idea could be used in connection with the ever 

 normal granary plan, which would be so constituted as to make it possible 

 for farmers to save their surplus crops during the years of plenty to use 

 during the lean ones. Surpluses such as these would be stored away not 

 because the government went out into the open market to make direct 

 purchases of them, but rather because the farmers would be able to pay 

 their premiums in kind. 



The idea of farmers' paying their premiums in kind was a novel one, if 

 the plan for crop insurance was not. Friends felt that the plan was a 

 doubly laudable one because it would cost the government little or noth- 

 ing to operate and also because it would make everybody happy. But the 

 big weakness, admitted by friend and foe alike, was that payments in 

 kind would have to be limited to goods that could be stored over a long 

 period of time. 16 



It would have been strange indeed had not Landon, in the course of the 



16. "Rival Programs To Help Farmer," Literary Digest, CXXII (October 3, 1936), 

 pp. 40-41; "Insuring Crops and Votes," Business Wee\ (September 26, 1936), pp. 

 9-10. For a fuller discussion of crop insurance, see "The Question of Establishing 

 a Federal System of 'All Risk' Crop Insurance," Congressional Digest, XV (Decem- 

 ber, 1936), pp. 289-320. 



