The problem of political management:
Two historical episodes examined
John Mark Hansen
Department of Government
Harvard University
March 2002
Prepared for the Conference on Political Accountability, Center for the Study of Democratic Politics
and the Political Economy Program, Princeton University.
List of acronyms
AAA
AFBF
Agricultural Adjustment Administration
American Farm Bureau Federation
BAE
Bureau of Agricultural Economics
FSA
Farm Security Administration
OMS
Office of Marketing Services
PMA
Production and Marketing Administration
USDA
United States Department of Agriculture
If democratic government rests on accountability, then democratic administration demands
bureaucratic responsiveness to political directives. If presidents are to be accountable for the
faithful execution of the laws, then they and their appointees must be able to control their
unelected subordinates. Democratic administration requires political authority.
Against this normative expectation, however, is widespread skepticism that presidents and
their appointees can in fact exercise their power over subordinates. “After he gets the big hello
at the White House,” a Fortune columnist wrote of Truman’s political executive, “he rides off to
the battlefield, where his deflation begins. There he will meet his ‘administrative officer,’ a man
whose name he has never heard before, upon whom Gulliver will find himself, in the first few
weeks, painfully dependent.”1
This image of political Gullivers lashed down by bureaucratic Lilliputians is a common
and venerable one. “Despite all the resources devoted to more topside staff, new management
initiatives, more elaborate analytic techniques, and so on,” Hugh Heclo writes in summary,
“there remain few … places where political executives can look for reliable political support in
any efforts at leadership in the bureaucracy. Political appointees in Washington are substantially
on their own and vulnerable to bureaucratic power.” The problem, as Heclo and others see it, is
that political appointees need bureaucrats a lot more than bureaucrats need political appointees.
Bureaucrats have permanence; appointees do not. Bureaucrats have institutional memory;
appointees do not. Bureaucrats have contacts; appointees do not. And bureaucrats have
expertise and information; appointees do not. Formal authority, in short, does not much matter.
“It is inevitable when an individual has been in a Cabinet position,” Richard Nixon once
commented, that “after a certain length of time he becomes an advocate of the status quo; rather
than running the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy runs him.”2
As much as this account might resonate with executive appointees and academic
reformers, however, it stretches credulity to think that it is always and everywhere true. After
all, political bureaucrats have resources that they alone control, resources they possess by virtue
of their position, and resources that subordinate agencies and civil servants need but singularly
lack. Political leaders, for example, control the movement of subordinates into policy-level jobs.
They control the formal and informal organization of their own domains. And, most
importantly, they control policy initiatives. Indeed, recent analysis of legislative delegation to
1
Robert Sheehan in Fortune, quoted by Marver H. Bernstein, The job of the federal executive (Washington:
Brookings Institution, 1958): 180.
2
Hugh Heclo, A government of strangers (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1977): 112 and passim; Louis
Fisher, The politics of shared power, 2d ed. (Washington: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1987): 146. See also, on
this general point, Bernstein, Executive: chap. 4; and Harold Seidman, Politics, position, and power, 5th ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998): chap. 3. For a similar complaint from the Reagan administration, see Philip
Longman, “Reagan’s disappearing bureaucrats,” New York Times Magazine, 14 February 1988: 42 ff.
executive bureaucracies would suggest, by analogy, that the extent of political control is the
conscious choice of the political executives themselves, made with due regard to its benefits—in
more expert policy development and administration—and due regard to its costs—in alienation
of authority over policy direction.3
This paper approaches the question of political control in the federal bureaucracy
inductively, pondering the lessons in two episodes in the history of the United States Department
of Agriculture (USDA). With its long tradition of clientele service, its tight bonds with
Congress, its close relations with powerful lobbies, and its ancestral allegiance to the interests of
farmers, the Department of Agriculture was surely an unlikely setting for the effective exercise
of political authority. But in fact, in the 1930s and 1940s, the political leadership of the USDA
wrested control of the federal agricultural program away from the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration (AAA), a subordinate agency with a strong, well-organized clientele. Through
reorganization, they gave themselves better control over subordinates and broader scope of
policy choice. Their actions, and the effects on clientele relations and the balance of power in the
Department, are the subject of the first section of the paper. The objective of the second section
is to reach some understanding of why bureaucratic reform, initiated from above, was possible,
and indeed why it was undertaken at all. The impulse toward administrative reform, and the
ability to achieve it, depended jointly upon the political goals of the leadership, the relationship
of its goals to the administrative structure of the Department, and the opportunities for the
agencies, their clientele, and their congressional allies to resist. The paper closes by using the
findings to reassess prospects for leadership in the American federal bureaucracy.
Bureaucratic politics in the Department of Agriculture, 1935–1948
By the summer of 1935, the two-year-old Agricultural Adjustment Administration
dominated the USDA. “From the time the Triple-A came to the Department of Agriculture,”
AAA official M. L. Wilson recalled, “we kind of had two Departments of Agriculture. If you’d
made a flow-sheet here, you’d have [Agriculture Secretary] Henry Wallace at the top, and you'd
have Triple-A over here, and the rest of the Department of Agriculture over here.”4 (See figure
1.) Together with its financial affiliate, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), Triple A
spent more money, employed more people, and generated more press than any USDA agency
before or since. The political importance of even its lesser officials outstripped their formal
rank. Triple A leaders, for instance, reported directly to Henry A. Wallace, but the older bureaus
3
See especially Terry M. Moe, “The politics of bureaucratic structure,” in Paul E. Peterson and John E. Chubb,
Can the government govern? (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1989): 267–329; Mathew D. McCubbins,
Roger G. Noll, and Barry R. Weingast, “Administrative procedures as instruments of political control,” Journal of
Law, Economics, and Organization 3 (Fall 1987): 243–77; and Kathleen Bawn, “Political control versus expertise:
Congressional choices about administrative procedures,” American Political Science Review 89 (March 1995): 62–
73.
4
Reminiscences of Milburn L. Wilson, Columbia Oral History Collection (COHC): 1443–44.
reported through Under Secretary Rexford G. Tugwell.5 Similarly, at White House functions,
AAA section heads rubbed shoulders with old-line bureau chiefs, who out-ranked them, much to
the latter’s consternation. To USDA’s other bureaus, the Triple A’s political importance was
obvious. “It should be brought out,” one chief observed, “that the other bureaus of the
Department are seriously raising the question in their minds as to whether or not they are to
become satellites and agents for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration [and whether] their
work … will be modified to reflect the political situation.” Soon after its founding, then, Triple
A “became, in effect, a department within the Department.”6
Likewise by the summer of 1935, commercial agricultural producers wholly dominated the
Triple A. Responding to nearly a decade of agrarian agitation, Congress passed the Agricultural
Adjustment Act in May 1933, and President Roosevelt staffed the early AAA with men who
were sympathetic to the farmer’s plight. Over the course of Triple A’s first two years, however,
farm producers strengthened their hold on it still further. In December 1933, disputes over the
AAA’s marketing agreements program forced the resignation of AAA’s first administrator,
George N. Peek, and his associates, and the abolition of AAA’s Division of Processing and
Marketing Agreements, the single beachhead of agricultural handlers, marketers, and processors.
Moreover, in February 1935, battles over the rights of tenants and sharecroppers in the farm
relief program culminated in the famous “purge” of USDA liberals Jerome Frank, Gardner (Pat)
Jackson, Frederic C. Howe, and others, and the dismemberment of the AAA’s Legal Division
and Consumers Counsel. Because of these two events, by the summer of 1935 the spectrum of
interests represented within the AAA was far narrower than in 1933. The Agricultural
Adjustment Administration was fundamentally indifferent to consumers and farm laborers,
overtly hostile to the agricultural trades, and openly solicitous of commercial farmers, especially
those represented by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).7
5
This was doubly galling to the older bureaus because Wallace had scientific expertise that Tugwell lacked.
Wallace, an important developer of hybrid seed corn, was deeply respected by the chiefs of the scientific bureaus.
Tugwell, one of Roosevelt’s “Brains Trust,” was an academic economist with only the faintest agricultural
background. See Wilson’s reminiscences, COHC: 1052–54, 1443–51; and Russell Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa
(Boston: Houghton-Mifflin and Co., 1947): 343.
6
Richard Lowitt, ed., Journal of a tamed bureaucrat: Nils A. Olsen and the BAE, 1925-1935 (Ames: Iowa State
University Press, 1980): 198; John M. Gaus and Leon D. Wolcott, Public administration and the United States
Department of Agriculture (Chicago: Public Administration Service, 1940): 196. Also, Lowitt, Bureaucrat: 193.
7
Van L. Perkins, Crisis in agriculture: The Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the New Deal, 1933
(Berkeley: University of California, 1969); Theodore Saloutos, The American farmer and the New Deal (Ames:
Iowa State University Press, 1982): chaps. 4–8; Persia Campbell, Consumer representation in the New Deal (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1940): chap. 3; “The Farm Bureau’s part,” Bureau Farmer, April 1934: 3 ff; “C.
C. Davis announces reorganization of AAA,” Commercial and Financial Chronicles, 6 January 1934: 60; “Milk—
also a noble experiment,” Business Week, 31 March 1934: 12 ff; Kiplinger Agricultural Letter (KAL) No. 125, 18
December 1933, No. 142, 28 July 1934, No. 146, 22 September 1934, and No. 156, 9 February 1935; “Permanent
AAA,” Business Week, 2 November 1935: 34; Paul W. Ward, “The AAA puts on false whiskers,” Nation, 22
January 1936: 93–94. See also Gregory Hooks, “From autonomous to captured state agency: The decline of the
New Deal in agriculture,” American Sociological Review 55 (February 1990): 29–43. While Hooks is correct that
the purge was a debilitating blow to the direct interests of consumers and the poor, I will show later that it was by no
The USDA in 1935, therefore, presented two challenges to its political leaders. First
Agriculture’s leaders had to wean Triple A away from the farm producer groups; then they had
to reclaim the Department from Triple A.
Political leaders accomplished this reassertion of political control largely in two waves, the
first spanning 1936 to 1939 and the second 1945 to 1947. Over the course of Franklin
Roosevelt’s second term, Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace first curtailed farm group
participation in Triple A administration and then countervailed AAA influence within the
USDA. During Truman’s first term, moreover, Agriculture Secretary Clinton P. Anderson built
upon Wallace’s reforms, effectively dismantled Triple A and further concentrated policy
authority in Washington. The results, as we will see, were significant. By 1947, the USDA was
more broadly representative of the agriculture community as a whole, more insulated from farm
group pressures, and more independent in its policy initiatives. From that time on, it would be
the major sponsor of innovation in U.S. farm policy.
