this public work to the development of
a democracy. I am not thinking so much of the development of a form of
government as of a real democratic expression on the part of the people.
Agriculture is our basic industry. As we organize its affairs, so to a
great degree shall we secure the results in society in general. It is
very important in our great experiment in democracy that we do not lose
sight of the first principle in democracy, which is to let the control
of policies and affairs rest directly back on the people.

We have developed the institutions on public funds to train the farmer
and to give him voice. These institutions are of vast importance in the
founding of a people. The folk are to be developed in themselves rather
than by class legislation, or by favor of government, or by any attitude
of benevolence from without.

Whether there is any danger in the organization of our new nationalized
extension work, and the other public rural agencies, I suppose not one
of us knows. But for myself, I have apprehension of the tendency to make
some of the agricultural work into "projects" at Washington and
elsewhere. If we are not careful, we shall not only too much centralize
the work, but we shall tie it up in perplexing red-tape, official
obstacles, and bookkeeping. The merit of the projects themselves and the
intentions of the officers concerned in them are not involved in what I
say; I speak only of the tendency of all government to formality and to
crystallization, to machine work and to armchair regulations; and even
at the risk of a somewhat lower so-called "efficiency," I should prefer
for such work as investigating and teaching in agriculture, a dispersion
of the initiative and responsibility, letting the co-ordination and
standardizing arise very much from conference and very little from
arbitrary regulation.

The best project anywhere is a good man or woman working in a program,
but unhampered.

If it is important that the administration of agricultural work be not
overmuch centralized at Washington, it is equally true that it should
not be too much centralized in the States. I hear that persons who
object strongly to federal concentration may nevertheless decline to
give the counties and the communities in their own States the benefit of
any useful starting-power and autonomy. In fact, I am inclined to think
that here at present lies one of our greatest dangers.

A strong centralization within the Stat