Theodore Saloutos

New Deal Agricultural Policy: An Evaluation

PERHAPS in no period of American history were the efforts of the federal government to resolve the almost unresolvable problems of the farm prosecuted with greater vigor and optimism than during the New Deal years. What administrators and politicians thought and did about the depressed state of the farmers more or less set the pace for policy making in the post-World War II decades and deserves serious study. Any attempt to assess or reassess the agricultural policy of the New Deal requires a definition of what one means by that policy and a statement of what historians have had to say about it. New Deal farm policy included a series of complex and interrelated programs that aimed to elevate the long-range social and economic position of the farmers, rather than simply attain stated price objectives. The policy was as comprehensive in character as political considerations permitted, seemingly contradictory and inconsistent, and the product of many minds and influences at work outside and inside the Department of Agriculture before and after the Roosevelt administration took office. The Department of Agriculture was among the most prestigious of all federal government agencies of cabinet rank and played a crucial and dominant role in all this. But other agencies participated too; and since their actions had a definite bearing on the farmer, they and their programs must be considered a part of farm policy. Agencies which liberal groups easily could believe were more constructive and creative in their approach than the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) included: the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which during the course of its existence provided many rural communities with relief; the Resettlement Administration (RA), which became an official part of the Department of Agriculture only after

The Greek Orthodox Church in the United States and Assimilation

The Greek Orthodox Church, or that branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the United States that ministers primarily to the spiritual needs of those of Greek birth or ancestry, for the greatest part of her existence resisted assimilation and emphasized the preservation of the Greek national identity. But this turned out to be a more formidable undertaking in a nation of many nationalities and religious denominations such as the United States than in Greece where the population was overwhelmingly Greek, the Church was a state church, and proselytism forbidden. 1 Owing to the unmanageable nature of the assignment, the irresistible pull of the American environment, the slenderness of her resources, differences from within and pressures from without, the Church within recent years has more or less concededthe futility of her earlier efforts. In coping with this problem the Church has gone through some painful transitional stages: first, that of an uncompromising commitment to the preservation of the Greek national identity; second, that of recognizing that the young were being brought up in the United States and were Greek-Americans; and finally that of acknowledging that as a Church it was difficult to serve two masters at the same time, acknowledging that the Church had become an indigenous one, and admitting that the identity to be preserved was an American rather than a Greek one. The commitment to the preservation of the Greek national identity was strongest during the years before and immediately after World War I, when immigration was at its peak and thoughts of returning to Greece were still in the minds of many. But the Church had allies in this endeavor, allies whose labors in some cases antedated her own. And these allies included the Greek colonies that emerged in the larger cities, the myriads of local and provincial societies, as well as the Greek American Progressive Association [GAPAj who waged tireless campaigns in behalf of. the Greek language, Greek schools, and the Greek faith; the Greek language press whose very existence depended on having enough

Land Policy and Its Relation to Agricultural Production and Distribution, 1862 to 1933

IF BY land policy we mean a comprehensive, well-thought-out plan that made for an efficient long-range use of our agricultural resources, we are reasonably safe in saying we had none. If we had anything that came close to resembling a policy, it was that of throwing open vast quantities of public and private lands to cultivation which resulted in maladjustments that made it difficult, if not impossible, for many farmers to adjust themselves to capitalistic methods of production and distribution. The extent of these maladjustments may be gauged in part by observing the status of agriculture on the eve of the New Deal. Shrinking foreign markets, world-wide competition, rising tariff walls, poor farm management practices, and excessive production and distribution costs were accompanied by sharp increases in indebtedness, farm foreclosures, and tenancy. Agriculture was receiving a dwindling share of the national income, capital formation was being discouraged, and farming had been relegated to a subordinate position within the economy. From the outset it should be made plain that our land laws were hardly as liberal to the farmers as once had been imagined. And even if these laws had been more liberally administered to satisfy their immediate and long-range needs, it is doubtful whether they would have been spared from many of the vicissitudes of commercial farming. More than cheap land was needed to acquire full ownership and to retain it. A far-sighted policy that would have made for a seasoned settlement of the areas thrown open to cultivation and taken legitimate credit needs into account conceivably might have mitigated, but not necessarily eliminated, the difficulties of the settlers. Too many other elements were involved. As suggested, the phrase land policy suggests something definite, well planned, unified, and long-range in character. But the most cursory investigation bears out that insofar as the Federal Government was concerned this hardly was the case. Policies were, and still are,

American Missionaries in Greece: 1820–1869

A lesser known but perhaps significant phase of American religious reformism manifested itself beginning with the eighteen twenties when missionaries attempted to graft Protestantism on Greek soil. These spiritual reformers prepared to plant their faith in Greece while Samuel Gridley Howe, Jonathan P. Miller, and George Jarvis sought to help the Greeks win their independence from the Turks. This phase of missionary activity represented something extraordinary, because the Americans were attempting to impose their kind of Christianity on a people who had been Christians centuries before America was discovered.

The Spring-Wheat Farmer in a Maturing Economy 1870–1920

The spring-wheat region, stretching from central Minnesota across the X Dakotas and into Montana, has been the seat of much unrest owing to its unbalanced development from 1870 to 1920. It was colonized by seekers of the proverbial “free home†and fabulous profits to be had by raising wheat. As a result many farmers assumed burdensome economic ties and fell victims to over-optimism. Their difficulties were due to a variety of complex factors, some within and others outside their control; yet, one trend stood out noticeably: the grain growers persisted in a ruinous, anarchistic form competition, whereas among the merchants and their powerful allies competition was closely regulated.

Book Review: Family and Mobility among Greek-AmericansFamily and Mobility Among Greek-Americans. By TavuchisNicholas. Athens, Greece: National Centre of Social Research, 1972. Pp. 191.

independence from Spain, and mission and ranching life on the frontier. Chapter Five, Roots of the Poison, introduces the era of the hyphenated American: the MexicanAmerican. As the authors state, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which terminated hostilities, pledged to these new citizens the protection of United States laws for their religion, property, and political liberty. Absent from the treaty, however, were provisions for protection of their social institutions. Chapter Six, The Conflict of Culures in New Mexico, explains through a single example, the interaction between Raw and Anglos and .the. subjugation process. Chapters Seven, Eight, Nine, and Twelve, North from Mexico, Mande Ud. Senor, Deporting Jesus, and Braceros all deal with the migratory bracero worker facet of Chicano historical and subsequent cultural reinforcement. Chapters Ten and Eleven, Basta Ya!, and Heroes, Second Class, are Raza reactions. The remaining three chapters are basically descriptions of the contemporary phases of El Mooimiento and their spokesmen. The Glossary presents, for the benefit of non-Chicanos, a vocabulary of terms and acrononyms used by laRaza. En toto, I would assess The Chicanos by Meier and Rivera to be one of the two best books for overall Chicano history. (The other is Occupied America by Rodolfo Acuiia.) The authors treat politics, culture, economics and the arts in their all-inclusive history. While complete coverage of the Mooimiento demands more space than a single volume, it is imperative that comprehensiveness begin somewhere; depth of assessment is not unduly sacrificed because of it. To the contrary, the authors strive to define the cultural structures of society which place meaning on context and make it relational. In this, the authors, out of a number of variants, have isolated cultural commonalities. From these basic structures of human culture, the authors have reconstructed Chicano history. This is a history of Chicanos because it reaches beyond traditional so-called American history and defines Chicanos.