William Andrew Hirth was an American publisher, journalist and farmer. He was the founder of the Missouri Farmer, and started the Missouri Farmers' Association.
Background
William Andrew Hirth was born on March 28, 1875 in Tarrytown, New Yorks, United States. He was the oldest child of German-born parents, Henry and Dora (Stanford) Hirth. His father was for several years a teamster for a New York City iron foundry, but when young Hirth was only three his family moved to Missouri and took up farming, first at Lead Creek in Pike County, then in Audrain County.
Education
Hirth spent a year at McGee College in Macon County, Missouri, and two years at Central College in Fayette, Missouri. His rebellious spirit apparently demanded something more challenging, however, and he took up the study of law.
Career
Hirth started as an insurance salesman. He found this an invaluable experience financially and one that gave him a good working knowledge of people.
Admitted to the bar about 1901, he turned instead to journalism, purchasing a weekly newspaper, the Columbia Statesman. Hirth's career as a farm leader grew out of his newspaper venture. In 1908, after some five years of publishing the Columbia Statesman, he started a farm paper, the Missouri Farmer and Breeder (later simply the Missouri Farmer), and this soon became his major enterprise. In 1914 he set out to organize the farmers of Missouri into marketing and purchasing clubs, believing that such associations would help relieve them of some of their most pressing economic problems. His success surpassed that of the Grange, the Farmers' Union, and the Farm Bureau.
Expanding his scope, Hirth early in 1917 started the Missouri Farmers' Association. In contrast to the Farm Bureau, with its stress on more efficient production, he emphasized cooperative marketing to secure better prices. Hirth also continued to publish the Missouri Farmer, as he did until his death.
During the middle 1920s Hirth became an outspoken advocate of the McNary-Haugen plan. This proposal, as then understood, sought to segregate the exportable surplus of farm produce from that portion of the crop consumed in the home market. The belief was that in this manner the price of the domestic crop could be protected and the surplus sold in the foreign market--presumably at a loss. Losses incurred from the sale of products in the foreign market were to be prorated among those who sold at a higher price in the domestic market. This assessment, or equalization fee, was to act as a sort of protective tariff for the farmers and provide the kind of protection that the traditional tariffs failed to offer. During the late 1920s and early 1930s Hirth waged a relentless campaign, both by public speeches and by lobbying, on behalf of the proposal and served as chairman of the Corn Belt Committee dedicated to securing its enactment.
Hirth died in Columbia of uremia, the result of chronic interstitial nephritis and arterial hypertension, and was buried beside the grave of his mother in Rock Hill Cemetery, near the village of Rush Hill in Audrain County.
Achievements
Politics
In 1896 Hirth supported Bryan for the presidency.
As a Democrat he was more of an anti-Republican than a New Dealer.
He had positive ideas on such matters as the shortcomings of the Federal Farm Board and the futility of the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
Views
Hirth's early thinking on farm issues was shaped by the Farmers' Alliance, which he joined when he was sixteen years old.
Personality
As a personality Hirth was blustering and arrogant.
Connections
In 1900 Hirth married Lillian Vincent of Clay Center, Kansas, the daughter of the former Populist Congressman William Davis Vincent. They had one child, William Vincent.