Administrative reform in Roosevelt’s USDA, 1936-1939
The first steps on the road to reform came in 1936, when Henry Wallace appointed
Howard R. Tolley to succeed Chester C. Davis as Administrator of the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration. In his background and orientation, Tolley was a striking contrast to his
predecessors. George Peek and Chester Davis were both veteran farm lobbyists, and both had
close ties to the American Farm Bureau. Peek had formulated the idea of the “equalization fee”
in the early 1920s, and he had led the efforts of the farm organizations to pass the McNary–
Haugen legislation that incorporated it. To the same end, Davis had worked for the Farm Bureau
off and on for almost a decade. Tolley, on the other hand, was an agricultural economist and a
member of the USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) in the 1920s. Since then, he
had alternated between the USDA and the academy. He served as the first director of AAA’s
Planning Division, but in 1935 he returned to the Giannini Foundation at the University of
California at Berkeley. Wallace summoned him back to Washington in January 1936 to help the
Department draft and implement the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act. When
Davis resigned in June 1936, Tolley became the first administrator of the Triple A who was not a
votary of the farm lobby.8
That aspect was significant, because in March 1936 Tolley moved to do what Peek and
Davis had never dared: to cut Triple A administration loose from the Farm Bureau. More out of
means a lasting triumph for farm producer interests.
8
Richard S. Kirkendall, Social scientists and farm politics in the age of Roosevelt (Ames: Iowa State University
Press, 1982): 15–152 passim; Gilbert C. Fite, George N. Peek and the fight for farm parity (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1954); Reminiscences of Howard R. Tolley, COHC; Reminiscences of Chester C. Davis, COHC.
convenience than anything else, the AAA had called upon the agricultural Extension Service to
administer the farm program in the field in 1933, and it had maintained that arrangement
subsequently. To nobody’s surprise, Extension’s role in field administration opened Triple A to
a significant degree of Farm Bureau influence. The Extension Service had, in essence, created
the Farm Bureau, and in many states local farm bureaus contributed to the salary of the county
agricultural extension agent. The consequence, Tolley recalled, was “ossification.” “More and
more of the people [within AAA] were feeling satisfied with … what they were doing, and there
was less effort to pioneer and make things better. More people were following unquestioningly
the line taken by interest groups, farm organizations, cooperative groups, and so on.”9
Immediately after the passage of the new farm act, therefore, Acting Administrator Tolley
“announced that under the leadership of the agricultural extension services work already has
started to set up field organizations to administer the new farm program in the various States.”
In Triple A’s first few years, state directors of extension had headed the state AAA committees
and had often appointed their members. These committees, moreover, had reported directly to
AAA commodity offices in Washington. Tolley’s 1936 directive, in contrast, set up five
regional AAA offices, established five-member AAA committees in each of the states, and
vested power of appointment of state AAA chairmen with AAA division heads in Washington.
Subsequent legislation and directives from Tolley went still further, and by 1938 Triple A
regulations confined extension officials to ex officio appointments on state and local AAA
committees. In certain areas, especially in the South and West, county extension agents
continued to play an important role in local AAA administration—practices varied widely.
Nevertheless, by making the state committees responsible to Washington rather than to the state
extension services, Tolley eased Extension out of Triple A’s chain of command.10
In practical terms, AAA’s new administrative order was different more in kind than in
degree. Because local administration still depended upon the elected farmer committees,
producer influence in the farm program remained formidable. Compared to the county extension
agents, however, AAA committees tended to be more responsive to directives from Washington.
9
Tolley reminiscences, COHC: 440; Richard S. Kirkendall, “Howard Tolley and agricultural planning in the
1930s,” Agricultural History, 39 (January 1965): 28–29; Gladys Baker, The county agent (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1939): chap. 4. “At least outside the South,” a 1935 study by the Brookings Institution concluded, “a
laudable degree of success has been attained in making [local administration] responsive to the desires of the
producer group.” Edwin G. Nourse, Joseph S. Davis, and John D. Black, Three years of the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1937): 266; for a similar but less charitable conclusion, see
T.R.B., “Washington notes,” New Republic, 15 August 1934: 17.
10
”AAA establishes five regions for administration of new farm-aid bill,” Commercial and Financial Chronicles,
21 March 1936: 1920; Kirkendall, Social scientists: 153 ff; Reed L. Frischknecht, “The democratization of
administration in the farmer committee system,” American Political Science Review, 47 (September 1953): 707–08.
One measure of the increasingly limited role of Extension in AAA administration is the rapid disappearance of
articles about the farm program in its official publication, the Extension Service Review, after 1935. Contrast their
absence with, for example, W. H. Brokaw, “Adjustment program influences Extension,” Extension Service Review
(December 1934): 179–80.
Their members drew their salaries and per diems from Triple A rather than the land grant
colleges and county farm bureaus. More importantly, they tended to attract committeemen who
were basically supportive of the New Deal agricultural program.11 Balky local administration did
not end with Tolley’s restructuring; the AAA committees would themselves become a target of
Clinton Anderson’s later reforms. Still, Tolley’s architecture reoriented local administrators
more toward Washington and away from the American Farm Bureau.12
The political significance of Tolley’s shake-up was not lost on the nation’s largest farm
organization. Extension’s demotion rekindled the AFBF’s fears that the Administration intended
to promote the elected AAA committees as its main link to farmers, skirting the Farm Bureau.
“They fear that the time is coming,” Kiplinger’s newsletter related in 1938, “when the
membership slogan ‘See what your farm organization can get for you,’ will compete with, ‘See
what your county committee can get for you.’” Concerned for its influence, the Federation
launched massive—and successful—membership drives, intending to coopt farmer
committeemen, especially in the South. Even so, the Farm Bureau discovered that its
relationship with Triple A would never again be as close or as friendly. Tolley had pushed
Extension out of AAA administration without even bothering to inform his erstwhile ally, and
after 1936 Farm Bureau leaders found their access to Triple A’s high councils much reduced.13
Howard Tolley’s reforms, then, helped to pull the Triple A away from the farm lobby even
while it preserved AAA's basic orientation toward commercial producers of politically important
crops. They did not and could not, however, address the bigger problem of Triple A’s influence
within the Department of Agriculture.
For reasons that I will explore later, the problem of AAA’s position within the Department
loomed larger as the Roosevelt Administration entered its second term. “Henry Wallace was
quite a little worried,” M. L. Wilson, then Under Secretary, recalled, “about this kind of farm
movement becoming a kind of water-tight compartment agrarian movement.” Wallace’s fears of
Triple A domination within his Department were fueled by his aide-de-camp, Paul H. Appleby, a
journalist turned bureaucrat and one of the fathers of modern public administration. “Appleby’s
study of public administration and his experience in the Department with AAA Administrators
who tended to insist that the Secretary approve without question any decision made by them
convinced him that AAA was both too big and too powerful in relation to other agencies. …
11
USDA’s New Dealers believed the midwestern extension services to be Republican in their politics and
therefore unsupportive of the agricultural adjustment program.
12
To use Selznick’s terms, Tolley’s reorganization replaced the “informal cooptation” of the Farm Bureau with
the “formal cooptation” of the local committees. Philip Selznick, TVA and the grass roots (New York: Harper &
Row, 1966), pp. 13–16.
13
KAL No. 237, 5 February 1938, No. 207, 26 December 1936, and No. 209, 23 January 1937; Christiana
McFadyen Campbell, The Farm Bureau and the New Deal (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962): chap. 6 and
53, 85–86, 156–58.
Appleby was able to interest Wallace in the problem and to convince him that a reorganization
was needed to secure structural balance.”14
On the pretext of implementing the Mount Weather Agreement, a memorandum of
understanding that clarified the roles of the Department and the land grant colleges in
administration of the farm program, Wallace announced a sweeping reorganization of the
Department of Agriculture on 16 October 1938. (See figure 2.) The Secretary’s order pulled all
of the agricultural marketing programs, including marketing agreements, out of Triple A and
placed them in four different agencies reporting to the Secretary through a Director of Marketing
and Regulatory Work. (Eventually these agencies were combined into the Division of Marketing
and Marketing Agreements.) The order also dismantled the AAA’s Planning Division and
reconstituted it within the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE). These moves were taken,
Wallace stressed in his press release, to establish USDA’s “part of the machinery needed to
integrate State and local planning [by the land grant colleges] with general planning and
program-forming activities within the Department,” as agreed at Mount Weather.15
In fact, though, as one observer noted, “last week’s major Wallace maneuver amounted to
dismantling AAA and moving it behind the lines. Although the name and a skeleton
organization remain, AAA’s major functions were parceled out among four new Department
divisions.”16
Wallace’s intent in the reorganization was three-fold. First, by moving program planning
out of the AAA and into the BAE, the Secretary entrusted policy initiatives to an agency whose
viewpoint was much broader, and historically much closer to the Secretary’s, than Triple A’s.
Created in 1922 while Wallace’s father, Henry C. Wallace, was Secretary of Agriculture in the
Harding administration, the Bureau was the bastion of professional agricultural economists.
BAE, consequently, was the wellspring of policy innovation. In the early 1920s its staff
formulated the theories that underlay the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and now, in the mid1930s, its staff promoted a farm policy more oriented toward consumption than current AAA
programs, an idea much to Wallace’s liking. BAE’s assumption of policy planning
14
Wilson reminiscences, COHC: 2038; Gladys L. Baker, “‘And to act for the Secretary’: Paul H. Appleby and
the Department of Agriculture,” Agricultural History, 45 (October 1971): 256; Paul H. Appleby, Big democracy
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945): 149; Wilson reminiscences, COHC: 2039–65.
15
“Department organization changed to meet new responsibilities,” USDA press release dated 6 October 1938,
Records of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Record Group 83, Box 212, National Archives. Formally, the
Division was still part of AAA, but the Department treated it as a separate entity. Although its leader was an
Associate Administrator of AAA, the 1939 Government Manual described the Division as “formerly a part” of
AAA, and it appears separately on USDA organization charts (see figure 2). Under Roosevelt’s Reorganization Plan
No. III, effective in 1940, the Division was merged with the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation into the
Surplus Marketing Administration.
16
“Farmers: Cart behind the lines,” Time, 17 October 1938: 14.
responsibilities, in fact, marked their return; BAE lost them to AAA in 1933 only because of the
implacability of its chief, a Hoover Administration holdover. Together with the new
responsibilities, moreover, came a new leader, Triple A Administrator Howard R. Tolley, a
Wallace loyalist. The removal of policy planning to BAE and the installation of a sympathetic
chief returned policy initiative to the Secretary’s orbit.17
Second, by moving the marketing programs out of AAA, the reforms served to narrow
Triple A’s influence within the Department. The 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act had given
the USDA two significant rights and responsibilities: production limits and price supports on the
one hand and marketing agreements on the other.18 As the repository of both powers, Triple A
held most of the cards in Department, and it did not hesitate to play them. Control over the
stringent marketing agreements program, for example, enabled AAA officials to harass the
processing companies, especially after Peek’s departure, and control over the popular crop
adjustment programs allowed AAA agrarians to overrule those who were more sympathetic to
consumers and non-commercial farmers, even superiors. Consequently, Triple A’s political
position in the Department was of central concern to the architects of the reorganization. As
Wallace explained to his bureau chiefs, “The foregoing consolidation and transfers in the
planning and marketing work more clearly delineate the function of the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration. Its major responsibilities will continue to be administration of the national
conservation and adjustment program,” and, he might have added, nothing else.19
Finally, by uniting the marketing programs outside of the Triple A, Wallace placed USDA
marketing activities in a more nurturing environment. AAA’s control over the distribution
programs, coupled with its fealty to farmers, insured that marketing and the interests of the
trades would take a back seat to adjustment and the interests of producers. As Kiplinger
explained it to his industry clients, “For legal as well as political reasons, the producer must be
AAA’s first consideration. This makes inherently complicated any machinery for getting
specific trade suggestions during the formative stages of AAA’s program.” At best, Triple A’s
suzerainty caused the USDA to neglect initiatives that would involve food and fiber distribution.
