page_118 < previous page page_118 next page > Page 118 ers, and sharecroppers. Their divergent interests made it very hard to build a national organization of the ''lower third'' in U.S. agriculture. By the late 1930s, the two most reformist agencies of USDAthe FSA and the BAEconstituted a "community of interest" favoring social change. The AAA's "urban liberals" were gone, as was their leader, Rexford Tugwell. His successor, a southern liberal, led the FSA until 1940, when he was replaced by another of Tugwell's aides. Heading the BAE from 1938 until 1946 was economist-planner Howard R. Tolley, who was strongly supported by Secretary Wallace and Undersecretary M. L. Wilson. This powerful group of USDA liberals formed a potential political coalition. First of all, their agency constituents numbered a few million rural citizens. More broadly, they were supported by progressive farm and reform groups around the nation: the NFU, the STFU, and urban liberals. This may be seen as an attempt to create the agrarian wing of a "social democracy" in the United States. In particular, Henry Wallace and the BAE turned increasingly toward the labor movement and issues of full employment, consumption, health, and nutrition (Baldwin 1968; see also Kubo 1991; Tugwell 1937; Tolley 1941, 1943; Wallace 1940). They were opposed, however, by a more powerful coalition of conservative USDA agencies (including the New Deal AAA), many state Extension Services, the National Cotton Council, California's Associated Farmers, and, most importantly, the American Farm Bureau Federation. This group represented the new status quo in U.S. agriculture. Together with the anti-New Deal coalition in Congress (conservative midwestern Republicans and southern Democrats), they were able to kill the BAE county land-use planning program in 1942 and, in effect, the FSA in 1943. The social base for reform was politically weak and relatively unorganized; it failed to save the progressive New Deal in agriculture. New Deal Visions of Reform Just as there were two reformist agencies in USDA, so were they motivated by two different visions for rural America. Each was represented by an articulate spokesperson. Despite his departure from the New Deal in 1936, Rexford Tugwell's spirit (and staff) stayed on; the FSA continued his legacy. His successor as undersecretary, M. L. Wilson, represented the other strand of reformism in USDA, institutionalized in the BAE's county planning program. A summary of their ideological similarities and differences reveals much about the reformist vision of the New Deal Department of Agriculture. Â < previous page page_118 next page >