RURAL STATESMANSHIP 199 



the best service of the government to the farmer is to 

 help him to help himself, or rather to help the farmers 

 to help themselves through cooperative methods; and 

 to refrain from all activities that can be done well by 

 individuals or by voluntary organizations. Govern- 

 ment regulation has become an absolute necessity; there 

 is no question about that principle. With respect to 

 government management or even government owner- 

 ship, we ought to be in the mood to have it wherever 

 it has become clear that voluntary organizations of 

 producers and consumers on the one hand, and state 

 and federal regulatory laws on the other hand, are 

 still ineffective to get substantial justice for the great 

 masses of producers and consumers. 



Federal Appropriations. The federal government 

 has been quite generous to agriculture. But there will 

 be new and extensive calls for federal money for many 

 purposes connected with agricultural improvement. 

 There may be, however, a growing resentment at too 

 detailed control of such funds from the federal treas- 

 ury as are appropriated and used in the states by fed- 

 eral authority. There is a widespread feeling that the 

 federal government should appropriate money for cer- 

 tain state purposes, and let the states handle it as they 

 like. The tendency of Congress is to insist that the 

 federal appropriation shall be supplemented by state 

 and local appropriations, the work to be planned jointly 

 and executed locally, but with close supervision by the 

 federal government, and with the latter holding veto 

 power over expenditures. There are those, too, who 

 are strongly opposed to federal appropriations for agri- 

 cultural purposes on the ground that each state knows 

 best its own needs, and has an obligation to take care of 

 its own problems; and also because of an earnest con- 