At worst, it precluded them. Thus, in order to broaden USDA’s compass, Wallace wrote in his
press release, “We need to integrate these types of activity so that we might devote the same
17
Kirkendall, Social scientists: chaps. 5–8. Tolley’s willingness to trade the top job at AAA for the top job at
BAE was another sign of the diminution of the political status of AAA within the Department.
18
In brief, marketing agreements are contracts between the Secretary and the agricultural trades that set prices for
commodities (most often fruits, vegetables, milk, and other perishables) below which no handler can legally buy.
The Act gave USDA the power to enforce the agreements by licensing trading and processing firms in recalcitrant
industries. See Edwin G. Nourse, Marketing agreements under the AAA (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1935).
19
“Memorandum for chiefs of bureaus and offices,” 6 October 1938, RG 83, Box 212; “Outline of the [1939]
annual report of the Secretary of Agriculture,” 1938, RG 83, Box 212; “Violent upheaval in A.A.A.,” Food
Industries, January 1934: 29; “Cease coddling processors, Bureau demands,” Bureau Farmer (Minnesota ed.),
January 1934: 10a; KAL No. 148, 20 October 1934.
concentrated attention to marketing that we now devote to production and conservation, … and
so that citizens who deal with our marketing agencies may have a central point of contact.”20
The expansion of Agriculture’s focus was quickly apparent to those outside the
Department, especially those in the agricultural trades. “There’s a new attitude toward
agricultural trades among officials of the Dep’t. of Agriculture," Kiplinger exulted in December
1938. “It’s no crack-down against middlemen that Wallace is hatching. Quite the contrary.
There’s definite effort, backed by much thought, to get agricultural trades’ help, to get trades to
suggest methods.” As head of the Division of Marketing and Marketing Agreements, Wallace
eventually chose his former special assistant, Milo R. Perkins, a Texas manufacturer of burlap
and cotton bags and current Assistant Administrator of the Farm Security Administration.21
Virtually at the same time, Wallace assigned to Perkins his first task: formulate a workable plan
to subsidize consumption of food and fiber by relief recipients. Perkins’s approach to this
problem set the tone for the Division’s subsequent dealings with the trades. As Fortune recalled
fondly, “When the [prototype food stamp] plan was explained to representatives of the food
industry called to Washington for the purpose of discussing it, there was almost no dissension.
Details of the operation were worked out after consulting over a thousand leading food men
throughout the country. For once a government project received almost unanimous approval—
except for some of the national officers of the politically powerful Farm Bureau Federation, who
object to seeing any department appropriations benefiting anyone but the farmer directly.” The
contrast with the trades’ reception at Triple A could not have been more stark.22
In total, the reforms of Wallace’s second New Deal moved the balance of power within the
USDA toward the Secretary and his lieutenants and away from the Triple A and its organized
farmer clients. In 1936, Wallace’s choice of an outsider to lead AAA and his renovation of AAA
field administration conduced to more top-down administration, responsive to farmers but less
well penetrated by the farm groups. In 1938, likewise, his revision of USDA structure curtailed
and countervailed Triple A’s influence within the Department. Wallace’s reorganization
20
KAL No. 172, 7 September 1935; “Department organization changed to meet new responsibilities,” press
release, RG 83, Box 212; “Outline for the [1939] annual report of the Secretary of Agriculture,” RG 83, Box 212.
21
Wallace also named BAE chief Albert G. Black, a close political associate, as Director of Marketing and
Regulatory Work.
22
KAL No. 260, 23 December 1938; “Mr. Perkins goes to Washington,” Fortune, October 1941: 67; “Farm
problem comes to a head,” Business Week, 29 October 1938: 17–18; KAL No. 259, 10 December 1938, No. 265, 25
February 1939; “Representation,” Market Growers Journal, 15 January 1939: 30; “The stamp plan shows the way,”
Business Week, 1 February 1941: 29–37; Janet Poppendieck, Breadlines knee-deep in wheat: Food assistance in the
Great Depression (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986): chap. 12. The change in focus was apparent
to the farm lobby as well. In a memorandum to Roosevelt after the 1940 election, Chester Davis assessed the reason
for the Midwest’s defection to Wendell Willkie. Farm leaders “could have been kept in camp if the Department of
Agriculture had continued to treat them as consultants and friends. … For nearly two years the men in the
Department [have] ceased to consult with the Farm Bureau, the Co-operatives, or the Grange, on important matters.”
Campbell, Farm Bureau: 180–81, 178, 177, 184.
reclaimed policy planning for the Secretary. Moreover, it removed important powers from the
AAA and deposited them in a separate agency, around which a distinct new clientele might be
created. Political leadership, consequently, exercised more control over policy options and
priorities than it had just three years before.
Administrative reform in Truman’s USDA, 1945-1948
Henry A. Wallace’s administrative reforms in the Department of Agriculture were a
remarkable achievement, increasing the scope of action for the political leadership even at the
expense of an agency tied closely to Congress and clientele. In themselves, however, the
reforms did not reassert the full measure of political control, and some were effectively undone
during the guerrilla actions of the Second World War. Consequently, in 1945 Agriculture
Secretary Clinton P. Anderson also inherited a department in need of reform.
First, despite Wallace’s moves toward greater administrative centralization, subordinate
Triple A officials still enjoyed considerable independence. In 1943, for example, the chief of
AAA’s North Central Division, Harry Schooler, “decided that the time for being a good sport
and trying to work with the Farm Bureau was passed. So he set out on his own.” In clear
violation of Department policy, he mobilized AAA committeemen to oppose Farm Bureau
initiatives—including a few supported by Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard—at a time
when Wickard was struggling to hold onto responsibility for the wartime food program. Under
pressure from the Farm Bureau and its allies in Congress, Wickard soon fired Schooler, a close
friend and advisor, but the broader administrative problem did not go away. “Each regional
office was an AAA by itself,” Anderson’s aide, Nathan Koenig, remembered, “and each director
had his own kingdom. Some of the people in the field became too powerful for the job they were
supposed to be doing.” In addressing the problem of farm group penetration of AAA
administration, Wallace had still not solved the problem of AAA’s administrative
independence.23
Likewise, despite Wallace’s efforts to broaden the Department’s focus and to empower the
leadership to set policy, Triple A still exerted a strong pull on the USDA’s direction. AAA
consistently dragged its feet on the production-oriented wartime food program and extracted
concessions from Wickard that only strengthened its position in the Department. The end of the
war brought more of the same. The armistice signed, top USDA officials foresaw rapid inflation
and disastrous shortages and sought to loosen restrictions on agricultural production. Triple A,
on the other hand, feared a postwar glut and depression that would rival the 1920s, and its
position in the Department and on Capitol Hill kept USDA leaders from doing much of anything.
23
“Appeasing the farm bloc,” New Republic, 19 April 1943: 497; Interview with Nathan Koenig, Washington,
D.C., December 1986; “Hog prices to come down,” Wallaces’ Farmer (WF), 17 April 1943: 253. On the
administrative problem, see Charles M. Hardin, “Reflections on agricultural policy formation in the United States,”
American Political Science Review 42 (October 1948): 881–905.
As one observer put it, the Truman “Administration doesn’t like … the strict orders to keep
farm prices up on the market,” but it “can’t openly say so.” Even when the administration’s
worries proved well-founded, the Department of Agriculture clung to a “bare shelves” policy.24
But Wallace’s reforms had also created political possibilities for Clinton Anderson that
Wallace himself did not enjoy. In the seven years since Wallace had pulled the marketing
programs out of Triple A, the marketing agencies had developed an appreciative following in the
agricultural trades. Because of the food stamp program, Kiplinger wrote in 1940, the “Rank &
file of the Department of Agriculture … have learned a great deal about techniques of
cooperating with business and businessmen. This will be felt by the permanent staff long after
the current top officials are gone.” Indeed, the departures of Henry Wallace and Milo Perkins
and the demise of the food stamp program affected cooperation with the food industry not at all.
The “increased attention given food distribution and nutrition problems” during the war, in fact,
redoubled USDA’s efforts to keep tabs on the trades.25
On 18 August 1945, only three months after his appointment by Truman as Secretary,
Anderson played his card. Based on the recommendations of his Committee on Reorganization
and its chairman, former USDA official Milton S. Eisenhower, Anderson first dismantled both
the Agricultural Adjustment Agency and the Office of Marketing Services (OMS), the successor
to the Division of Marketing.26 Next, the reorganization consolidated their personnel and powers
into a new Production and Marketing Administration (PMA), organized not by function but by
commodity to bring the “producer men” from AAA directly together with the “trades men” from
OMS. Third, it took what was left of Triple A, renamed it the Field Service Branch and
designated it PMA’s contact with the state PMA committees. Finally, nearly a year later, it
reconstituted the state AAA committees as PMA committees “by adding farmers whose primary
interest is now marketing. It’s part of a general move to make [the] whole agency really ‘PMA,’
farmer run. [The] move will give co-ops and private trade representation according to the chief
farming interests in each state.” In fact as well as in name, from top to bottom, the Agricultural
Adjustment Administration was abolished.27 (See figure 3.)
24
Wayne Darrow’s Washington Farmletter (WDWF), 8 September 1945, 29 July 1944, 25 August 1945, No. 111,
27 October 1945; KAL No. 439, 22 September 1945; “Food subsidies to end soon,” WF, 17 November 1945: 842;
Clinton P. Anderson (with Milton Viorst), Outsider in the Senate (New York: World Publishing Co., 1970): 63;
Allen J. Matusow, Farm policies and politics in the Truman years (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967):
chap. 6.
25
KAL No. 292, 17 February 1940; Walter W. Wilcox, The farmer and the Second World War (Ames: Iowa State
College Press, 1947): 351; KAL No. 333, 30 August 1941, No. 353, 4 July 1942.
26
The marketing agency went through many incarnations after 1938, but the Division of Marketing and Marketing
Agreements was essentially intact within OMS. By this time, too, the AAA was more properly titled the
Agricultural Adjustment Agency. For a helpful organizational history, see Government Information Service, United
States Government Manual (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1946): Appendix A.
27
WDWF No. 137, 27 April 1946, 28 July 1945, 4 August 1945, 11 August 1945, No. 158, 21 September 1946;
“Memorandum,” 18 August 1945, RG 83, Box 211; KAL No. 431, 2 June 1945, No. 457, 1 June 1946; Matusow,
From the standpoint of political administration, the super-agency that Anderson created in
1945 and 1946 was radically different from the old Triple A. Both the farm groups and the
trades complained of losses in the shuffle, accusing Anderson of sacrificing them to the enemy.
In truth, neither and both were correct, and that was exactly the point. “The Department of
Agriculture, in the opinion of some people, has a better balance in the point of view and the
experience of its administrators, than before,” USDA economist Walter Wilcox wrote in 1947.
