Henry Charles Taylor - Government Career

Government Career

From 1909 to 1910 he assisted the Bureau of the Census to plan its schedule for the agricultural census, as well as for a special census of plantations. Taylor chose to join the United States Department of Agriculture for the chance at giving a national role to agricultural economics, even though the new position meant a large reduction in salary. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1919 to take charge of the USDA's Office of Farm Management and Farm Economics. Not long after his arrival in Washington, the wartime prices of farm products collapsed, which proved disastrous for a great number of farmers. In 1920, President Harding appointed Henry C. Wallace, who knew Taylor and was himself a great supporter of farmers, as the new Secretary of Agriculture. Taylor soon became Chief of the Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates, while also being part of a commission to reorganize the offices of the USDA. For him this was a chance to consolidate the economics work of the department which had been scattered through many offices. In 1922, Wallace appointed him chief of the new Bureau of Agricultural Economics, which subsumed the former Office of Farm Management and Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates (today the Agricultural Research Service and Agricultural Marketing Service). Among Taylor's tasks in the USDA were the expansion of agricultural information services, creating foreign outposts for the USDA to better collect information on world production and consumption, standardizing the grading of exported American crops, especially cotton, and inaugurating the Agricultural Outlook Service. He also brought many talented new people into the USDA. Among them, two of his Ph.D. students he had already sent to work with Spillman, Oscar C. Stine and Oliver Edwin Baker, and Lewis Cecil Gray, who he persuaded to go with him to Washington.

One of the major issues at the time was the controversy surrounding the first McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Bill in 1924 and other farmer subsidies proposals, however Taylor later stated his own involvement was only indirect. The bill was not supported by the White House but had support from much of the Department of Agriculture. Wallace died unexpectedly in late 1924, and Taylor had lost one of his greatest supporters. President Coolidge appointed William Marion Jardine as the new Secretary of Agriculture in 1925. Although he knew Taylor and they possibly were friends, Coolidge appointed Jardine on the condition that he get rid of Taylor. Jardine asked him to step down and he would try to find him a government position of equivalent rank. Taylor ignored the request and carried on his work, stating that he himself never actively supported the McNary-Haugen Bill or any other such program. Taylor was dismissed from his post officially on August 15, 1925. Despite his short government career, he was still able to make major contributions to the Department of Agriculture, which had become one of the first great economic research organizations in the United States. Disappointed by his termination, he went on to give speeches to farm groups, especially in Iowa, with the main message that Washington was more interested in providing cheap food to urban workers than the welfare of farmers. Taylor wrote of his experience in government in 1926 in a 317 page manuscript called "A Farm Economist in Washington, 1919-1925." Although intended to be released as a book to the public, it was never published.