Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1993
Abstract
A storm of controversy arose in April 1949 when Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan unveiled the Truman administration's postwar policy for agriculture. The most controversial aspect of the so-called Brannan plan was its production payments feature, a direct, undisguised farm subsidy designed to bring relief to producers and consumers alike. Other aspects of the complex plan also elicited both praise and blame, but disagreements during this fractious time were not limited to farm questions. In a year of apparent victories for the world's communist monolith, spy trials, and labor unrest, discussions of farm policy on the Great Plains and elsewhere were affected by the participants' general views of government intervention in the economy and particularly by their view of commodity stabilization as a form of socialism.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 13:1 (Winter 1993). Copyright © 1993 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.