“Before the war, the dominance of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, administered by
farmers with continued farm connections, was a source of concern to some students of public
administration. Although former Agricultural Adjustment Administration officials maintain
several key positions in the Department of Agriculture [including PMA Director], the processing
point of view is well represented in the commodity branches.” Unlike the separate AAA and
OMS, then, the Production and Marketing Administration forced advocates of producers and
champions of the trades to confront each other in formulating and implementing both the
marketing and adjustment programs. In the farm program in particular, it lent greater weight to
proposals for moving crop surpluses into consumption and export rather than merely preventing
them. As Darrow summarized, the “practical effect is to break up the once-mighty AAA, …
which has been a thorn in the flesh of some trades and others for years. [The] main business
significance to farmers is that producer influence will be much weaker in policy and program
making. [The] significance to farm and food trades is assurance that PMA policies and programs
will be developed in an atmosphere more favorable to business.” USDA’s new structure was
well adapted to where USDA’s leaders wanted to go.28
The construction of the PMA, however, was only the first phase of a three-step reform
designed to fortify the position of the Secretary in agricultural policymaking and
implementation. The second phase, achieved in the fall of 1945, consolidated policy planning
responsibilities in the Office of the Secretary. By accretion, AAA and OMS had picked up
policy prerogatives during the war, counterpoising them to the traditional powers of the BAE.
“A lot of the authority and thinking in the Department of Agriculture was broadly scattered,”
Nathan Koenig recalled. Consequently, Anderson extracted policy planning, first from the PMA
(in October) and then from the BAE (in December), and unified it in his own office. The
Secretary tightened his grip on policy initiative.29
Farm policies: 72–78; James L. Forsythe, “Clinton P. Anderson: Politician and businessman as Truman’s Secretary
of Agriculture,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1970: chap. 14.
28
Wilcox, Second World War: 351; WDWF No. 159, 28 September 1946; Wilcox, Second World War: 357–60;
John Morton Blum, The price of vision: The diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942-1946 (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co.,
1973): 545; WDWF No. 112, 3 November 1945; KAL No. 452, 23 March 1946; “May pay more for light hogs,” WF,
20 April 1946: 387; “Put AAA men back in power,” WF, 4 May 1946: 436. Wayne Darrow, a journalist, served in
the USDA’s Office of Information in the 1930s.
29
Koenig interview; “Origin, structure and functions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” mimeo, 1 November
1946, USDA Office of Information: 12; WDWF, 6 October 1945; Charles M. Hardin, “The Bureau of Agricultural
Economics under fire: A study in valuation conflicts,” Journal of Farm Economics 28 (August 1946): 651;
In the third phase of his reforms, finally, Anderson brought PMA’s field administration
under Washington’s harness. In June 1946, PMA Director Robert Shields took state program
planning and policymaking responsibilities away from the elected state committees and gave
them instead to federally-appointed PMA directors. In September, moreover, Shields abolished
the regional PMA offices, replaced the Field Service Branch with an Assistant Administrator for
Field Operations, and directed the PMA commodity branches to deal directly with the state PMA
committees. The trend, Darrow noted in his newsletter, “is toward [a] centralized, push-button,
type of administration from Washington to states to counties, and away from [the] old committee
system of state operation. In the states, PMA directors and assistant directors will be in full
charge, [and] boss virtually all PMA field programs.” The “Production and Marketing Adm.’s
new policy of centralized, top-down administration,” he continued, “means that more and more
key decisions will be made in the office of Director Shields.” The state and county committees
were “put under the strictest Department discipline [they have] ever known.”30
Anderson’s order, especially the abolition of the regional offices, precipitated a blowup.
“To its enemies,” Matusow noted, “this order meant the destruction of the last vestiges of the
AAA and farmer influence in Washington.” The regional directors, the state committee
chairmen, the Farmers Union, and the Farm Bureau, strange bedfellows all, took their protests to
Congress and the White House. Under pressure and concerned that the “issue was being
agitated” in the midst of the 1946 elections, Anderson rescinded his decision two weeks later, on
Truman’s order. The opponents’ hopes of a permanent reversal, though, proved illusory. “As
soon as the 14 state PMA directors … hit town,” Darrow reported in February 1947, after the
election, “Anderson laid down the law: that he would be Secretary as long as Truman was
President; that he, not the old AAA, was going to run USDA; [and] that the old days of AAA
domination over USDA policy (under Wickard) are over.” In January acting PMA Director
Jesse Gilmer “more or less suspended” the ringleader of the AAA dissidents, and by late
February the rebellion had subsided. By April it had ended. The task had taken nearly a year,
but Clinton Anderson had beaten the Triple A.31
Kirkendall, Social scientists: 232–33, 237–38; Herbert Emmerich, Essays on federal reorganization (University,
Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1950): 48.
30
WDWF No. 145, 22 June 1946, No. 153, 17 August 1946, No. 136, 20 April 1946; KAL No. 459, 29 June 1946,
No. 466, 5 October 1946; “Anything could happen now,” WF, 1 September 1945: 591; “Thinks crop control may be
needed,” WF, 19 October 1946: 1007. For a dissenting opinion, see Richard Wilson, “The farmer’s Washington,”
Successful Farming, July 1946: 12.
31
Matusow, Farm policies: 74; KAL No. 467, 19 October 1946; WDWF No. 178, 8 February 1947; Richard
Wilson, “The farmer’s Washington,” Successful Farming, February 1947: 6; WDWF No. 154, 24 August 1946, No.
155, 31 August 1946, No. 161, 12 October 1946, No. 164, 2 November 1946, No. 168, 30 November 1946, No. 184,
22 March 1947, No. 189, 26 April 1947, No. 199, 5 July 1947; KAL No. 469, 16 November 1946; “Shall we go back
to acreage control?” WF, 2 November 1946: 1059; “Will new Congress change farm program?” WF, 7 December
1946: 1175; “Congress wants to cut farm funds,” WF, 1 March 1947: 228; Matusow, Farm policies: 74–76.
In total, the reorganization of 1945 to 1947 contained the influence of the agencies and
expanded the power of the leadership within the USDA. It broke Triple A into pieces, scattered
it into dozens of new PMA branches, and countered it with marketing specialists and their allies
in the agricultural trades. It harvested policy planning responsibilities from the bureaus and
deposited them in the Office of the Secretary. Finally, it moved control of USDA administration
out of the country and into Washington, subjugated the elected committees to the appointed
directors, and closed down the fiefdoms in the regional AAA offices.
Conclusion
In the 1930s and 1940s, then, two Secretaries of Agriculture extended leadership’s range
of decision over matters of policy. By tightening the reins on field administration, the
Secretaries restricted the ability of subordinates and clients to interfere in the implementation of
policies they opposed. Further, by consolidating policy planning within their orbit, the
Secretaries limited the power of subordinates and clients to squelch proposals they disfavored.
Finally, by countervailing subordinates and clients within the Department, the Secretaries
created opportunities to play their demands off against each other.32
Thus, the significance of the USDA reforms in the thirties and forties was not that leaders
acted contrary to the wishes of agencies or interest groups (even though Anderson’s reforms
encountered stiff opposition from both). Rather, the significance was that leaders took the
opportunity to build political and institutional barriers against the demands of agencies and
interest groups. The Secretaries bought insurance against the day when they would have to
oppose them—and that day was not long in coming.
Even so, the reassertion of the political control in the Department of Agriculture is a
remarkable story. It is remarkable that it succeeded. It is remarkable that it encountered so little
resistance. And it is remarkable that it was undertaken at all. What do the circumstances of
reorganization in the 1930s and 1940s suggest about the conditions under which political
bureaucrats can extend their control over the direction of their own departments? Why did
Wallace and Anderson try, and why did they succeed, in the exercise of political leadership in
the federal bureaucracy?
Delegation and political authority
One of the key powers of political leaders in the federal bureaucracy is their control over
32
Readers will recognize these as some of Eric A. Nordlinger’s “autonomy-enhancing strategies.” See
Nordlinger, On the autonomy of the democratic state (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981): 90–98, 109–15,
128–34.
the formal and informal organization of their own domains. Political executives are charged by
legislation passed by Congress to manage specific programs, but the precise form administration
takes is subject to their discretion. To be sure, their choice is constrained. Enactment coalitions
in Congress make administrative assignments in the anticipation that particular interests will be
served and protected. Oversight committees control budget and prerogatives. Citizens cooperate
in administrative programs or resist, collectively or individually. But the instruments of
constraint are blunt. Enforcement of congressional preferences over administrative structure and
routine requires collective action, and even if achieved not only deprives departmental
executives but also clientele agencies and, importantly, constituents. Political leaders enjoy
considerable scope of action within parameters quite broadly defined by Congress.
Accordingly, the primary issue that confronts political executives in the administrative
design of their departments is the issue of delegation: how much discretion shall be granted
subordinate agencies and on what terms? As Bawn argues of legislative delegation, the “degree
of agency independence on an particular policy reflects the legislature’s willingness to trade
uncertainty about policy consequences for uncertainty about agency behavior.”33 So, too, of
department leaders. Political bureaucrats must balance the benefits of more expert
administration against the danger that agencies will use delegated powers to set their own course.
As the department’s vulnerability to policy uncertainty gives way to vulnerability to
administrative uncertainty, as it will, leadership might be expected to attempt to reclaim
authority it had previously and willingly alienated.
The Wallace reorganization: Policy uncertainty
As a starting point, such is a reasonable interpretation of the reorganization of Triple A in
the 1930s. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 12 May 1933 charged the department to
implement the voluntary domestic allotment program for each of seven “basic” commodities,
wheat, cotton, corn, hogs, tobacco, rice, and milk.34 The allotment plan required farmers to scale
back production in return for benefit payments made from the proceeds of a “processing tax” on
millers, ginners, packers, crushers, and manufacturers.
Administratively, the undertaking was immensely complex. As a Brookings Institution
study summarized, the design of the program in Washington entailed
(a) Analysis of the existing and prospective situation with particular reference to the economic
position of producers as measured by the standard of purchasing power “parity.”
(b) Determination of the rate of the processing tax which would be indicated in this situation in
33
Bawn, “Political control”: 63.
The number of basic commodities was soon expanded to 13 by the Jones-Connally Act of 1934. The list of
supported crops expanded and contracted, but wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco, rice, peanuts, and milk were consistently
covered.
34
accordance with the act and estimation of the probable revenue from such a tax.
(c) Decision as to the amount of reduction in production of the commodity which should be
sought to effectuate the purposes of the act.
(d) Consideration of the rate of payment to producers which would be necessary in order to obtain
their participation in the plan….
(e) Determination of a representative base period from which reduction of acreage or production
would be computed with the highest degree of equity to the several interested parties.
(f) The setting of such quotas as were to be allotted and the manner in which they were to be
distributed geographically and, finally, to the individual.
(g) Specification of rates of payment to be made for compliance with the adjustment program.
(h) Preparation of instructions, forms, and other administrative details.35
Additionally, the implementation of the program in the field required
(a) The preparation of publicity material to give popular exposition of the details of the plan and
how it was expected to affect participants….
(b) Organization and supervision of actual sign-up campaigns….
(c) Checking and often adjusting participants’ data as to previous farming operations. These were
indispensable elements in determining the terms of each participant’s contract with the
Secretary of Agriculture and the basis of payments to be made to him subsequently on proof of
compliance.
(d) Completing the routine of acceptance in the name of the Secretary so as to constitute a valid
contract.
