55 2 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



found themselves face to face with surpluses, vanishing foreign markets, 

 and higher prices for what they bought. Crops like cotton and wheat were 

 especially vulnerable to violent price fluctuations over which the domestic 

 producers had little or no control. In other words, the agrarians, whether 

 justified or not, came to feel that the tariff system as it operated brought 

 them greater burdens than benefits, and they became determined to right 

 the balance. 



The critics of American tariff policy had been advancing several pro- 

 posals: one was to lower the tariff schedules to a point that would en- 

 courage a freer flow of trade between nations and would bring down 

 the prices of goods the consumers bought; a second called for a "scientific 

 tariff" that would be based on equal costs of production; and a third 

 sought tariff equality for agriculture. 



The campaign for "tariff equality" had special appeal. This approach 

 appeared more expedient. In a decade that had gone all out for high 

 tariffs, the agrarians reasoned that they had a better chance for relief by 

 seeking to be placed under a more effective system of protection than 

 by trying to gain this relief through a diametrically opposite drive for 

 tariff reduction. 



As someone wrote, "The term 'tariff equality' had a Delphic vague- 

 ness: to practical politicians it meant sufficient concessions to the West to 

 hold them to their traditional party loyalty, but it soon developed that 

 realistic spokesmen for western agriculture meant by the term something 

 very different from a few almost meaningless duties." As a result leaders 

 from the corn belt believed that "agriculture must have a subsidy ... to 

 offset the subsidy in the form of a tariff which was given to the eastern 

 manufacturers. The East rebelled against what it termed the 'unsound' 

 policy of paying a subsidy to agriculture. . . ." 4 



The drive for McNary-Haugenism was of great significance. This 

 effort to make the tariff effective for agriculture, coming in an era when 

 protectionism reached the highest point in history, came closer to giving 

 the farmers a sense of unity than did any single farm campaign up to 

 that time. It appears certain that the vigorous drive waged in its behalf 

 forced the Republicans to give greater support to the cooperative move- 



4. Frank W. Fetter, The New Deal and Tariff Policy, University of Chicago, 

 Public Policy Pamphlet No. 7 (Chicago, 1937), pp. 18-19. 



