Corn-Makers 233 



profitable seed-growing businesses. Henry A. Wallace, United 

 States Secretary of Agriculture, and owner of the Iowa Seed 

 Company at Des Moines, introduced the hybrid "Copper 

 Cross" in 1924. This, and other hybrid corns, played a part 

 in the A.A.A. program. Farmers could comply with the A.A.A. 

 contracts to cut down their corn acreage, for which the govern- 

 ment paid them, and still raise on a smaller acreage, and with 

 less labor, more bushels of corn than they had previously raised. 

 Hybrid corn made this possible. 



There were die-hards in the farming ranks who protested, 

 after the manner of the old woman who pronounced the Day- 

 light Saving Law a scheme of the government's to make people 

 buy new clocks, that the A.A.A. contracts were a measure to 

 force farmers to buy Secretary Wallace's hybrid corn seed. But 

 the protests and the grumbling could not go on against the 

 overpowering fact of sixty bushels per acre. 



Figures like that renewed faith in the American dream. 



