AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



from the same platform from which Landon had spoken. These treaties 

 were unpopular along the American side of the Canadian border, yet Hull 

 did not hesitate to uphold them. Said Hull, "Governor Landon was right. 

 The American farmer has been sold out. But the Governor is mistaken 

 as to who did the selling and when it occurred. The 'sell-out' took place 

 during the Hoover administration, and it was the Smoot-Hawleyites who 

 did the work." 69 



In 1937 Francis B. Sayre, the Assistant Secretary of State, told the Wis- 

 consin Farmers' Equity Union that the trade program had not damaged 

 the Wisconsin dairy industry as its critics had charged. He admitted that 

 agricultural imports had increased since the fiscal year of 1933-34, but 

 denied that the trade agreements made with the sixteen nations were 

 chiefly responsible for this. The increase in farm imports since the fiscal 

 year of 1933-34 was placed at $699,000,000, out of which only $83,000,000 

 was attributable to the trade pacts. He said that the boost in imports re- 

 sulted from improved economic conditions and the droughts of 1934 

 and 1936. The trade treaties simply were "trying to clear the river of the 

 debris, the agricultural wreckage with which it has been strewn since 

 the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act." 70 



Hull, speaking before the National Farm Institute in Des Moines, said 

 that the farm belt was the principal benefactor of his trade-treaty program. 

 Unfortunately, the nation, he said, was being "subjected to a veritable bar- 

 rage of sinister propaganda designed, for narrow and selfish reasons, to 

 wreck the most important policy which our country can pursue to pro- 

 mote its economic well-being and peace." He warned the meeting against 

 being misled into "helping predatory interests preserve their own privi- 

 leged position under embargo tariffs to the injury of the farmers them- 

 selves and of the nation as a whole." "Our great staple crops still defi- 

 nitely depend upon export outlets. So do our exceedingly important fruit- 

 growing industry and various smaller branches of agricultural produc- 

 tion." He reminded his listeners of the Smoot-Hawley tariff and the boom- 

 erang which it created in the mounting tariff walls abroad that it brought 

 against American products. 71 



69. "Who Sold Out?" Time, XXVIII (October 19, 1936), p. 16. 



70. Capital Times, November 3, 1937. 



71. Milwaukee Journal, February 20, 1938. 



