55^ AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



than the independent agency that it had been. One of the first acts of the 

 F.C.A. in 1934 was to halt foreclosures on defaulted mortgages, but its 

 nonforeclosure policy had relaxed by 1939. 



Farmers coming from the western Middle West protested when the 

 A.A.A. failed to operate to their liking. The national Farmers' Union and 

 the Farm Holiday Association poured their wrath on the New Deal be- 

 cause of its opposition to the cost-of-production formula which they spon- 

 sored. Opposition was also leveled against the administration because the 

 N.R.A. had forced up the prices of the goods which the farmers bought 

 at a pace faster than the A. A. A. raised the prices of the products they sold. 

 Complications and protests arose over the hog-sow purchases and the 

 slaughter of these animals, and over the delays that the farmers met in 

 obtaining the advances that they had been promised earlier in 1933. This 

 spurred on the "cost of production" enthusiasts to attack Wallace bitterly 

 and force him and other administration spokesmen to come out into the 

 corn-hog states on good-will missions. In North Dakota Governor William 

 Langer, an A.A.A. foe, tried unsuccessfully to put an embargo on those 

 farm products which sold below the "cost of production." 



Parity served as an integrating, focalizing, synthesizing force, and was 

 somewhat a form of economic appeasement to the farmers who, for the 

 most part, had been unsuccessful in adopting the restrictive devices that 

 the industrialists and the manufacturers had used in order to keep up the 

 prices of their commodities. As Equity leaders once said, high tariffs for 

 industry and low tariffs or none at all for agriculture, "corporate controls 

 and agreements," and "labor monopolies" kept industrial wages up and 

 prices high, but they inevitably meant higher production costs for farmers. 



If parity promised the farmers better prices and higher living standards, 

 they promised no equivalent benefits to the millions of unorganized con- 

 sumers, the countless white-collar workers, school teachers, pensioners, 

 widows, and others who lived on more or less fixed incomes and who had 

 to pay higher prices for what they bought because of parity schedules. 

 Nor did it promise to make possible a very effective use of our natural 

 resources. 



Local action was of the utmost importance in putting farm programs 

 into operation. The Great Plains Committee conceded that much when 

 it said that the success of "a long-time plan for essential readjustments . . . 



