Farmers suffering the effects of drought and depression in the 1930s were looking for relief from what they felt were unfair prices for their crops, and reform of the entire agricultural and economic system of which they were the primary part. In the election campaign of 1932, they heard Franklin D. Roosevelt promise that if elected he would work for a program to help them. The vagueness of the president-to-be led a variety of farm groups to believe that he would support their leaders and programs, but some groups, such as the Farmers Union, were disappointed and their organizers criticized various aspects of the New Deal Agricultural Program. During the dire thirties, new farm groups were formed to voice their opposition to the program. The ideas of these groups were resisted by the Department of Agriculture, which fought back to stifle their opposition and largely won. This work is a history of seven organizations that opposed Roosevelt's agricultural programs. They are the Missouri Farmers Association, the Farmers Union, the Farm Holiday Movement, the Farmers Independence Council, the National Farmers Process Tax Recovery Association, the Corn Belt Liberty League and the Farmers Guild.

Cotton growing-Government policy-Texas-Historly 2. Cotton trade-government policy-Texas-History. 3. New Deal1933-1939-Texas. 4. United States.

From first to last the New Deal was a work in progress, a patchwork of often contradictory ideas.

Hamilton (history, U. of Kentucky) argues that the farm policies of both Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1920's and 1930's were attempting to create cooperative self-governing and planning institutions for agriculture, that Hoover's was defeated by the depression and his own simplistic misconceptions, and that Roosevelt's came closer, but still failed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Providing a needed historical perspective on current debates about industrial and agricultural policy, Kenneth Finegold and Theda Skocpol compare the origins, implementation, and consequences of two similar programs from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, each of which committed the federal government to extensive intervention in sectors of the U.S. economy. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and its industrial counterpart, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), had very different fates. The politically and economically successful AAA set trends in American farm policy that continue to the present. The NRA was rejected as an abysmal failure. Why such drastically different outcomes? A historical and institutional approach, Finegold and Skocpol contend, can explain the similarities and differences of the NRA and AAA better than competing approaches of pluralism, elite theory, Marxism, or rational choice. They show that the AAA aided large commercial farmers and increased their power over tenants, sharecroppers, and farm workers. The NRA, however, worked against the interests of its original business supporters and encouraged union organization among their workers. Finegold and Skocpol explain the contrasts in these programs by showing differences in the organization of governmental intervention in agriculture and in industry before the New Deal, and by tracking the differing ways capitalists, farmers, and workers participated in the New Deal political coalition. Both Finegold and Skocpol have been prominent in bringing renewed attention to national political institutions. Their crisp analysis of state and party dynamics contributes to theories of politics in advanced industrial societies and will appeal to political scientists, policy makers, sociologists, historians, and economists--in short, all those who must understand how past programs influence present U.S. policies.

Hamilton (history, U. of Kentucky) argues that the farm policies of both Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1920's and 1930's were attempting to create cooperative self-governing and planning institutions for agriculture, that Hoover's was defeated by the depression and his own simplistic misconceptions, and that Roosevelt's came closer, but still failed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR