166

AGRICULTURAL RELIEF
it i - it will be denounced as dangerous and unsound. Becausc some of its
oS ovisions tal necessarily have to be reviewed by the courts, it will be declared
in advance to be unconstitutional by its opponents, and every possible delay
interposed to the adjudication which only can determine the fact. Every organ-
ized industry in America which has grown powerful while agriculture has re-
mained unorganized and easily exploited, may be depended upon to cry out that it
is now about to be sacrificed upon the altar of agricultural greed. The opponents
of such a measure will find in the inevitably divided counsels of producers them-
selves an argument which they can accept with smug complacency against
every specific effort toward farm relief. But since when have all the bankers of the
country agreed upon the Federal reserve act, or all the manufacturers been sat-
isfied that the tariff wasssufficiently high, or all the railroads been satisfied with
all the decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission? To say that the
farming classes are not themselves in entire accord upon any specific measure of
relief is a pettifogging excuse for opposing the merits of whatever may be agreed
upon by some of them. And the argument about the farmer trying to put the
Government in business would have some weight, if the Government were not
already in business. The Government has been in the business of proteeting
certain industries at the expense of the rest of the country since the first protec-
tive tariff act was passed. It has for years been in the business of irrigation,
reclamation, flood control, conservation, reforestation, agricultural, mining, and
other experimentation and investigation, navigation, ocean transportation, foreign
commerce extension, railway promotion, immigration, land scttling, road build-
ing and whatnot. What are the Federal land banks and the Federal inter-
mediate credit banks but Governmental agencies, serving a great public need,
and administered by a Federal board, appointed by the President? What is
avery act restricting immigration but a law, in effect, for surplus labor control?

In its final analysis the whole question of agricultural surplus control through
the medium of joint action between a Federal board and local organizations of
producers, must resolve itself into a matter of the administration of general
principles, rather than one of legislative definition and direction. It is on this
broad ground that legislative creative action may be safefly defended and justified.
[f the fundamental object to be attained is desirable and sound, the endless
quibbling over methods and details only serves to muddy the water and confuse
the issue at stake. Under our system of government, we are peculiarly depend-
ant upon the integrity and efficiency of our public servants, and we must proceed
upon the assumption of the presence of these two qualities. In the case of any
remedial legislation for agriculture, we would have to assume that the Federal
board upon which would devolve the administration of the act would be compe-
tent to discharge its duties, without doing the things which seem to fill with
apprchension the minds of those who oppose such legislation. Such a board
would not be composed of doctrinaires, day-dreamers, or fools. The men on it
would have common sense enough to know that if they took one step hurtful
bo any other industry, or to the country as a whole, the board would not survive
the next session of Congress. But they would be guided by no such apprehension.
We assume sane and reasonable action on the part of other boards. Why is it
50 preposterous to assume similar action on the part of a board devoted to the
interests of American agriculture?

Therefore, we need not stop to inquire into just what agreements such a board
would make with producers, or exactly how it would meet its problems, or
just what action it would take under a given set of circumstances. It would
probably act as the Federal Reserve Board acts, or the Interstate Commerce
Commission, or any other board of large responsibilities, charged with duties
of very great concern to the public and of far-reaching consequences to the entire
Nation. To demand in advance a bill of particulars on the basis of a hypothetical
situation, is directly in keeping with the general opposition to such legislation.
Such a board would be charged with the duty of studying the problems of Ameri-
can agriculture, particularly as related to surplus control and the orderly distri-
bution of agricultural products into and through the channels of trade. It
would be clothed with authority, acting in conjunction with the producers them-
selves, to devise some means of ameliorating such problems, or at least mini-
mizing their harmful results. No law creating such a board could even approach
finality in its original form. The chief concern of the proponents of such legis-
lation is to establish a point of departure from the policy of laissey faire; to urge
that in justice to its importance and to its needs, American agriculture is at least
antitled to share in the long series of legislative experiments which have been
undertaken in behalf of other industries and other groups.