Review of: Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981. Hansen, John Mark

Hawley, Ellis W.

English

Iowa Research Online

The Annals of Iowa 
Volume 53 Number 1 (Winter 1994) pps. 66-68 
Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981 
Ellis W. Hawley 
ISSN 0003-4827 
Copyright © 1994 State Historical Society of Iowa. This article is posted here for personal use, 
not for redistribution. 
Recommended Citation 
Hawley, Ellis W. "Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981." The Annals 
of Iowa 53 (1994), 66-68. 
Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0003-4827.9787 
Hosted by Iowa Research Online 
66 THE ANNALS OF IOWA
Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981, by John
Mark Hansen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. xiv, 265
pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. $15.95 paper.
REVIEWED BY ELLIS W. HAWLEY, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
Gaining Access is primarily a work of political science concerned
with testing a theory of interest group access in the United States
Congress. Empirically, it reconstructs the story of the farm lobby
and its relations with Congress from 1919 to 1981. But it is less
interested in contributing to historical knowledge than in using the
story to validate an explanatory theory of how access—defined as
"a close working relationship between members of Congress and
privileged outsiders" (23)—is gained, used, and lost. It joins a
debate among political scientists over the nature, source, and degree
of interest group influence rather than debates among historians
about the development of agricultural policy.
Hansen's central argument is that access results from the
efforts of lawmakers to deal with electoral uncertainty, that it is
given to interest groups (rather than parties or local elites) when
they are seen as having a persisting competitive advantage in pro-
viding electoral information, and that it is withdrawn when
changes in the situation discredit the assumptions upon which it
was given. In the case of the farm lobby, he assumes, the presence
of access can be inferred from the interaction taking place in con-
gressional hearings. By focusing on these hearings and on the judg-
ments expressed in newspapers and periodicals, he makes a persua-
sive case that farm lobby access can be explained by the theory
propounded.
Part one of the book shows that access came only after agricul-
tural lobbying groups, especially the American Farm Bureau Federa-
tion, convinced legislators that they could provide superior electoral
intelligence on a continuing basis. For midwestern congressmen this
was the case by 1926, for southerners by 1931, and for both groups
the New Deal programs institutionalized and perpetuated the
access previously granted. Part two then shows how increasing
urbanization, divisions among farm interests, and electoral out-
comes running counter to the lobby's intelligence undermined the
kind of access enjoyed in the 1930s and 1940s and brought changes
that narrowed its ability to shape policy. Those changes made spe-
cialized commodity groups more important players than the Farm
Bureau. In addition, Hansen shows that his theory can explain the
failures of the consumer lobby in the 1970s, that it fits well the
known successes and failures of various other lobbying groups, and
Book Reviews 67
that it identifies turning points better than any alternative
explanation.
Along with the theory building, the book also contains material
substantially altering and supplementing conventional accounts of
U.S. agricultural policy Hansen argues persuasively, for example,
that the importance of the Farm Bloc of the early 1920s has been
exaggerated and that it was not until later that a reconstituted farm
bloc allowed the farm lobby to become the nation's most influential
lobbying group. It sheds new light on how the policy initiatives of
Charles Brannan, Ezra Taft Benson, and Orville Freeman affected
relations between rural congressmen and farm lobbyists. And it
traces in detail how "deal-cutting" between rural congressmen and
supporters of food stamps for the urban poor helped to perpetuate
farm programs running counter to consumer interests. In these and
other ways, the book makes important historical contributions that
deserve serious attention from anyone interested in how American
farm policy came to be what it is.
Those interested in the history of Iowa will also find the book
rewarding. Iowa, after all, was at the center of much that Hansen
describes and analyzes. It was a stronghold of the Farm Bureau in
its heyday, a provider of leadership for both the initial and reconsti-
tuted farm blocs, an arena of contestation in the battles over the
Brannan, Benson, and Freeman initiatives, and a state whose con-
gressmen were major participants in the hearings and judgments
that the book reconstructs. Those who would understand Iowa's
part in the making of national farm policy can find much of value
in Hansen's story.
From the historian's standpoint, however, the book has several
weaknesses. One is its narrow focus on congressmen and lobbyists
deliberating over agricultural price support policy, generally without
much effort to relate this to what was taking place on the adminis-
trative side of the triangle or in those agricultural policy areas not
directly related to price supports. Another is its cursory treatment of
the years from 1933 through 1947, ignoring in particular the battles
between the Farm Bureau and the New Deal in the late 1930s. A
third weakness is a tendency toward an excessive and sometimes
tiring repetition of the theoretical model. In addition, the assump-
tion that congressmen are single-minded seekers of reelection seems
likely to trouble historians who believe that legislative behavior is at
least partially driven by efforts to implement ideologies and value
systems.
68 THE ANNALS OF IOWA
On balance, though, this is a well-researched, cogently argued,
readably written, and intellectually significant book. It deserves a
wide reading by historians as well as political scientists.
Gateways to Commerce: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' 9-Foot
Channel Project on the Upper Mississippi River, by William Patrick
O'Brien, Mary Yeater Rathbun, and Patrick O'Bannon; edited by
Christine Whitacre. Denver: National Park Service, Rocky Mountain
Region, 1992. 238 pages. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
Paper.
REVIEWED BY PHILIP V. SCARPINO, INDIANA UNIVERSITY/PURDUE UNI-
VERSITY, INDIANAPOLIS
This nicely illustrated volume had its genesis in three separate con-
tract history projects for the National Park Service's Rocky Moun-
tain Region. In 1986 the Rocky Mountain Region contracted with
the St. Paul District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to pro-
duce documentation of the locks and dams in the St. Paul district
for the Historic American Engineering Record. Two additional con-
tracts with the Rock Island and St. Louis districts finished docu-
menting the twenty-six locks and dams that make up the nine-foot
channel project on the upper Mississippi. The completion of the
documentation of all twenty-six locks and dams provided an impor-
tant body of source material about one of the most significant engi-
neering accomplishments in the history of inland navigation in the
first half of the twentieth century. These materials are now a part of
the collections of the Historic American Engineering Record in the
Library of Congress.
Apparently in an effort to make a summary of the results of
these three contracts available to a larger public, the Rocky Moun-
tain Region elected to have Christine Whitacre edit the work of
William Patrick O'Brien, Mary Yeater Rathbun, and Patrick
O'Bannon into Gateways to Commerce. In twenty-seven pages,
including notes and pictures, the first four chapters provide back-
ground on navigation on the upper Mississippi from the early 1800s
to the late 1920s, and on the beginning of the construction of the
nine-foot channel. Chapters five and six examine the nine-foot
channel project from 1929 to 1933 and set the stage for the heart of
the volume, found in chapters seven and eight: "From Rollers to
Tainters: The Changing Technology of the 9-Foot Channel" and
"Case Study: The Construction of Lock and Dam No. 26." Chapter
nine briefly examines the story of the nine-foot channel after World



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