—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 21,1378
106
Farm strike has history of failure
EDITOR'S NOTE: If farm strikes and witholding ac
tions of previous decades are any indication, the current
national farm strike will die a failure. Farmers
cooperatives, on the other hand, have brought some
benefits to American agriculture. The following historical
perspective was prepared by the United States Depart
ment of Agriculture.
The idea of withholding farm products from the market
until a higher price can be obtained has a great deal of
appeal. Many business enterprises have demonstrated the
effectiveness of orderly or controlled marketing. Various
farm groups have worked toward this goal at several
periods in American histroy, yet none has succeeded in
obtainilng better market prices for farm products except
for very short periods or for limited commodities.
The Southern Cotton Association, active from 1904 to
1908, is an early example. Members talked of voluntary
acreage reduction, but also proposed strong measures to
keep the price-depressing surpluses from market. In 1904,
Texas farmers talked of burning a bale of cotton each,
every Saturday for 15 weeks, to eliminate 2,000,000 bales
that otherwise would be sold. Four years later, “night
riders” attempted to keep some farmers from picking
their cotton, and burned a number of gins. There was no
measurable effect on the price of cotton.
At about the same time, farmers organized a number of
cooperatives devoted to marketing specialized crops
grown in limited areas particularly on the Pacific Coast.
Many of these groups could effectively control marketing
because their respective crops could be grown
economically only in a limited area. Thay were suc
cessful, and most of them are still active.
Large-Scale Commodity Marketing
The success of cooperatives devoted to specialized
crops led in 1920 to a new movement with the slogan
“orderly commodity marketing and prosperity.” Ideas
developed by a California lawyer, Aaron Sapiro, con
templated state or regional single-commodity
cooperatives, each controlling enough of its respective
crop to be a decisive factor in determining prices.
Regional and - after the American Farm Bureau
Federation became active in the work - national
marketing organizations were formed for cotton, tobacco,
wheat, peanuts, rice, livestock, and may other products.
Farmers signed “ironclad” contracts to market only
through these groups.
These organizations of the early 1920’s did not control
enough of their crops to influence prices over any large
area for long. For example, pools were formed to carry
out orderly wheat marketing, with a goal of with holding
wheat from sale until a satisfactory price could be
received. In 1924-1925, ten pools, with 96,800 members,
marketed nearly 28 million bushels of wheat, only 3.8 per
cent of the U.S. commercial crop. Net returns to members
appear to have been slightly less than to non-members.
In 1924-25, 15 large-scale cotton associations handled
eight per cent of the total gainings. In 1925,28 associations
marketed 1.9 million cattle and calves, out of a total of 24
million marketed. Such figures contrast with those of
specialty crops grown in limited areas. The dried prune
associations, for example, handled 42.4 per cent of the
marketing in 1924-25, while the nee associations ac
counted for 26 per cent of that crop.
The attempt to control the marketing of widely-grown
crops failed. Even where temporary price increases were
obtained, non-members often profited more than mem
bers. Many of the large-scale cooperatives went out of
business, although some of the groups survived as
producers’ cooperatives offering business services to
their members.
The leaders of the “orderly commodity marketing’;
group resigned from their positions in the American Farm
Bureau Federation early in 1924, but were unable to
establish strong, mdependent organizations. The Farm
Bureau thereafter endorsed cooperative marketing, but
did not promote the idea of obtaining control of the market
through fanner action alone.
Federal Farm Board
Meanwhile, farmers were pressing for action by the
federal government. President Coohdge vetoed the
McNary-Haugen bill for farm assistance in 1927 and again
in 1928, making farm policy an issue in the 1928 campaign.
After Hoover became President, Congress passed the
Agricultural Marketing Act, which the President signed
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Cooperatives proven effective
on June 15, 1929. Voluntary orderly marketing through
cooperatives, particularly with the idea of ending
seasonal gluts, was emphaiszed by supporters of the
Federal Farm Board, which was established by the act.
The Federal Farm Board helped farmers organize
cooperative marketing associations and made loans to
them. It also made loans to wheat and cotton stabilization
corporations set up by the cooperatives to control sur
pluses that would tend to depress prices. However, the
depression of 1929 and subsequent years doomed the
Farm Board.
The last report of the Farm Board contained this per
ceptive comment: Experience with stabilization thus
demonstrates that no measure for improving the price of
farm products other than increasing the demand of
consumers can be effective over a period of years unless it
provides a more definite control of production than has
been achieved so far. In a few limited and specialized
lines, cooperative associations have made no progress
toward such control. For the great staple products,
however, the problem still remains for future solution....
Farm Holiday
Movement
As the depression deepened, the farm situation became
desperate. Midwestern farmers, faced with the loss of
everything they owned, demanded strong action by the
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federal government. Inlowa, under the leadership of Milo
Reno of the lowa Farmers Union, farmers began talking
on “farm strike.” The strike was to be launched on July 4,
1932, under the slogan of “Stay at Home - Buy Nothing -
Sell Nothing.” It was sponsored by the new Farmers’
Holiday Association, formed in Des Moines in May 1932.
The title “holiday” was chosen because many of the banks
which had closed had used the term. The rhetroic was
impressive:
Let’s call a “Farmers Holiday”
A Holiday let’s hold
We’ll eat our wheat and ham and eggs
And let them eat their gold.
The strike was postponed a month, and began in August.
The first activity was in the Sioux City area, where roads
were blockaded and some violence resulted. The
movement spread to Des Moines and Omaha, while
farmers converged on state capitals in the Midwest to
demand farm relief legislation and moratoriums on
mortgage foreclosures. The farmers won temporary
victories by obtaining higher milk prices in Sioux City and
Omaha, but the gains were erased when the picketing
ceased.
When governors of several Midwestern States met in
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