192 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



ternational councils has been all too obvious. Much 

 new social machinery has been built and utilized for 

 emergency agricultural production and distribution and 

 for propaganda in rural districts. Some of it might 

 well be saved for future use. There has been as yet 

 no authoritative cooperation with European agricul- 

 tural leaders on the larger policies, nor any repre- 

 sentative body studying agricultural reconstruction at 

 home. 



THE GOVERNMENT AND RURAL PROGRESS 



The province of government in the New Day will 

 soon be a burning issue in America. Shall or shall not 

 the government manage the railways, the telegraph 

 lines, grain elevators, packing houses? Shall the gov- 

 ernment fix prices, or assist in land settlement, or pro- 

 vide agricultural credit? Shall the government do 

 more or do less than it is now doing for agriculture? 

 While these questions are supremely important to the 

 farmer in this new time, our discussion of them herein 

 must be exceedingly brief and in the form of a few 

 mere suggestions. 



Legislation and the Farmer. As a rule, legislation 

 is haphazard. It often results from the individual no- 

 tions of some legislator or possibly grows out of the 

 prejudices of a group of legislators. More often it is 

 just sheer compromise between the radicals and the 

 conservatives. While a compromise is a very practical 

 sort of affair, it is not always wise. Perhaps some of 

 the inequities and inadequacies of legislation in rural af- 

 fairs could be remedied through the existence of a 

 strong national association for agricultural legislation. 

 We already have the beginnings of such an agency. 

 Properly developed, this will be composed of both spe- 



