Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs
Making a Difference in Rural Illinois
A Foundation for Sustainable Rural Community Development
Warren G. Harding and His Successors
Republican President Warren G. Harding (1920-1923) and his GOP successors, Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), wiped out Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal progressivism from the party. In contrast to Roosevelt’s trust-busting efforts, the policies of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover fostered the growth of big business propelled by expanding industrialism and consumerism.
The country’s unprecedented growth, however, was not universal. After World War I, the decline of foreign markets for agricultural products and the inability of agriculture to control production and domestic markets contributed to an agricultural depression that lasted most of the decade and seriously eroded the economic position of farmers. Increased mechanization on farms fueled continued migration from rural areas as the nation became increasingly urban. Passage of the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act in 1922, a response to the weakened farm economy under Harding, raised U.S. tariffs to historically high levels and sowed some of the seeds for the Great Depression.
Coolidge twice vetoed the McNary-Haugen Bill, which sought to support farm prices by government purchases of farm products at world price plus tariffs. Between 1920 and 1928, farmers’ average net income fell 23%, while most nonfarm earnings were increasing.
Recommended Resources
- Cochrane, Willard. 1984. The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- United States Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Service. History of Agricultural Price-Support and Adjustment Programs, 1933-84. (Accessed: October 8, 2008).
- Wunderlich, Gene. 2003. American Country Life: A Legacy. Dallas, TX: University Press of America.
