Howard Ross Tolley

Background

Howard was born on September 30, 1889 in Howard County, Ind. He was the son of Elmer E. Tolley, a farmer, and Mollie Grindle.

Education

Tolley studied at Marion (Ind. ) Normal College during the 1905-1906 school year. From 1906 to 1911 he taught at Indiana high schools and attended Indiana University, graduating in 1910, with a major in mathematics.

Beginning in 1921, Tolley informally studied farm management and agricultural economics under the tutelage of Secretary of Agriculture Henry Cantwell Wallace.

Career

In 1912 Tolley went to work as a mathematician at the Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, D. C. Three years later he began a long association with the Department of Agriculture. After one year with the Bureau of Plant Industry, Tolley moved in 1916 to the Office of Farm Management at the invitation of William Jaspon Spillman, who was anxious to start researching the quantitative and analytical aspects of farm management.

When the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) was created in 1923, Tolley helped to shape its research program, which generated both data and techniques for analyzing agricultural problems. He was a leader in the development of multiple-correlation and input-output studies.

The agricultural outlook work within the BAE was largely his creation. In September 1928 Tolley was elevated to assistant chief of the BAE. In March 1930 Tolley left the BAE to help organize and develop the newly established Giannini Foundation for Agricultural Economics at the University of California (Berkeley).

While Tolley is listed as director of the foundation from 1930 to 1936, he was under considerable pressure from the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to return to Washington and assist with the formation of New Deal agricultural programs. Initially he served as economic adviser and assistant to Chester C. Davis, administrator of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). In that capacity Tolley's principal concern was with marketing agreements for fruits and vegetables, a task made difficult by the grower groups seeking special advantages.

Tolley was next appointed chief of the Program Planning Division of the AAA (1933 - 1935). In that capacity he played a leading role in developing a long-run, conservation-oriented approach that was written into the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936. When the AAA was declared unconstitutional in 1936, the work of the Program Planning Division simplified the transition of the AAA to an agricultural program acceptable to the court. When Chester Davis resigned in June of that year, Tolley became administrator and resigned his directorship at the Giannini Foundation.

Two years later he transferred back to the BAE and served as its chief until 1946. In the period before the war, Tolley helped Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, son of his chief in the 1920's, change the emphasis of the BAE from research to long-run planning. Tolley also helped develop the county planning committee approach to local agricultural problems.

Throughout the 1930's Tolley supported the concept of an "ever-normal granary" to put agriculture on a sound and stable basis. He argued that this would double the national inventory of grain and achieve "stabilizing prices. " Wallace accepted the argument and erected government granaries to store surplus harvests as insurance against lean years. Tolley also reasoned that the financial and physical problems of agriculture were interdependent, and that increased soil fertility was the farmers' main hope for a brighter financial future. To that end he advocated a quota system for planting specific crops and urged farmers to restrict the acreage they planted. His advocacy of cash grants to farmers under the federal price support plan aroused controversy but did not lessen his reputation as the "soil wizard" of the New Deal.

During World War II, in addition to his duties in the BAE, Tolley served in the Office of Price Administration and represented the United States at many international agricultural conferences. He was economic adviser to the United States delegates at the Hot Springs (Va. ) Conference of 1943, which led to the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and he served as a member of the interim commission that drafted a constitution and program for the FAO.

In 1946 Tolley became chief economist of the Economics and Statistics Division of the FAO. Like his situation at the BAE more than two decades earlier, this position offered him the challenge of pioneering an agricultural research and service program. When the FAO moved to Rome in 1951, Tolley resigned to become a staff assistant to Chester Davis, who had been appointed a vicepresident of the Ford Foundation. Tolley was in charge of the Washington office of the foundation until 1954.

After his retirement he served as an adviser to the Planning Board of Pakistan (1955) and as a consultant to many organizations, particularly the National Planning Association in Washington.

He wrote The Farmer, Citizen at War (1943) and numerous articles and bulletins, many published in the Journal of Farm Economics. Tolley edited the Journal between 1927 and 1929, and was president of the American Farm Economics Association, which published it, in 1933. Tolley died in Alexandria, Va.

Achievements

• Tolley was a dominant figure in the development of agricultural economics and American agricultural policy.

Works

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  • Experience of Eastern Farmers With Motor Trucks: An Analysis of 753 Reports From Farmer Truck-Owners (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Experience of Eastern Farmers With Motor Tru...)

  • A Method of Testing Farm-Management and Cost-of-Production Data for Validity of Conclusions (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Method of Testing Farm-Management and Cost...)

  • The Manufacture and Sale of Farm Equipment in 1920: A Summary of Reports From 583 Manufacturers (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Manufacture and Sale of Farm Equipment i...)

  • The Standard Day's Work in Central Illinois: Performance of Implements and Crews as Indicated by Reports From 600 Farmers in a Typical Corn-Belt Area (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Standard Day's Work in Central Illinois:...)

  • The Theory of Correlation as Applied to Farm-Survey Data on Fattening Baby Beef (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Theory of Correlation as Applied to Farm...)

  • The Theory of Correlation as Applied to Farm-Survey Data on Fattening Baby Beef (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Theory of Correlation as Applied to Farm...)

  • Corn-belt Farmers' Experience With Motor Trucks: A Study Of 831 Reports From Farmers Who Own Motor Trucks, Volumes 926-950

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Motor Trucks On Eastern Farms

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • The Farmer Citizen at War

Membership

He was a president of the American Farm Economics Association.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• At his death the Washington Post noted that Tolley ". .. helped to plant and nurture the seeds of agricultural policy that during the last 25 years have grown into programs which are now as familiar a part of the American farm scene as a silo. "

Connections

On May 8, 1912, Tolley married Zora F. Hazlett, a graduate of Marion Normal College. They had three sons, all of whom became economists.

Father:

Elmer E. Tolley

He was a farmer.

Mother:

Mollie Grindle

Spouse:

Zora F. Hazlett

References

• The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography by John S. Bowman (1995-05-26)