NEW DEAL: LATER STAGES 5 X 7 



government seal. Meanwhile, A.A.A. officials had been striving to get 

 the individual states to pass uniform warehouse laws to facilitate the fed- 

 eral program. Once it was suggested that the federal government build 

 granaries of one-thousand-bushel capacity on farms where grain pledged 

 for loans could be held under seal, but it appears that the suggestion did 

 not get very far. 32 



By late 1936 the ever normal granary plan was pretty much in the lime- 

 light, along with a growing demand for crop insurance. In pleading for 

 the farmer, Wallace paid tribute to the earlier activities of Joseph in 

 biblical times, citing the forty-seventh chapter of Genesis, to the works of 

 Confucius and his followers in China, who had formulated a scheme 

 known as the ever normal granary, and to the early Mormons in Utah. 

 He also cited the storage operations of the Federal Farm Board, disillusion- 

 ing as they were, as establishing further precedent. He appeared sensitive 

 to critics who scoffed at his ideas as being nothing more than an attempt 

 to regiment nature. Wallace replied, "We cannot regiment nature, but 

 we do not have to let nature regiment us." In fact, he felt that it was about 

 time that we took advantage of "the experiences of Joseph, the ancient 

 Chinese and the Farm Board." The havoc brought upon the land by the 

 droughts made such action mandatory. 33 



In the spring of 1937 a meeting of 5,000 farmers held in Sioux Falls, 

 South Dakota, with representatives present from Minnesota, North 

 Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Montana, asked 

 for the adoption of a long-time farm program and the passage of a 

 tenancy act that would make available long-term land purchases at rea- 

 sonable rates. It was also maintained that easterners were endangering 

 the A.A.A. program because of their economy demands. Because farm 

 prices were up, the feeling among many was that there was no further 

 need for such a farm program. 34 



When the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act became law 

 in 1936, it was passed partly with the feeling that the conservation program 

 had more to offer the farmer than did any other single proposal. But no 



32. Kansas City Star, December 27, 1934. 



33. Congressional Digest, XV (December, 1936), p. 299. For a critical analysis and 

 historical background, see Joseph S. Davis, On Agricultural Policy, 10,26-10,38 (Palo 

 Alto, Calif., 1939), pp. 399-4 1 8. 



34. Pioneer Press (St. Paul), May 22, 1937. 



