Monday, August 30, 2010

New Deal Ag Programs Didn't Come From Nowhere

FRom the News from 1930 blog (Wall Street Journal stories of August 29, 1931):
Farm Board has received "somewhere between 500 and 1,000" proposals for solution of the cotton problem in response to its plan to plow under every third row of cotton; "the Board has indicated that after it digests the various plans it may evolve and make public some other proposal."

2 comments:

George Buddy said...

Bill, I was surprised to learn that during the 1931-32 period, the Hoover administration, including the President, tried many programs, probably in half-hearted fashion. In fact government spending in 1932 was in par with initial budgets of tje Mew Deal.

Bill Harshaw said...

In the farm area, a lot of the difference seems to be Hoover's was trial and error and a lot of it was relying on voluntary cooperation, which didn't work. FDR's AAA put the power of the government behind a lot of similar ideas. To give Hoover his due, his efforts seemed big at the times. (Just as Obama's stimulus package seemed big at the time, but not big enough now?)