The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1922-06-15
1.-The Farm Bureau
Movement"
A Striking Book Review
by
John L. Heaton in the New York Eve
ming world"

Up i'm the Catskills a young Cornell
graduate drives a busted bronco automo.
bile over obstacles that would turn a New
York taxicab artist pale with fright. He
goes everywhere, in any weather, He can
give advice on bugs, blights, soil ~inocula-
ton, dairy methods. He is the County
Farm Agent
Town in Washington a group of Sena-
tors and Representatives, elected by one
party Oh another, disregard party to do
the bidding Of a new lobby, arisen to power
in a single extra session so suddenly that
the city public scarcely realizes it. This
lobby, to which the Anti-Saloon League is
an amateur, recently bumped into Presi-
dent Harding himself by m~arshalling
tie votes of ninety-four Republican Repre-
sentatives against the lowering OF the so
per e surtax on very rich men, which
MIR. Harding had recommended.
From the modern knight Grant in the
tanned hivver fighting the modern micro
scopic dragons to the great organization
in Washington that commands and We
toes legislation is only two short jumps.
According to Orville Merton Kile, late
Assistant Washington Representative Of
the American Farm Bureau Federation
chat is the new power), in The Farm
Bureau Movement" (Macmillan), the
first County Farm Agent in the United
States on the present plan was John H.
Barron, in Broome County, N. Y. Funds
were provided by the Binghamton Cham
Der Of Commerce, the United States De-
partment of Agriculture and the Lacka-
wanna Railroad. Cornell offered scientific
guidance. The date was 1911.
Now there is a Farm Agent in most Of
the counties, usually with an assistant or
two. Associated with him, but indie
pendent, is often a young woman who also
drives a wicked motor car up the side of a
boulder when necessary, and who can
tell the farmers wives about science ap-
piled to housekeeping. And let not city
people suppose that they despise the Home
Bureaus book %larnin'." They do not.
Any more than the farmers repel the Of
fered aid of the agent. He is their man.
For behind him is the Farm Bureau
cludes practical farmers. When the World
War sucked the United States into its
maelstrom, the Farm Bureaus became
sources of wal strength. 1t was only
when they combined, first in State and
now in a national organization completely
represented In every state and with a presi-
dent who issues orders to Congress that
the famous "bloc" appeared, to which
President Harding devoted awe-struck
consideration in his message.
Mr.. Kile describes farmers movements
of the past that have sought power and
vanished from sight or, like the Grange,
have been diverted to ~sociability. He is
cruel enough to point out many demands
Of those temporary organizations, satir-
lied then in cities, that have become law.
Call the roll: Regulation Of railroads,
popular election Of Senators, the r. F.
d. mail, parcel post, postal savings banks,
Re 'eral improvement Of roads, Anti
Trust Laws, the land bank, a panic-proof
currency. We take all these things for
granted now, yet how bitterly every one
was once fought as 'socialistic."
1t is easy to call the farmers bloc" a
Soviet. 1t is, in fact, about ffty-hfty-
half Soviet or guild socialism as demanded
by G.. Fl. d. Cole and others in England,
and half regional representation as at
present; only regional representation is
itself often of a guild nature; for farm is
sues are sectional. Wall Street is a Sec
ton. North Dakota is another. And,
as Mr.. Kile's book will demonstrate,
North Dakota's experiments have been
dispraised for the wrong reasons.
Most of the things North Dakota sought
to do were proper and would be for the
public as we'll as for the particular interest
If the league could only do them. II
should be condemned not for radicalism
but for ineficiency. 1t bit of more than
it could chew. 1t is no more immoral for
the farmer to demand legislation in his
interest than it has been for the manu-
featuring trust to demand protection"
in the past, while the staple farmer sold
his product at free-trade prices and was
double-crossed.
Saws Mr.. Kile: 1.-THE Farm Bureau.
being moderate in its demands, got drom
Congress in the session just ended) prac-
tically everything it asked for"-Capper-
Tincher Grain Exchange, Packer Control
Bill, Federal Aid to Roads Bill, Farm
Financing and Crop Exporting Bills. In
addition, "the plans for a sales tax were
blocked" The book went to press too
early to chronicle the crowning achieve
ment that scared Mr.. H~arding-the defeat
Of the effort to reduce income super-tax
on very rich men. How the country has
wept over the sorrows of these poor fell
lows!
People generally avoid important books.
But if they really wish to know how James
R. Howard suddenly has more power over
legislation than the President Of the
United States, the story is told by MIR.
kile.