And, moreover, once participants were enrolled, successful execution of the contracts demanded
(a) Computing preliminary payments which were to be made during the growing season in
accordance with the terms of the contract and having payment checks prepared in Washington
and distributed to millions of contract signers in all parts of the country.
(b) Planning and supervising the activities of local agencies in checking contract signers’ farming
operations during the growing season to see that they were complying with the terms of the
contract.
(c) Dealing with such special circumstances as might arise during the period of operation which
might call for special interpretations of the contract terms or even modification of the original
plan….
(d) Securing final check of compliance with the terms of the completed contract and submission of
final proof of such compliance.
(e) Computation of the year’s final payments due in accordance with the terms of the contract and
issuance and distribution of final settlement checks.36
In the first year, the four largest programs—in cotton, tobacco, wheat, and corn and hogs—wrote
nearly two million production control contracts with nearly three million farmers, monitored
35
36
Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three years: 61–62.
Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three years: 65–66.
compliance, and issued benefit payments.37
Thus, in 1933, policy uncertainty loomed large. With tasks like these, program
implementation simply could not be done from Washington. It required too much local
knowledge, and time was too short: by the time the Act was passed, most field crops were
already planted, and wheat was ripe for harvest in the southern plains. Thus, delegation of field
administration to the agricultural Extension services and to committees of farmers appointed by
county extension agents helped to overcome acute difficulties in program implementation.
The nature of the difficulties was threefold. One uncertainty was purely informational. In
order to implement the allotment program for field crops, AAA needed to establish a “base
acreage,” an historic benchmark of previous production for each commodity, for each farm
producer. It needed moreover to ascertain whether each farmer in fact complied with the terms
of production contracts by reducing plantings or destroying crops already planted. In reporting
their practices in years previous or in carrying through on their contractual obligations, farmers
had incentives to misrepresent, or to be more charitable, to guess on the high side whenever they
did not know for sure. Nationwide, for example, compared to official USDA estimates, cotton
producers “overestimated” their previous acreage in cotton by 6.6 percent and their previous
production of cotton by 22.6 percent. In the most startling instance, Oklahoma producers
overstated their typical production by nearly 50 percent. Such experience was not peculiar to
cotton. In all the programs, the sum of farmers’ individual claims of historic acreage and historic
production usually exceeded the county estimates that BAE’s crop reporting bureau had made,
sometimes by a wide margin. But Triple A insisted that the numbers be made to match, and
“newspaper accounts of the failure of Farm Bureau leaders to persuade [AAA Production
Division chief] Chester C. Davis … that the quotas should be relinquished resulted in many
communities returning with renewed vigor to the work of adjusting production figures in
[acreage reduction] contracts.” Their neighbors, the county agents and the county
committeemen, knew the situation on the ground.38
37
Even mundane administrative tasks, like issuing benefit checks, took place on an unprecedented scale. At its
peak, AAA turned out 80,000 checks a day, and it averaged 25,000 checks a day during its first two years. Its ability
to do so was made possible by innovations in data processing technology, in particular the Hollerith card, the
precursor of the IBM punch card. “One of the amusing stories of the processing tax period with those Hollerith
cards was of the sharecropper’s family in Texas,” recalled Mordecai Ezekiel, an economist who was special assistant
to the Secretary. “They got one of those process tax checks … on a tabulating card. They had never seen one of
these before … and they couldn’t figure out what it was. But finally they thought, ‘Well now, that looks just like a
player piano roll—maybe it’ll fit the player piano,’ and they had a player piano so they put this on the old player and
pumped it up to see what would happen. Sure enough it worked. The tune that came out was ‘Happy Days Are
Here Again.’” Reminiscences of Mordecai Ezekiel, COHC: 86.
38
Richard H. Roberts, “The administration of the 1934 corn-hog program in Iowa,” Iowa Journal of History and
Politics 33 (October 1935): 352; Henry I. Richards, Cotton and the AAA (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1936):
120 and more generally chap. 7; D. A. FitzGerald, Livestock under the AAA (Washington: Brookings Institution,
1935): chap. 6; Joseph Stancliffe Davis, Wheat and the AAA (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1935): chap. 3.
Some farmers pleaded, apparently straight-facedly, that BAE’s county estimates were biased downward because
farmers habitually underreported acreage and production to county assessors, to lower their taxes, and routinely
underreported acreage and production to the BAE, to mislead the commodities markets.
A second element of uncertainty for AAA was farmers’ response to the agricultural
adjustment program. The voluntary domestic allotment plan was exactly that—voluntary—and
its success depended upon the willingness of farmers to participate in the program.39 Partly the
uncertainty was a technical problem: AAA economists in Washington had to strike the right
balance between benefits and obligations. But partly the uncertainty was an administrative
problem: AAA officials in the field had to encourage the perception that the administration of
the program—in the allocation of allotments and in the oversight of compliance—was fair and
even-handed. As Gaus and Wolcott put it, “lines of action thus running directly to the farmer on
his farm, programs the success of which depended upon the extent of voluntary cooperation, the
waiver implicit in such, particularly of the unrestricted right of the owner to use his property in
any way he pleased—all made substantial farmer support absolutely essential.” AAA officials,
in fact, chose Extension for its field service over a second option, the state commissioners of
agriculture, so as to divorce the AAA from partisan politics and to maintain USDA control, even
if nominal, over field administration. Moreover, Extension’s ties to the nonpartisan Farm
Bureau enabled AAA officials to call upon local farm bureau leadership in promoting the
production control program. Producer participation in field administration and the involvement
of highly-regarded county agricultural extension agents, that is, were also devices to secure
farmers’ vital involvement in the program. “At least outside the South,” Brookings Institution
researchers found, “a laudable degree of success has been attained in making [local
administration] responsive to the desires of the producer group.” 40
The third element of uncertainty for AAA, though not really an informational deficit, was
political support for the agricultural adjustment program. The Act had passed the Congress by a
large margin, but still it faced the implacable hostility of the agricultural trades, which opposed
the processing tax and the coercive use of marketing agreements. In hopes of blunting their
objections, AAA Administrator George N. Peek staffed the Processing and Marketing Division
with officials sympathetic to business—Charles J. Brand from the American Fertilizer
Association as co-administrator and General William I. Westervelt from Sears, Roebuck as
Division head—and actively sought the trades’ counsel. The reward was obstruction and delay,
39
Later, in 1934, the Bankhead Cotton Control Act and the Kerr-Smith Tobacco Act gave AAA the authority to
compel participation in the cotton and tobacco programs. See Henry I. Richards, Cotton under the Agricultural
Adjustment Act (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1934): 122–25.
40
Gaus and Wolcott, Public administration: 151; Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three years: 266; Wilson
reminiscences, COHC: 1471–88; “One year old,” Bureau Farmer, April 1934: 12; Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three
years: 64, 119-20, 137, 140, 273–74; John D. Black, The dairy industry and the AAA (Washington: Brookings
Institution, 1935): 352. Beginning in 1934, AAA submitted the programs to farmers for approval in referenda,
which approval was nearly always granted and nearly always by large margins. See Robert E. Martin, “The
referendum process in the agricultural adjustment programs of the United States,” Agricultural History 24 (January
1951): 34–47; “Wheat men vote ‘yes’,” WF, 8 June 1935: 345; “Corn-hog farmers back AAA,” Literary Digest, 2
November 1935: 6.
to the point that Kiplinger warned of “trouble in Congress next winter if [AAA] doesn’t speed
up” and Farm Bureau president Edward A. O’Neal complained that “much more progress has
been made in raising wages and prices for industries and distributors under the N.R.A. codes
than has been done for agriculture under the A.A.A.” The Production Division, in the meantime,
solicited and solidified farmer support for AAA with ostentatious regard for the farm
organizations’ viewpoints. “Never before has such tremendous effort been made to see that ‘dirt
farmers’ themselves were consulted at every stage of developing the program,” Wallaces’
Farmer noted at the end of 1933, “and that ‘dirt farmers’ themselves were given the power to
administer the program after it was developed.” USDA’s delegation of policy authority to AAA
was instrumental in creative an appreciative constituency for the Department’s new program.41
In the first years of the agricultural adjustment program, then, delegation of policy
development to AAA and delegation of field administration to Extension and its farmer clients
was an outstanding success. Through close consultation with far producers, the USDA
implemented a vast program of production control and subsidy payments that was without
precedent anywhere in the world. Starting with very little information, it allocated allotments,
enforced production controls, and paid out millions of dollars in benefits with a mrximum of
cooperation and a minimum of fraud. “Unquestionably [AAA’s] principle of ‘economic
democracy’”—AAA’s term for farmer involvement in program administration—“has been a
major factor in helping the AAA to succeed in an administrative task of staggering dimensions,”
a 1935 study by the Brookings Institution concluded. “The AAA stands out as one of the best
administered of New Deal agencies.”42
But by 1936, in fact, delegation in field administration had already served its purpose.
Triple A had always viewed Extension’s role in administration of the agricultural adjustment
program as a temporary expedient, to be replaced as soon as possible by AAA’s own field
service and elected farmer committeemen. So, for that matter, had Extension.43 AAA had gotten
41
KAL No. 118, 9 September 1933; “Clear the road,” Bureau Farmer, October 1933: 3; Perkins, Crisis: 100; KAL
No. 108, 6 May 1933; KAL No. 117, 26 August 1933; Campbell, Farm Bureau: 56, 63; Davis, Wheat: 71–72;
FitzGerald, Corn: 12n; Wilson reminiscences, COHC: 1550; Lowitt, Tamed bureaucrat: 177; KAL No. 122, 4
November 1933; Paul H. Hayward, “The first year in milk planning,” Nation’s Business, June 1934: 29; “Farm
troubles,” Business Week, 16 September 1933: 16. For more on Peek’s approach to the trades, and its aftermath, see
Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three years: 71, 76, 225, 391; Black, Dairy: 102–08; Edwin G. Nourse, Marketing
agreements under the AAA (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1935): chaps. 2, 11; “Farm reliever,” Business Week,
24 May 1933: 18; “AAA fails to recognize farmers’ cooperatives,” American Farm Bureau Federation Weekly News
Letter, 5 September 1933: 3; George N. Peek, Why quit our own? (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1936): 144–45,
154–55.
42
Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three years: 257, 246; Perkins, Crisis in agriculture. See also the series of
Brookings studies of particular commodity programs, cited fully in Nourse, Davis, and Black, Three years. For a
particularly detailed portrait of the implementation of the tobacco program, see Anthony J. Badger, Prosperity road:
The New Deal, tobacco, and North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).
43
The land grant colleges and state extension services in the Midwest and Northeast welcomed Tolley’s decision
to discharge Extension from farm program administration. The Triple A program, they felt, had eclipsed their
the detailed local information it needed to implement the production control program.
Information is costly only while it is unknown; information is costless once it is revealed. The
successful implementation of the agricultural adjustment program diminished the value of
delegation for informational purposes.
The Wallace reorganization: Agency uncertainty
Nothing in the USDA’s experience with delegation, however, necessitated the sweep of
Henry Wallace’s reforms of departmental administration. Delegation had achieved its intended
purposes, to enable program implementation and to solidify political support for the agricultural
adjustment program. AAA’s practice of consultation with the farm lobby had proved a
magnificent success; its attempt to accommodate the trades had proved a political disaster. But
still, Wallace pressed ahead with reforms that trimmed the influence of producers and broadened
the influence of the trades within the Department of Agriculture.
