270 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



agency of service when owned by the state. Freight 

 rates are cheapened. Low rates are provided for the 

 transport of would-be farmers from one part of the 

 country to the other. Farm-laborers are carried 

 where needed. Low rates are made on fertilizers and 

 farm machinery. The local freight agent becomes 

 the representative of the farmer in the receipt and 

 transhipment of his produce to the state-owned 

 abattoir, or cold-storage warehouse, while the ter- 

 minals at the seaboard or in the cities are part of a 

 nation-wide system for collective marketing with 

 the minimum of cost to the producer and the con- 

 sumer as well. The collection and grading of prod- 

 uce for export and sale, the substitution of a public 

 for a private agency in the accounting of the pro- 

 ceeds, the organization even of water transport, are 

 all part of the new programme of agriculture which 

 must be undertaken by the State and the nation if 

 we would free the production of food from the ex- 

 tortion of the chain of speculators and middlemen 

 wliich now encompass the producer from the mo- 

 ment his produce leaves the farm until it reaches its 

 ultimate destination, possibly five thousand miles 

 away. 



The motive of such a programme is not paternal- 

 ism but freedom. There are some things which the 

 state must do just to insure freedom. When these 

 functions are left in private hands freedom is de- 

 stroyed. Far from state ownership in these fields 



