THE GRASS LANDS 177 



many men in a rowboat. If one man cannot pull his oar, the 

 whole boat is slowed down. And if the sea is rough and dan' 

 gerous, everyone in the boat is endangered by that one man's 

 weakness. In cases like this, people often make the mistake of 

 blaming the weak man. There is a good chance that he is not 

 responsible for his weakness. It may well be that it is some 

 thing the others have done to him. In any case, people who 

 want to reach a goal must help one another. 



That was more or less the idea of Congress, which is supposed 

 to think of the country as a whole. Congress decided that the 

 range problem, along with many other regional problems, was 

 a national problem. The argument was that the whole country 

 loses when one section is in trouble. Therefore, they directed 

 federal money and a federal department to try to solve that 

 regional problem. 



The great danger of such a process is that a national agency 

 may not understand the best way to deal with regional prob 

 lems. After all, Washington is a long way from Albuquerque, 

 New Mexico. In order to meet this difficulty, the district 

 advisory boards were set up so that the national administrators 

 of the Taylor Act would have a source of local information. 

 At the same time, the Gracing Division was so arranged that 

 each region would be managed by a director in that region. 



Once you give power to local people you are in danger of 

 another difficulty. Local groups are apt to think only of how 

 to care for themselves without considering the effect such 

 efforts may have on others in other places. There must 

 be a balance of power between the national and regional 

 groups if the interest both of the nation and of the region 

 are to be properly handled. Therefore, the Taylor Act gave 

 the Division of Gracing the power to supervise the work 

 of the local boards. And Congress, national body, has the 

 power to control the whole process according to the wish of 

 the majority of all the voters. Thus, from this point of view, 