Wallace’s own plans for the Department of Agriculture, as a policy leader in his own right,
appear to have caused the costs of delegation to figure more prominently in administrative
planning. For his own policy plans, Wallace had in mind to elevate the status of agricultural
marketing programs within the USDA, and he believed that in order to do so, he needed to bring
AAA more firmly under control. In the 1930s, the Secretary’s vision diverged significantly from
the basic orientations of the bureaucrats who staffed the AAA.
At the heart of Agriculture’s restructuring in the Roosevelt years lay the food stamp plan,
USDA’s first systematic attempt to channel farm surpluses to needy consumers. In its very
conception, the program ran counter to Department traditions. The essential article of the
agrarian faith of the twenties and thirties found the source of the farm problem in overproduction. It was the intellectual basis for the agricultural adjustment plan, and, not
surprisingly, it suffused the Triple A. In the 1930s, however, other USDA economists located the
farm problem in under-consumption. The implications of their argument, of course, were
radical: Agriculture should move away from programs that restricted production and toward
programs that promoted consumption.44
In the mid-1930s, the views of the “liberals” won the attention of the Department’s top
leadership. Their appeal was a mix of ideological sentiment and hard-nosed political calculation.
Despite its fundamental agrarianism, the New Deal USDA was a refuge for a variety of
educational work and drawn county agents into a partisan issue. The southern extension services, however, were
less pleased. Their state legislatures had never funded them as generously as in the North, and because federal
Smith–Lever funds were apportioned on a matching basis, they were starved for resources before AAA came along.
They did not wish to go back, and in fact, Extension involvement in AAA administration persisted in the South. See
Wilson’s reminiscences, COHC: 2001–11
44
Kirkendall, Social scientists: 79–81, 163.
experiments ranging from the mildly progressive Soil Conservation Service to the brash new
Farm Security Administration (both of which transferred to the Department from elsewhere). In
the early days, many of these projects were the tutelage of Under Secretary Rexford G. Tugwell,
whom the Triple A regarded as a dangerous radical. Gradually, though, the challenge and
purpose they generated drew Secretary Henry A. Wallace away from his ancestral agrarianism.
Initially devoted to the farmers’ cause, Wallace agonized over the 1935 “purge” of the liberals
and afterward harbored disappointment approaching resentment that Triple A had forced the
decision upon him. Ideologically, the New Deal worked on Wallace as it worked on others,
turning a cautious man of progressive intentions toward a broader vision of reform.45
As striking as Wallace’s intellectual journey was, however, the pivotal appeal of the
liberal program was more purely strategic. Observers sized Wallace up as a potential successor
to Roosevelt as early as 1934, and by 1937, according to aides, Wallace himself cherished the
thought. For the Secretary and his advisers, presidential ambitions vastly extended the political
frontier, and by 1938 two of its features were apparent.46
First, the New Deal had long since shifted its course away from the corporatism of the
“first” New Deal and toward the welfare statism of the “second.” As is well known, the
constituency for the second New Deal was urban workers and the disadvantaged.
Second, in Congress and in the countryside, farmers’ alienation from the New Deal was
palpable. Legislation to create a permanent farm program languished in Congress for almost a
year before its passage early in 1938. Unnerved by the bill’s tough production quotas, farm state
lawmakers temporized despite ferocious pressure from Farm Bureau leaders. It was well that
they should. Within months of approval, Democrats (and the Farm Bureau) backpedalled rapidly
from the 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act, an accurate portent of November’s disaster.47 The
Midwest’s rebellion was not news to the Department, however. Based on assays of voting
trends, Gallup polls, and USDA surveys, Department analysts had already traced the general
decline in farmers’ support for the New Deal, although they were at a loss to explain it. In any
case, the answer was really beside the point. Despite the solicitude extended to them,
45
[Raymond Gram Swing], “The purge at the AAA,” Nation, 20 February 1935: 216–17; Paul W. Ward,
“Wallace the great hesitator,” Nation, 8 May 1935: 536; Dean Albertson, Roosevelt’s farmer: Claude R. Wickard
and the New Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961): 103; Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H.
Schapsmeier, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The agrarian years, 1910-1940 (Ames: Iowa State University Press,
1968): 241 and passim.
46
Stanley High, “Will it be Wallace?” Saturday Evening Post, 3 July 1937:. 5 ff; KAL No. 210, 6 February 1937,
No. 231, 13 November 1937; Reminiscences of Paul H. Appleby, COHC: 167–71.
47
Another straw in the wind in 1938 was the Farm Bureau’s call for an independent board to administer the farm
program after 1940, a proposal symptomatic of its growing distrust of the political leaders of USDA. See “Final
action near on farm bill,” WF, 29 January 1938, p. 73; KAL No. 259, 10 December 1938; Campbell, Farm Bureau:
177–78.
midwestern farmers returned to the Grand Old Party.48
In the context of 1938, then, Wallace’s adoption of the agricultural consumption program
was a clever solution to a difficult problem. Politically, it limited his dependence on a
constituency that was fast abandoning him. At the same time, in its appeals to the poor of the
cities, it staked his claim to inheritance of the New Deal. Given its departure from the
Department’s attentions hitherto, plans to develop the food stamp plan made liberation of the
marketing agencies from Triple A an absolute necessity. Left to its own devices, AAA would
either ignore the marketing programs or impede them. In the reorganization of October 1938,
therefore, “Wallace was mainly motivated by his convictions concerning the type of work the
Department will do by force of circumstances during the next 5, 10, 15, even 20 years.”49
Deviating as they did from the Department’s past, Wallace’s aspirations for the Department—
and his ambitions for himself—required greater administrative control. Delegation was more
costly to the political leadership in 1938 than it was in 1933.
The motivations for administrative reform during Henry Wallace’s secretaryship, in sum,
reflect a logic of delegation that trades off more informed policy development and
implementation against the loss of control. Early in Wallace’s administration, when USDA was
building the agricultural adjustment program from the ground up, the informational—and
political—benefits of delegation were immensely attractive. Later in Wallace’s administration,
when USDA wished to shift the emphasis of its policies, the loss of control in delegation was far
less tolerable.
Delegation in wartime: policy information and political positioning
48
KAL No. 219, 29 May 1937, No. 222, 10 July 1937, No. 226, 4 September 1937, No. 233, 11 December 1937,
No. 244, 14 May 1935, No. 247, 25 June 1938; “Starting work on farm bill,” WF, 6 November 1937: 813 ff;
“Washington adjusting self after adjournment,” National Butter and Cheese Journal, 10 July 1938: 36; T.R.B.,
“Washington notes,” New Republic, 24 November 1937: 73; Donald R. McCoy, “George S. McGill of Kansas and
the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938,” Historian 45 (February 1983): 186–205; “Farmer attitudes toward the
New Deal,” preliminary report, 11 June 1938, RG 83, Box 211. The 1938 public opinion study was representative
of USDA political analysis. The Department of Agriculture, and Wallace in particular, was acutely interested in
analysis of election returns, so interested, in fact, that the earliest attempts to forecast elections were made in the
1930s by Louis H. Bean, a USDA economist who was special assistant to the Secretary. See Bean’s book, How to
predict elections (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948) and popular articles about his election forecasts, for example,
“Up the Bean poll, Newsweek, 15 November 1948: 29; Louis Bean, “Who will win in November,” New Republic, 16
September 1946: 316–18; Bean, “Forecasting the 1950 elections,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1950: 36–40.
49
KAL No. 255, 15 October 1938, No. 245, 28 May 1938; Lord, Wallaces: 469-72. The Farm Bureau’s
displeasure with the elevation of consumption programs was so extreme that a proposal to revive food stamps in the
Truman Administration raised it to anger. “We do not believe that the Department of Agriculture should be
concerned about people in the cities,” a director of the Washington Farm Bureau told Clinton Anderson. “Its job is
to see that the farmers get adequate prices.” See Angus McDonald, “Anderson’s program,” New Republic, 10
November 1947: 30; KAL No. 428, 21 June 1941, No. 333, 30 August 1941; Richard Wilson, “It’s Reno for the
Bureau,” Successful Farming, September 1942: 28.
As we will consider momentarily, Anderson’s motivations for administrative reform had
important parallels with Wallace’s. Both secretaries sought to reorient farm policy toward
greater emphasis on consumption. In fact, because of a policy environment that was massively
changed by the war, Anderson’s plans for change made Wallace’s look halting and timid.
But the logic of delegation that created the administrative problem for Anderson seems to
have been very different. In fact, the Department’s informational needs seem to have played
little role in the wartime delegation to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Although the
federal agricultural program expanded during World War II—by the war’s end, the number of
commodities with price support had increased to 20 from 6—the main outlines of the program
were unchanged. Where in 1933 the Department had created the programs de novo, in 1941 it
simply applied policy and administrative expertise that was already well developed.
Instead, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration accrued powers through the
exploitation of its improved political position during the War. In the early forties as in the late
thirties, the USDA saw a deep and widening rift between the agrarians in the AAA and the
“liberals” in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) and the Farm Security Administration
(FSA). The war mobilization focused their rivalry on two old but repackaged issues: the vigor
of the Department’s mobilization efforts and the Department’s orientation toward different
classes of farmers. True to its past, Triple A counseled caution in expanding production and
sought to steer price guarantees primarily toward large, commercial producers. Farm Security,
on the other hand, urged a more aggressive mobilization effort targeted primarily at small
farmers.50
Agriculture Secretary Claude R. Wickard, a close political associate of Henry A. Wallace,
struggled valiantly to maintain an even hand, but when crucial decisions had to be made,
Wickard sided largely with AAA. In July 1941, the Secretary merged seven types of USDA
county committees, including AAA and FSA committees, into county Defense Boards, and he
put the chairs of the county Triple A panels in charge. In December 1941, moreover, Wickard
consolidated AAA, FSA, and Soil Conservation Service into the Agricultural Adjustment and
Conservation Administration. Once more, he put Triple A on top, moving AAA Administrator
Rudolph M. (Spike) Evans up to lead it. In December 1942, finally, Roosevelt created a twobranch Food Administration inside the USDA, placing the marketing services in the Food
Distribution Administration and the adjustment and conservation agencies in the Food
Production Administration. This time, Wickard appointed an FSA official, Herbert W. Parisius,
to the top Production post. Parisius lasted 36 days. Clifford Townsend from Triple A succeeded
him. As Howard Tolley put it, Wickard “was supremely conscious of the Triple-A—an
organization that he had helped to build—and he would tend to look upon that as the real unit of
50
KAL No. 318, 15 February 1941, No. 340, 6 December 1941, No. 343, 17 January 1942, No. 345, 14 February
1942, No. 361, 26 September 1942; Carlyle Hodgkin, “Agriculture’s got troubles,” Successful Farming, March
1943: 22 ff; “Farm price prop?” Business Week, 8 March 1941: 26; Albertson, Roosevelt’s farmer: chaps. 9–17;
Reminiscences of Rudolph M. Evans, COHC: 215–55.
organization in the Department of Agriculture.51
The decisions under Wickard re-established and re-enforced Triple A’s hegemony in the
Department of Agriculture. On one side, liberals allied with FSA labeled them a “sell-out.” On
the other side, the Farm Bureau rejoiced that the agencies were “in the hands of a practical man
who thinks in farm terms.” One journalist’s view of the Defense Boards, then, was more
generally true of the Department: “Instead of remaining the errand boy of the county war
boards, AAA has virtually taken over all of their functions.”52 Once again, the interests of farm
producers dominated the USDA’s agenda.
