Farm Policy
Coolidge is against crop support. “He urged farmers to organize, as had labor, and then voluntarily cut back on acreage in order to lower production, which would boost prices.” Coolidge supports the Curtis-Crisp bill, a creation of a Federal Farm Board to help co-ops keep perishable crops off the market in times of crisis. The farm bloc supports the McNary-Haugen Bill. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon comes out against it, “writing to congressmen saying that in his view the measure would cause inflation, increase production while decreasing consumption, and thus lead to a depression.” Historian Sobel summed up the issue, “Agricultural reform dependent on government input would not be realized until the Great Depression and the New Deal–when the times were strikingly different, and farmers were united in its support.”
Sobel, Coolidge,An American Enigma, p. 327 and 334