In Defense of Agricultural Relief on the General Plan of the McNary-Haugen Measure

Abstract

There is no occasion in a paper such as this to go deeply into the history and causes of the agricultural depression. The essential facts are well known and generally admitted, and are proven by statistics accessible to everyone. Taking as the basis of comparison, not the abnormal years of 1917–1919 when agricultural in America benefited relatively to the average of other industries (though not as much as some others) from the special conditions of the war, but taking the conditions of 1913, it is known and admitted that since the “break” of 1920, the condition has been reversed, and to a serious degree. Agricultural prices have ruled distinctly below those of other products, and much of the time very much lower. The real wages of workers in manufacturing industry have been well above those of pre-war years, and the labor incomes of farmers far below – when they had any labor income at all. “Industry” (in the narrow sense) has been vauntingly prosperous, while the figures for bankruptcies and for the movement of population from country to city testify to the opposite condition in agriculture.

Citation

Emmett, R.B. (2011), "In Defense of Agricultural Relief on the General Plan of the McNary-Haugen Measure", Emmett, R.B. (Ed.) Frank H. Knight in Iowa City, 1919–1928 (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 29 Part 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 57-62. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-4154(2011)000029B010