Wickard’s capitulation to the AAA had little to do with the Department’s need for more
expert policy development and information. Rather, it had to do with the Department’s
untenable position in wartime politics. Throughout his term, the Secretary was caught between
the demands of the White House and the congressional farm bloc, each of which had the
resources to enforce its will.
One option for Wickard was to lean toward Triple A and Capitol Hill, ease restrictions on
production slowly, and keep farm prices high. The White House, however, provided the
argument against it. Administration officials dropped broad and frequent hints that the President
might consider a separate Food Administration, such as Woodrow Wilson created during World
War I, if Agriculture did not act more responsibly. Waxing hot and cold for price control,
Wickard retained authority over the wartime food program until March 1943, when Roosevelt,
exasperated by the Department’s resistance to agricultural price controls, pulled the “action
agencies” out of the USDA.53
51
Tolley reminiscences, COHC: 554; Albertson, Roosevelt’s farmer: chaps. 2–8; Eugene Butler, “What’s new in
agriculture,” Progressive Farmer, March 1941: 10; “Dirt farmers are in charge,” WF, 22 February 1941: 116; “Cliff
Townsend heads AAA,” WF, 27 June 1942: 374; “Names Wickard food boss,” WF, 12 December 1942; KAL No.
341, 20 December 1941, No. 346, 28 February 1942, No. 356, 18 July 1942, No. 367, 19 December 1942, No. 369,
16 January 1943; “Food czar at last,” Business Week, 12 December 1942: 16–18; James G. Patton, “Why food is
scarce,” Nation, 13 March 1943: 374–76; Albertson, Roosevelt’s farmer: 229–30, 251, 288–91, 330–51; Wilcox,
Second World War: 47–48; Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and politics: The rise and decline of the Farm Security
Administration (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968): 325–77. The marketing agencies survived
the war intact. Under the leadership of Roy Hendrickson, they established industry advisory committees to help
formulate their program, the first institutionalized consultation with the trades since George Peek left AAA. The
practice was continued by the War Food Administration. See Wilcox, Second World War: 357; “War food boss,”
Business Week, 23 January 1943: 19–20; KAL No. 371, 13 February 1943.
52
“Keeping tab on Washington,” Nation’s Agriculture, February 1943: 9; Richard Wilson, “The farmer’s
Washington,” Successful Farming, January 1944: 37; “As the editor sees it,” Nation’s Agriculture, February 1943: 2;
Michael Straight, “The fight for food,” New Republic, 1 February 1943: 138–40; “War food boss,” Business Week,
23 January 1943: 19.
53
KAL No. 343, 17 January 1942, No. 347, 14 March 1942, No. 348, 28 March 1942, No. 349, 11 April 1942, No.
355, 4 July 1942, No. 358, 15 August 1942; “Henderson wins,” Business Week, 7 February 1942: 17. The leadership
of the War Food Administration was no more responsive to Roosevelt than Wickard. In obeisance to Congress,
Roosevelt appointed two Administrators whose fundamental orientations were agrarian: Chester C. Davis, the
Wickard’s other option was to implement the reforms needed to hew to the President’s
course of greater production and lower prices. But this course would have required Wickard to
get behind a program strongly opposed by the AAA. Moreover, it would have required the
Secretary to come to the aid of the FSA, an agency that had fewer and fewer strong supporters in
the White House—its attention diverted from social reform by the war—and almost none on
Capitol Hill. In 1941, Farm Security came under the scrutiny of the Joint Committee on
Reduction of Nonessential Federal Expenditures, an inquisition into the expense and “socialistic
tendencies” of the New Deal chaired by Virginia senator Harry F. Byrd. Inspired by the Farm
Bureau, a bitter enemy of FSA, the Byrd Committee charged that the agency paid its clients’ poll
taxes, an accusation that sent southern conservatives into a high dudgeon. Byrd’s attacks on
FSA scattered its few congressional supporters, and in 1942 the Appropriations Committees
lopped 40 percent off of its budget. Elevating the Farm Security program within the Department,
then, was simply not a viable choice. As Howard Tolley put it, “I don’t think Congress would
have supported such a program of all-out production as the Farm Security people wanted at that
time.”54
The Anderson reorganization: Agency uncertainty
However delegation might have benefited Claude Wickard during the War—and it is not
clear that it benefited him very much—to maintain the AAA’s strong position in the Department
promised few advantages for Clinton P. Anderson. As the war came to a close, the task for the
Secretary was clear. The need to overhaul the farm program was the most open secret in
Washington. “The furrowing of official brows is most intense about the two-year period during
which Congress has promised price supports on certain crops at 90 percent of parity,” Darrow’s
newsletter reported in 1944. “But farm program thinkers in both parties also look beyond that
period to some system of keeping farm income at financially—and politically—satisfactory
levels. The Government has a bear by the tail and can’t let go.”55
second Administrator of AAA, and Marvin Jones, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee during the
1930s. KAL No. 374, 27 March 1943, No. 381, 3 July 1943; “Keeping tabs on Washington,” Nation’s Agriculture,
May 1943: 3; “Keeping tabs on Washington,” Nation’s Agriculture, September 1943: 8–9; Eugene Butler, “What’s
new in agriculture,” Progressive Farmer, November 1943: 12; Richard Wilson, “The farmer’s Washington,”
Successful Farming, September 1943: 50; Washington Farmletter, 29 January 1944; Irvin M. May Jr., Marvin
Jones: The public life of an agrarian advocate (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1980): 195–225;
Wilcox, Second World War: 133–34; Murray R. Benedict, Farm policies of the United States, 1790–1950 (New
York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1953): 427n.
54
Tolley reminiscences, COHC: 575; KAL No. 345, 14 February 1942, No. 361, 26 September 1942; Helen
Fuller, “Who speaks for the farmers?” New Republic, 23 February 1942: 267–68; Oren Stephens, “FSA fights for its
life,” Harper’s, April 1943: 478-87; William G. Carr, “The return of the carpetbagger!” Nation’s Agriculture, April
1942: 7 ff; “The spotlight on FSA,” Pacific Rural Press, 4 April 1942: 248; “Don’t destroy the FSA!” Progressive
Farmer, March 1942: 6; Baldwin, Poverty and politics: 347–62.
55
Washington Farmletter, 2 September 1944.
The political dilemma was acute. Under the provisions of the Steagall Amendment of
1941, as amended, the federal government was obliged to support basic commodities and 14
“Steagall commodities” at 90 percent of parity until two years after cessation of hostilities.56
Thereafter, unless the law was changed, the farm program would revert to the terms of the 1938
Agricultural Adjustment Act, to its strict production quotas and (in the context of wartime
prosperity) its relatively stingy subsidy levels. Viewed from one side, the impending problem
was a farm price collapse similar to 1920s. The evident solution was to limit production,
maintain subsidies and let prices rise. Viewed from the other side, the problems were more
numerous. First, generous federal price guarantees would put a serious strain on the Treasury.
Second, rigid production quotas would hamstring American relief efforts in war-ravaged Europe
and Asia. Finally, low stocks and high prices would almost certainly aggravate inflation, already
in double digits.57
Periodic rumors out of USDA placed Anderson firmly on the side of the Administration on
the issue of long-range farm policy, but in his first two years as Secretary he studiously avoided
a specific position on the issue. Fortunately, he had the luxury. The Steagall Amendment
postponed consideration of postwar agricultural policy until two years after the president
declared an end to hostilities, or until 1948.58 When revealed, in October 1947, the
Administration’s plan was everything the farm bloc feared: subsidies pegged to running
averages of market prices (instead of the benchmark 1910–14) at rates that varied inversely with
carryover stocks (rather than at legislated rates).59
Anderson’s plans for policy reform, however, had an identifiable provenance. The
Secretary was a three-term Representative from New Mexico and a successful insurance agent
who happened to own a dairy farm.60 Otherwise, he had few personal ties to agriculture. As a
56
The “basic” commodities were corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, tobacco and wheat. The “Steagall commodities”
were those covered separately under the terms of the amendment. With the exception of potatoes and eggs, they
were less significant to the politics of the issue than the basics.
57
Washington Farmletter, 29 July 1944, 25 November 1944; Wilcox, Second World War: 243–46.
58
WDWF, 2 June 1945, 25 August 1945, 20 October 1945, No. 111, 27 October 1945, No. 115, 24 November
1945, No. 117, 8 December 1945; KAL No. 439, 22 September 1945, No. 445, 15 December 1945; “Food subsidies
to end soon,” WF, 17 November 1945: 842; “Farm cutbacks,” Business Week, 25 August 1945: 21; Anderson,
Insider in the Senate: 63. At the same time Anderson was avoiding a stand on long-term farm policy, he was
actively working to undermine Office of Price Administration controls on farm commodity prices. See Barton I.
Bernstein, “Clash of interests: The postwar battle between the Office of Price Administration and the Department of
Agriculture,” Agricultural History, 41 (January 1967): 45–58; and Matusow, Farm policies: chap. 3.
59
KAL No. 493, 18 October 1947, No. 503, 6 March 1948; WDWF No. 215, 25 October 1945, No. 226, 10
January 1948; Matusow, Farm policies: chap. 6.
60
Even before his election to Congress, Anderson had already earned a footnote in political history. As a young
reporter in Albuquerque he uncovered the involvement of Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, formerly senator from
congressman who represented a state below the national median in agricultural production, in
fact, his interest in farm policy was brand new: in March 1945, only three months prior to his
appointment as Secretary, Anderson called for a probe into meat and sugar shortages and, having
opened his mouth, found himself chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate Food
Shortages. Truly a newcomer to agriculture, Anderson had no obvious affinity for the farm
lobby, an attribute that probably weighed in his favor with Truman. He was the first Agriculture
Secretary of the Democratic era who was a genuine outsider. As an outsider, he was a wild card,
liable to pursue policy as technical necessity and susceptible to the direction of the president.61
But no plans for policy reform could be accomplished without administrative reform.
AAA and its farmer clients had clearly demonstrated their resistance to departures from the
policy status quo, even during the flush of wartime patriotism. The agency costs of delegation
engaged the leadership precisely because it felt compelled to pursue a policy direction that was
fundamentally at odds with the preferences of its delegated agents.
Both Henry Wallace and Clinton Anderson wanted to take national agricultural policy in
directions the farm bloc opposed. For Anderson, independence was easy. He had no particular
background, and indeed no particular interest, in agriculture, and no particular ties to the farm
lobby. For Wallace, independence was acquired. His grandfather the founder of an influential
agricultural weekly, his father a secretary of agriculture himself, Wallace was an advocate for
farmers by birthright. But Wallace assumed bigger ambitions for leadership. Anderson and
Wallace needed to extend their scope of action because their preferences were fundamentally at
odds with the views of the agrarians who controlled the Department. The calculus of delegation
had its roots in the actual stuff of the policy debates.
