The National Farmers Union (NFU) was founded in Texas in 1902. Since 1907, its official
title has been the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America. The founders of the
NFU had experienced the agrarian unrest in the South which had taken definition in the
Populist or People's Party and had mobilized farmers against exploitative banks and railroad
companies. Membership in the newly-created NFU grew quickly in the South; and by the First
World War the NFU was extending into the Great Plains states and the Midwest. By the 1920s,
the NFU had essentially died in the South, along with the Populist movement. Since then, the
strongest bases of the organization have been in the Great Plains states and in the Upper
Midwest.
As established at its incorporation, the National Farmers Union has represented the cause
of the family farmer. The NFU ideal has been the agrarian egalitarianism espoused by Thomas
Jefferson. Traditionally, the NFU has advocated: large governmental support for family
farmers; increased rural education; rural electrification; and public ownership of banks,
utilities, and insurance companies. Of the three major farm organizations--the Farm Bureau,
the Grange, and the NFU--the one most politically liberal has been the NFU. The NFU has not
only proposed increased government farm programs, but also has taken progressive stands on
the issues of civil rights and world peace. Such a program during the “Red
Scare” of the 1950s led to accusations of communism within the organization. A handful
of Communists had infiltrated the NFU, but these were quickly purged. In 1951, the NFU won a
libel suit against the Farm Bureau, which had referred to the NFU as
“communist-dominated.”
In the 1920s the NFU began spreading into Wisconsin, organizing local branches. The rapid
growth of the NFU in those years has been attributed, in part, to the progressive tradition
of Wisconsin, as well as to the prevalence of ethnic Germans and Scandinavians, who were
accustomed to cooperative ideas. In 1930, sufficient membership had been attained to permit
the creation of a statewide organization, and the Wisconsin Farmers Union (WFU) was created.
Its official title has changed several times, but since 1943 it has been: Farmers
Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Wisconsin Division.
The Wisconsin Farmers Union prospered in the New Deal years, rising in membership from
3,788 in 1931 to 15,587 in 1947. The next decade, however, the years of the “Red
Scare”, saw the WFU fall to as low as 6,412 members in 1952 and then rise again to
12,611 in 1956. Today [written in 1979] the WFU is a productive concern, which participates
in the common activities of the National Farmers Union, especially in the lobbying in
Congress on behalf of active government farm programs, and in the work of its service
organizations such as the Farmers Union Central Exchange (Cenex), the Farmers Union Grain
Terminal Association, the Farmers Union Livestock Association, and the Farmers Union
Insurance Corporation.
In the first forty-nine years of its history, the Wisconsin Farmers Union had only four
presidents: A.N. Young (1930-1933), Kenneth W. Hones (1933-1959), Gilbert Rohde
(1959-1979), and Leland Mulder (1979- ). It was during the tenure of state president Kenneth
Hones that the WFU was solidly established. Hones was notable in helping to establish the
vibrant youth education program of the WFU, of which one high point was the completion in
1951 of the WFU summer youth camp, Kamp Kenwood (named after Ken Hones), located at Chippewa
Falls on Lake Wissota. During his presidency, however, Hones was perhaps better known for
his virulent anti-communism, which led to a stringent purge of Communists within the WFU.
Hones' allegedly highhanded acts, in the purge and in other matters, caused his detractors,
among them the Committee for a Better Wisconsin Farmers Union, to call for his resignation.
Hones did not resign, however, until he had completed twenty-five years as WFU
president.
Sources:
- Crampton, John Alvah. The National Farmers Union: A Study in
the Resolution of Ideology and Practice. Ph.D. thesis, University of
California-Berkeley, 1958.
- The National Farmers Union: Ideology of a Pressure
Group. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1965.
