ABSTRACT
This study is concerned with agrarian politics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although this is clearly an historical subject, I am not an historian, but a rural sociologist with a keen interest in current farm policy discussions. In fact, it is these discussions which prompted me to undertake this study. As is well known, in recent years there has been a mounting criticism of existing farm policies, especially of the protection of agricultural prices. Economists have been emphasizing that price support hampers a necessary adjustment of agriculture and causes growing surpluses of farm products. They have produced model studies demonstrating how much these policies reduce general welfare and harm taxpayers and consumers. They have also pointed out that the dumping of surpluses injures agricultural exporting countries as well as the modernization of farming in developing countries, while the associated government costs drain resources away from policies for assisting disadvantaged farm regions in the countries committing this dumping.1
