Goss was born on October 14, 1882, in Rochester, New York, the youngest of the four children (two boys and two girls) of John Weaver Goss and Flora M. (Alling) Goss. His father, who had a substantial hardware business, moved his family in 1889 to Spokane, Washington, and in 1897 to Portland, Oregon, where he operated a flour-milling business.
Goss graduated from high school in Portland and attended Holmes Business College.
After his father's death, Goss and his brother took over their father's business in Portland and in Lamar and Tacoma, Washington, and managed it until about 1914. Albert also ran a small country store and a telephone company. Goss had a better appreciation of the business phases of farming than most farmers even before he himself took up farming. Beginning in 1914 he operated a dairy farm in Kennewick, Benton County, Washington, and became active in the Grange. He served as master of a local Grange (1916-1918) and as a member of several committees of the Washington State Grange. After the passage of the Federal Farm Loan Act in 1916, Goss called together farmers in his neighborhood, to organize a cooperative farm loan association (of which he was to become the first president), which would enable them to apply to the Federal Loan Bank at Spokane for loans. From 1920 to 1922 Goss was manager of the Grange Cooperative Wholesale Society in Seattle; he worked for the amalgamation of the scattered Grange warehouses into a cooperative buying unit, established a central system of bookkeeping and auditing, and stressed the potentialities of producer and consumer cooperatives. He was very alert to the cooperative business needs of the farmers. Goss's climb up the Grange ladder was assured. In 1922 he became master of the Washington State Grange, a position he held for the next eleven years. As master he worked to heal the breach that had been caused by the aggressive reformism of his predecessor; to encourage cooperatives; and to emphasize the need for improved rural schools, roads, tax reform, and power development. He was critical of the eastern outlook of the National Grange and its failure to consider the problems of the western states and to furnish help to the locals. His elevation to the executive committee of the National Grange probably was inspired by his trenchant criticisms. Later as chairman of the same committee, he pressed for changes in Federal Land Bank policy to broaden the services of the federal land banks. Goss was one of a group of consultants who worked on the draft of the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act of 1933. As director of the Federal Land Bank in Spokane from 1927 to 1933, he drafted a program of cooperative farm credit that subsequently became a model for the Farm Credit Administration (FCA). As land bank commissioner of the FCA from 1933 to 1940, Goss probably derived much satisfaction from seeing a cooperative credit system that he helped develop at the local level being placed at the national. Goss resigned as land bank commissioner when President Roosevelt ordered the consolidation of the FCA with the Department of Agriculture and ordered changes in its functions. He argued that the FCA had been useful in sustained emergencies caused by the failure of the federal government to develop a workable farm policy. In 1941 Goss was elected master of the National Grange, which gave him an opportunity to seek reforms he had been advocating, such as helping make the locals more effective and extending the influence of the National Grange within the federal government. After World War II, Goss became an advisor to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and a founder and member of the executive committee of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. Death came from a heart attack minutes after he finished a speech on mobilization policy at the 1950 New York Herald Tribune Forum at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Burial was at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, California.
Goss was a moderate on matters of farm policy and in step with the quiet, conservative approach of the Grange. His views were those of one who was more responsive to the needs of the better-placed farmers. As head of an organization that pioneered in cooperatives, farm credit reforms, and lobbying at the congressional level, he was far more influenced by his business experiences and the thinking of agricultural leaders of the Far West and Washington, D. C. , who were sensitive to the needs of the commercial farmers in an urban-industrial state.
A critic of Roosevelt's wartime price-control program and later of subsidies for the farmers, Goss believed that a broader farm program and price controls would eliminate these difficulties and benefit the farmers. He was also critical of programs that restricted production to maintain prices in the midst of acute food shortages, believing that under a strong program farmers could produce abundantly and still get fair prices.
Member of the Land Management Commission of the War Power Administration; member of the War Mobilization and Reconversion Advisory Board; member of the advisory board of the Federation for Railway Progress; member of the Public Advisory Board
Goss' marriage to Minnie E. Hand, on December 21, 1907, resulted in the birth of three children.
