EPILOGUE 553 



ment, perhaps more than they would have liked, because they looked 

 upon it as the lesser of the two evils. Administration opposition forced the 

 McNary-Haugenites to band together into bodies like the American Coun- 

 cil of Agriculture, the Corn Belt Committee, and others for the purpose 

 of coordinating their activities. Said the St. Paul Dispatch, "Unless agricul- 

 ture enjoys the same American price standard as transportation, finance, 

 labor and manufacturing, a permanently fair exchange value between 

 the products of the soil and those of the shop, between the East and West 

 cannot exist. That means the decline and submergence of agriculture, 

 and transformation of the independent, land-owning farmer into some- 

 thing like a peasant." 5 



Another thing the McNary-Haugen movement did was to bring to the 

 surface conflicting interests within agriculture. One of the best proofs of 

 this is furnished by the failure of the corn-hog and wheat leaders to bring 

 the South into the equalization fee fold. Southern cooperative leaders, to 

 be sure, gave lip service to "tariff equality" but at no time did they ever 

 represent a very substantial part of the farmers of their area. History 

 reveals that southern tradition militated against the adoption of any pro- 

 grams that threatened either to increase the power of the federal govern- 

 ment or to extend the principle of protection which jeopardized the 

 foreign market for cotton. Experience seems to have taught many of the 

 southerners that their cotton economy could be better aided by federal 

 programs that looked toward the purchase of surpluses, the temporary 

 removal of them from the market, and the implementing of these efforts 

 with an acreage-reduction program. Many southerners also felt that they 

 had to guard their position as consumers. They were led to understand 

 that an equalization fee would "boost the price of flour, meat and meal, 

 the very things that the southern farmers purchase [d] in largest quan- 

 tities." Such a program would force up the price of mules because a rise 

 in corn prices would make the rise in the price of mules inevitable. "Cotton 

 interests would be short-sighted indeed," wrote the Cotton Trade Journal, 

 "to accept this gift horse from the farm bloc Republicans of the midwest 

 whose troubles originate [d] in inflated land values due to postwar specula- 

 tion rather than in low grain prices." 6 



5. St. Paul Dispatch, January 16, 1925. 



6. Cotton Trade Journal (New Orleans), January 15, 1927. 



