ABSTRACT
The medalist, for the moment the nation's model farmer, had obeyed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of May 12, 1933. The citizens of the United States indulged the belief that they could keep out foreign industrial products, sell their agricultural surplus overseas and collect debts, old and new, from countries drained of gold and whose goods they would not let in. Fears of a new war determined nations to supply their own needs for agricultural staples if they could. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration was the agency which more than any other focused on restriction of output for the sake of driving up prices. Every method which responsible administrators and hardpressed farmers could devise for increasing agricultural prices in the face of surpluses was tried. The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, which replaced the Agricultural Adjustment Act, nominally, at least, made crop reduction secondary. Increased industrial uses of agricultural products had a beneficial effect on farming.
