Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the 27th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, 25–29 March 1986, Anaheim, CA; and the 1986 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 28–31 August, Washington, D.C. I am grateful to David Balaam, Jeffry Frieden, Jeffrey Hart, Wendy K. Lake, Karen Orren, Robert Paarlberg, and Michael Wallerstein for comments. I would also like to acknowledge the research assistance of Scott James and Bess Karadenes and the financial support of the Academic Senate of UCLA.

¹ See Edward, L. and Schapsmeier, Frederick H., Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The Agrarian Years, 1910–1940 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; and Fite, Gilbert C., N, George. Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954).Google Scholar

² McConnell, Grant, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Finegold, Kenneth, “From Agrarians to Adjustment: The Political Origins of New Deal Agricultural Policy,” Politics and Society, 11:1 (1982), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ See, for instance, Talbot, Ross B. and Hadwiger, Don F., The Policy Process in American Agriculture (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing, 1968)Google Scholar; Campbell, Christiana M., The Farm Bureau: A Study of the Making of National Farm Policy, 1933–1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962)Google Scholar; and Peterson, Trudy Huskamp, Agricultural Exports, Farm Income, and the Eisenhower Administration (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979).Google Scholar

⁴ In the absence of artificial restraints, supply cannot exceed demand; if supply increases more rapidly than demand, prices will simply decline. By oversupply or surplus, I mean that supply is too large relative to domestic demand to sustain a price that makes farming profitable under current factor endowments and technology. The condition of oversupply in the United States was originally generated by many factors, including strong foreign demand for United States products as well as the perceived attractiveness of farm life.

⁵ There is a natural tendency for the farm population to decline as countries industrialize. As cities and manufacturing sectors grow, labor is attracted away from agriculture. Simultaneously, the remaining farmers may begin to employ more intensive agricultural techniques, thereby increasing their productivity. Up to a point, this process is self-generating; shrinkage induces improvements in productivity, which, in turn, displace additional farmers.

⁶ The process of shrinking output through population attrition clearly has differential effects within the farm sector. For the remaining more efficient and more competitive farmers, the agricultural surplus will be smaller and incomes, for them, correspondingly higher. For these lucky farmers, this is a route to relative prosperity. There are considerable private and social costs—related to the state of the macroeconomy—for the farmers who are dislocated. If alternative means of employment for these farmers are scarce, their incomes may fall dramatically. In addition, while the incomes of the remaining farmers will be enhanced, the income of the agricultural sector as a whole may actually be reduced.

⁷ To succeed, production controls must be mandatory. Under typical conditions, farmers will not voluntarily agree to restrict production to reduce surpluses. Voluntary restrictions confront a classic large-n prisoners' dilemma: each fanner prefers to maintain production, while others reduce theirs, even though all farmers would gain from cooperation. As a single farmer's cutbacks cannot appreciably affect the surplus, while reducing output, if others do not, can spell bankruptcy, the temptation to defect is overwhelming. If a farmer believes others are reducing their production, he will increase his own. Thus, mandatory restrictions are necessary to impose cooperation. Even here, the incentives to cheat are high. Farmers therefore require minimum price supports or direct cash subsidies, which act as a form of income insurance against cheaters, as the price of their compliance with mandatory crop restraints. Subsidies and mandatory production restraints, then, are mutually reinforcing. Restraints are necessary to limit payments to farmers; subsidies are required to gain farm compliance with reduced productions levels.

⁸ Mayhew, David, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

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¹⁰ Among others, see Goodwyn, Lawrence, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

¹¹ Benedict, Murray R., Farm Policies of the United States, 1790–1950 (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1953), 94.Google Scholar

¹² See Terrill, Tom E, The Tariff, Politics, and American Foreign Policy, 1874–1901 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973), 18Google Scholar; and Williams, William Appleman, The Roots of the Modern American Empire: A Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (New York: Random House, 1969), 106.Google Scholar

¹³ Benedict, , Farm Policies, 133.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Lake, David A., Power, Protection, and Free Trade: International Sources of U.S. Commercial Strategy, 1887–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), ch. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Benedict, , Farm Policies, 85.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Lipsey, Robert E., Price and Quantity Trends in the Foreign Trade of the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 157.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Benedict, , Farm Policies, 85.Google Scholar

¹⁸ With the closing of the frontier and the expansion of urban centers, land values also began to climb, increasing the net worth of farmers and enabling them to borrow more easily in times of crisis or for improvements.

¹⁹ Campbell, , Farm Bureau, 3–7.Google Scholar

²⁰ See Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade, ch. 4.

²¹ Fite, , George N. Peek, 10Google Scholar; Benedict, , Farm Policies, 168–69.Google Scholar

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²³ Ibid., 168–72.

²⁴ See Taussig, Frank W., The Tariff History of the United States, 8th ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931)Google Scholar; and Saloutos, Theodore and Hicks, John D., Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ See McConnell, Decline of Agrarian Democracy, and Campbell, Farm Bureau.

²⁶ Fite, , George N. Peek, 169–84.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ibid., 137.

²⁸ Schapsmeier, , Henry A. Wallace, 104.Google Scholar

²⁹ Quoted in Fite, George N. Peek, 164.

³⁰ Benedict, , Farm Policies, 179.Google Scholar

³¹ For a good summary of the issues and policies involved in the American stabilization effort, see Leffler, Melvyn P., The Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979).Google Scholar

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³⁵ Schapsmeier, , Henry A. Wallace, 118.Google Scholar

³⁶ U.S. Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, vol. I (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), Series C76–80, p. 96.Google Scholar

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³⁹ Condliffe, J. B., The Commerce of Nations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950), 481.Google Scholar

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⁴² Finegold argues that the farm organizations did not really support Roosevelt's initial policies. Rather, the principal advocates were “agricultural experts” from the Department of Agriculture and the land grant colleges. The greater prominence given to experts in the Roosevelt Administration helps explain the different policy preferences of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations. Yet, too much emphasis can be given to the role of experts in the 1930s. Crop restrictions were first proposed by Henry A. Wallace as early as 1921. Peek and others already constituted a considerable body of expert opinion in the 1920s. Finally, the Farm Board's switch to limited agricultural subsidies following the stock market crash illustrates the force of events. See also Kirkendall, Richard S., Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966).Google Scholar

⁴³ Schickele, Rainer, Agricultural Policy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954), 214.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Tasca, Henry J., The Reciprocal Trade Policy of the United States: A Study in Trade Philosophy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kottma, Richard N., Reciprocity and the North Atlantic Triangle, 1932–1938 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Rau, Allan, Agricultural Policy and Trade Liberalization in the United States (Paris, 1957), 64.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ David N. Balaam, “The Political Economy of U.S. Agricultural Trade Policy, 19171985” (paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August 1986).

⁴⁷ Ibid., see also Peterson Agricultural Experts.

⁴⁸ See Congressional Quarterly, Farm Policy: The Politics of Soil, Surpluses, and Subsidies (Washington, D.C., 1984), 129.Google Scholar