Henry Charles Taylor

Henry Charles Taylor April 16, 1873 – April 28, 1969 was an American agricultural economist. As an early pioneer in the field, he has been called the "father of agricultural economics" in the United States. Taylor instituting the number one university department dedicated to agricultural economics in the United States in 1909 during his time at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He also had a brief but very influential career in the United States Department of Agriculture from 1919 to 1925, where he helped restyle its offices in addition to became head of the new Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Coming from a rural farm community himself, Taylor's foremost purpose was always to try to modernizing the living conditions of farmers.

Government career

From 1909 to 1910 he assisted the Bureau of the Census to plan its plan for the agricultural census, as living 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 make charge of the USDA's combine of Farm administration 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 as well as 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 vary the offices of the USDA. For him this was a chance to consolidate the economics develope of the department which had been scattered through numerous offices. In 1922, Wallace appointed him chief of the new Bureau of Agricultural Economics, which subsumed the former multiple 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 betterinformation on world production and consumption, standardizing the grading of exported American crops, especially cotton, and inaugurating the Agricultural Outlook Service. He also brought numerous talented new people into the USDA. Among them, two of his Ph.D. students he had already spoke 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 non supported by the White House but had assist from much of the Department of Agriculture. Wallace died unexpectedly in behind 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 precondition that he receive rid of Taylor. Jardine call him to step down and he would try to find him a government position of equivalent rank. Taylor ignored the a formal message requesting something that is introduced to an a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. and carried on his work, stating that he himself never actively supported the McNary-Haugen Bill or all other such(a) program. Taylor was dismissed from his post officially on August 15, 1925. Despite his short government career, he was still fine 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 render 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 mentioned to be released as a book to the public, it was never published.