54 2 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



At first the South seemed hesitant about supporting federal farm pro- 

 grams, at least when compared with the eagerness with which the agrarian 

 western Middle West endorsed them. Nor was it on as strong a financial 

 footing as the middle western area. Cotton still remained the number- 

 one staple of the region, and its producers were far more dependent on 

 the foreign market for the sale of their products than were the western 

 wheat and livestock producers. When the southerners were invited to 

 join hands with the western farmers, they were dubious, hesitant, skeptical 

 perhaps because they felt that their problems were different, perhaps 

 because of a sense of apathy or surviving sectional tensions, or perhaps 

 because of a combination of these and other reasons. When the southerners 

 finally did consent to cooperate, they did so only because of much per- 

 suasion, and in the end their interest in the venture usually turned out to 

 be a short-lived junior partnership. 



The Pacific states can be disposed of more readily. To a considerable 

 degree the farmers from this area were the victims of geography. They 

 were isolated from the rest of the farming nation in many respects; the 

 type of farming they engaged in was different from that of the more dis- 

 affected areas; and the influx of settlers from other parts of the country 

 helped provide it with a flourishing activity that betrayed distress until 

 the impact of the Great Depression. 



If there were good reasons why farmers in other parts of the country 

 did not take the leadership in farm action, there is at least one good reason 

 why those from the western Middle West did. The most obvious is that 

 the area had long been the scene of a great series of farm groups, some 

 longer-lived than the others, but nevertheless all of them casting a strong 

 influence over the thinking of the region. These states early had become 

 the center for some of the bitterest of Granger battles, followed in turn 

 by those of the Farmers' Alliance and the Populists. When the Grange 

 shifted many of its activities to the states east of the Mississippi and 

 advanced into the Middle Atlantic and New England states, and the 

 Farmers' Alliance and the Populists started to disintegrate, new farm 

 organizations arose to fill in the vacuum created by the decline of the 

 older ones. The lengthy procession that followed reflected the farmers' 

 agitable frame of mind. There were the various state farmers' grain 

 dealers associations, the American Society of Equity, the Farmers' Union, 



