AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Middle West in 1932. The former opened his campaign for re-election 

 in Des Moines, Iowa, and the latter chose Topeka, Kansas, as the place 

 to lay down the six points that he held essential to any sound approach 

 to the farm problem. In 1936 the Republicans hoped to capitalize on farm 

 unrest in this area and went to the state of Kansas for their candidate. 



The western Middle West was also a pioneer in state rural credits. 

 Specifically, the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota, 

 unhappy though many of their experiences were, set up state-financed 

 rural-credit systems to furnish long-time loans on rural real estate. These 

 three systems were built largely in the belief that the private credit institu- 

 tions were incapable of meeting the credit needs of the farmers. "Although 

 these three [states] were not the only ones which tackled the problem, 

 they went farther than any other states." 8 



Progress was also made by these same three states in state warehouse 

 supervision. Preliminary efforts along these lines had been made by 

 Dakota Territory as early as 1887. In 1917 North Dakota, as a result of 

 Nonpartisan League influence, passed drastic warehouse legislation. Legis- 

 lation was also passed by South Dakota, Minnesota, and other states. 

 One or two of these other states provided warehouse supervision as good 

 as that in the three spring wheat states, or even better. Most states, how- 

 ever, found that the staff available to supervise the laws was altogether 

 too small and the turnover in personnel was high. On the whole, the ex- 

 periences of the states indicated that local efforts were not enough. 10 



While the agrarians organized, protested, and drafted their own for- 

 mulas of relief, the evidence is that agriculture declined in its relative 

 importance to the American economy. Agriculture still remained very 

 important as a source of food and raw materials; but from the standpoint 

 of the numbers engaged and the amount of capital invested in it, it cer- 

 tainly did not occupy the position that it formerly held. 



One scholar points to this declining importance of agriculture as an 



9. William G. Murray, Agricultural Finance (Ames, Iowa, 1941), pp. 312-15; 

 Gilbert W. Cooke, "The North Dakota Rural Credit System," Journal of Land 

 and Public Utility Economics, XIV (August, 1938), pp. 273-83; Gilbert C. Fite, 

 "South Dakota's Rural Credit System," Agricultural History, XXI (October, 1947), 

 pp. 239-49. 



10. Geoffrey S. Shepherd, Marketing Farm Products (Ames, Iowa, 1947), pp. 

 438-40. 