But why no sanctions?
The actions that Henry A. Wallace took in the 1930s and the actions that Clinton P.
Anderson took in the 1940s were plainly deliberate, made with consideration of objectives and
expectation of consequences. The secretaries sought administrative change with particular
policy goals in mind. They appreciated that structure is politics.
New Mexico, in the Teapot Dome scandal. In fact, his entry into the insurance business was financed by the sale of
his newspaper to some of Fall’s associates. See M. R. Werner and John Starr, The Teapot Dome scandal (London:
Cassell and Co., 1961): 64–65; Baker, County agent: 15–17.
61
KAL No. 431, 2 June 1945; Washington Farmletter, 31 March 1945; “Getting food facts, letting headlines go,”
Business Week, 18 April 1945: 18; “Fourth food chief sets his goal,” Business Week, 30 June 1945: 32; Koenig
interview; Matusow, Farm policies: 7–10; Richard Allan Baker, Conservation politics: The Senate career of
Clinton P. Anderson (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985): 23. In May 1948, Anderson left
Agriculture successfully to seek a vacant Senate seat from New Mexico. In four terms in the Senate, he evinced only
slight continuing interest in agricultural policy.
But seeking change is not the same as accomplishing change. In common portrayal,
political bureaucrats seeking effective control over their domains are hamstrung by dictates from
Congress, demands from clientele, and indifference from the White House. Attempts to extend
political control might be met by cooperation withheld in planning and implementing vital
departmental programs. They might be defeated when agencies and clientele take objections to
Congress, asking that legislators sequester departmental resources.62
Remarkably, however, nothing of the sort occurred when Henry A. Wallace and Clinton P.
Anderson downgraded the AAA and farm producers and elevated the marketing agencies and the
trades. None of the secretaries’ initiatives was successfully resisted. Indeed, only one,
Anderson’s reform of AAA field administration, was even contested. How did they get away
with it?
One possibility is that nobody among agencies and clientele either noticed or cared about
the stakes in administrative reform. In parts of this story, a reasonable case might be made. The
Extension Service did not resist its removal from field administration, for instance, because it
was only too happy to be relieved of the responsibility. But in most instances, the contemporary
record indicates the opposite. In both the 1930s and the 1940s, agencies and clientele
appreciated the consequences of administrative reform quite well. AAA and the farm lobby
viewed the Wallace reorganizations as demotions; the trades viewed them as new opportunities.
Likewise in the 1940s: AAA and the farm lobby saw that the purpose in the reorganization was
to limit farm producer interests in USDA policymaking.
A second possibility is that the subordinate agencies, their clientele, and their
congressional associates, because of the political circumstances, lacked the opportunity to
contest political bureaucrats’ actions. Certainly, there are circumstances that constrain rather
than enable leadership in the executive branch. The very urgency of the war mobilization, for
instance, put tight limits on Secretary Wickard’s scope of choice in his relations with AAA. But
vulnerabilities exist even in more ordinary times. In 1935, for example, the Department’s
liberals (grouped loosely around the Legal Division’s Jerome Frank) joined battle with Triple
A’s agrarians on a variety of fronts, in particular over the terms of marketing agreements and the
legal obligations of landlords to tenants. The disputes were nothing new; they had raged inside
AAA from the beginning and played a part in George Peek’s ouster in 1933. The crucial
element in 1935, rather, was Wallace’s submission to Congress of amendments to the
Agricultural Adjustment Act. This legislative initiative gave the agrarians the lever they needed.
As soon as Frank issued his controversial interpretation of tenant rights, southern legislators, at
the behest of AAA’s Cotton Division, “informed Roosevelt that no significant piece of [farm]
legislation would come out of Congress until matters were resolved in the Department of
Agriculture.” His hand forced, Wallace allowed Chester Davis to fire the lawyers and dismantle
62
Bernstein, Executive: 84–89; Aaron Wildavsky, The politics of the budgetary process, 2d ed. (Boston: Little,
Brown Co., 1974): 63–84; Francis E. Rourke, Bureaucracy, politics, and public policy, 2d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown
Co., 1976): 112–14.
their offices.63
In contrast, the timing of both major administrative reforms is quite striking. Wallace
undertook reorganization when legislation was safely past. In March 1936, fresh on the heels of
the passage of the 1936 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, which restored the farm
program after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hoosac Mills, Howard Tolley overhauled AAA’s
field units. And in October 1938, immediately after congressional approval of the 1938
Agricultural Adjustment Act, so-called “permanent legislation” for the farm program, Henry
Wallace reformed the USDA’s marketing units. Clinton Anderson undertook reform when
legislation was safely in the future. The Steagall Amendment postponed consideration of
postwar agricultural policy until two years after the president declared an end to hostilities, an
announcement that Truman delayed until after the 1946 elections. The timing, apparently, was
deliberate. Political leadership anticipated opposition and used circumstances to isolate
themselves from sanctions.
The final possibilities focus on Congress. Political bureaucrats have unilateral powers
vis-à-vis subordinates. As we have already seen, political executives delegate powers and take
them back. But executive departments depend upon Congress for their own powers. Congress
can delegate powers and Congress can take them back.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Congress did not. Congressional actors, or those who might try to
mobilize them, knew that to reverse the decisions of USDA’s leadership would be costly.
Wallace used reorganization to pursue the goals of the second New Deal, Roosevelt’s goals.
Anderson likewise used reorganization to pursue a new long-range farm program, Truman’s
program. Both Wallace and Anderson operated under the protective umbrella of presidential
support.
Equally, congressional actors, or those who might try to mobilize them, knew that
effective oversight is difficult for Congress to achieve. It requires making oversight a priority
relative to all of the other issues that engage congressional attention. It requires positive
collective action in a body that is radically decentralized into two chambers and dozens of
decision points. Finally, it requires careful application so as to deny political leaders without
also depriving favored agencies and constituency clientele. The ease with which Clinton
Anderson put down the rebellion of the regional offices of the Triple A, after backing down once
before the 1946 election, could not but have been helped by the Republicans’ having taken
control of Congress for the first time in 16 years. Given the opportunity costs for members of
63
Roy V. Scott and J. G. Shoalmire, The public career of Cully A. Cobb (Jackson: University and College Press
of Mississippi, 1973): 231; KAL No. 156, 9 February 1935, No. 138, 2 June 1934; Wilson reminiscences, COHC:
1806; Cully Alton Cobb, “The Cotton Section of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 1933–1937,”
interview, University of California Regional History Office: 83–84; William J. Briggs and Henry Cauthen, The
cotton man: Notes on the life and times of Wofford B. (“Bill”) Camp (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1983): 131–34. Cobb and Camp were the Cotton Division officials most closely involved.
Congress, the contest was not worth the candle.
Precisely because oversight is difficult, Congress “stacks the deck” to bias administration
toward favored interests.64 And indeed Congress made a considered decision when it placed
administration of the Agricultural Adjustment Act in the Department of Agriculture, as Secretary
Wallace wished, rather than forming an independent administrative agency, as George Peek
argued. In 1933, administration by the Department of Agriculture seemed a sound idea. Henry
Wallace’s sympathy for farmers was well known: he was the son of another popular Agriculture
Secretary, the grandson of the founder of a major agricultural journal, and an active participant
in the campaign for farm relief in the 1920s. The farming sector’s previous experiment with an
independent agency, the Hoover Administration’s Federal Farm Board, was an inept, unpopular
failure.65 The spectacular success of the AAA program could only have reassured Congress that
it had made the right choice.
But of course, people change and times change. Wallace grew in office to a broader
conception of his role as Secretary. Anderson came into office with a mandate for change. And
as the policy environment changed, subsequent Secretaries of Agriculture like Charles Brannan,
Ezra Taft Benson, Orville Freeman, Clifford Hardin, and Bob Bergland took Agriculture in
directions that frequently displeased its core constituency of commercial producers of pricesupported crops.66 But Congress, once having delegated, has a much harder time forcing
political bureaucrats to stay the course.
Conclusion and implications
This essay has demonstrated two things. First, extensions of political authority in the
American federal bureaucracy are indeed possible. Second, the conditions under which they
may occur are surprisingly common. If the preferences of leaders and agencies diverge and if
agencies lack the opportunity to impose sanctions, then leaders are very likely to broaden their
influence over matters of policy and administration.
What are we to make of the skeptics’ tales, then? If political bureaucrats have such
resources and abilities, why is there such deep pessimism that political leadership really matters?
The doubts arise, I think, from the strange perspective that observers have tended to adopt.
First, the doubts arise because political bureaucrats and the scholars who study them have
embraced an unrealistic criterion for leadership success. Appointees complain that they could
64
McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast, “Administrative procedures”: 246–53; Moe, “Bureaucratic structure.”
David Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal:American farm policy from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928–1933
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
65
66
John Mark Hansen, Gaining access: Congress and the farm lobby, 1919–1981 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991): chaps. 5–6.
not accomplish all that they wanted because the civil service stymied them. No doubt this is
true. It does not follow, however, that they accomplished nothing at all. The readily apparent
differences between presidential administrations is ample evidence that political leadership does
indeed matter. Second, the doubts arise because the bids for political control that have drawn the
most attention are the ones that political bureaucrats are most likely to lose. For appointees and
observers alike, epic battles over administrative direction and reform are the most interesting and
the most memorable. They are not necessarily the most representative, however. As we have
seen in this paper, conflict is endogenous to the process of reform. It arises when agencies have
an opportunity to sanction leaders; hence, it arises in circumstances where leadership efforts to
reform are most likely to fail. Finally, the doubts arise because of the severe ahistoricism of
political leaders and students of bureaucracy (at least within political science). Expectations of
what political bureaucrats can and cannot accomplish depend upon their institutional power
versus agencies and clientele. Therefore, unless one observes bureaucracy over time, one misses
the crucial fact that the possibilities themselves change. That which was a struggle before
becomes routine and therefore unremarkable.
But part of the skepticism arises as well from a consideration of the possibilities for
political control that is removed from the political context. Henry Wallace and Clinton
Anderson created a department that represented more than the interests of commercial farmers.
Because of their actions, the department was able to entertain and to pursue policies to encourage
consumption and meet the needs of consumers, not just policies to restrict production and protect
growers of basic crops. But USDA’s new pluralism was still a clientelistic one. It did not
include consultation with the representatives of consumers. It did not include consultation with
the representatives of landless tenants and sharecroppers. To the extent that the USDA’s
broader vision served their needs, it was because it happened also to serve the needs of
agricultural traders, processors, and handlers. But it did include opportunities to accomplish the
goals of the political leadership. Wallace and Anderson could not escape the strictures of a
department oriented by history and politics toward constituency service. But they could
construct a more competitive clientelism and use it to pursue policies of broader benefit not only
to the agricultural trades but also to consumers and taxpayers.
The despair over the prospects for democratic administration, then, runs too deep.
Political bureaucrats are not always and everywhere subject to their subordinates; indeed, in a
number of circumstances, political appointees can increase their power over policy and
administration. To be sure, control is incomplete, and it always will be. Political appointees
cannot solve every agency problem, but they can—given the motivation, and the right
circumstances—do better.