198 The Waning Role of Laissez Faire 



of the land in that area should be returned to grass and kept there. 

 But an important roadblock to this goal is private property rights in 

 land — an economic institution that has become a sturdy feature of our 

 culture. How does the public in this circumstance achieve a control of 

 land use in the public interest and at the same time serve the special 

 interests of existing owners? We have several operating public pro- 

 grams, the latest of which is under Public Law 1021, in which the 

 government enters into contracts with landowners for specified peri- 

 ods of time. All of the existing programs rest on the assumption that 

 demonstration, education, and public assistance will do the job. None 

 of them is recognized as intervention or interference, except in the 

 case of the rare exercise of the police power by a soil conservation 

 district as a local unit of government. Thus, the tradition of permit- 

 ting the individual landowner to do as he pleases is itself an obstacle 

 to needed government intervention. 



Problems in political economy have a way of becoming blurred as 

 to purpose — often intentionally. They defy all efforts at classification 

 into mutually exclusive compartments. Narrow definitions are helpful 

 for what Professor Mason calls "rational analysis"; but for social and 

 political judgments and for social inventions to deal with problems in 

 political economy the broader definitions can be useful at times with- 

 out being irrational. Witness, for example, the evolution of soil con- 

 servation and other agricultural legislation. There is not the slightest 

 question that the purpose to raise farm income reinforced the purpose 

 to promote soil conservation, and vice versa. The interrelation between 

 soil conservation and national programs for dealing with the prob- 

 lems of farm surpluses and farm incomes is quite clear in the historical 

 process by which we have made great strides during the last quarter- 

 century in soil conservation. Indeed, there must often be such in- 

 terrelationships in the actions of democratic government, for the action 

 of such government is usually a process of compromising conflicting 

 interests and integrating multiple purposes. To the extent that govern- 

 ment subsidies become greater than appear reasonable for conserva- 

 tion purposes, they are often judged by some to be serving other pur- 

 poses. At that point they are presumably no longer payments for con- 

 servation under Professor Mason's definition of conservation, but are 



