e may be the most hurtful kind of
concentration, for it may more vitally affect the people at home. Here
the question, remember, is not the most efficient formal administration,
but the best results for the people. The farm-bureau work, for example,
can never produce the background results of which it is capable if it is
a strongly intrenched movement pushed out from one centre, as from the
college of agriculture or other institution. The college may be the
guiding force, but it should not remove responsibility from the people
of the localities, or offer them a kind of co-operation that is only the
privilege of partaking in the college enterprises. I fear that some of
our so-called co-operation in public work of many kinds is little more
than to allow the co-operator to approve what the official
administration has done.

In the course of our experience in democracy, we have developed many
checks against too great centralization. I hope that we may develop the
checks effectively in this new welfare work in agriculture, a desire
that I am aware is also strong with many of those who are concerned in
the planning of it.

Some enterprises may be much centralized, whether in a democracy or
elsewhere; an example is the postal service: this is on the business
side of government. Some enterprises should be decentralized; an example
is a good part of the agricultural service: this is on the educational
side of government. It is the tendency to reduce all public work to
uniformity; yet there is no virtue in uniformity. Its only value is as a
means to an end.

Thus far, the rural movement has been wholesomely democratic. It has
been my privilege for one-third of a century to have known rather
closely many of the men and women who have been instrumental in bringing
the rural problem to its present stage of advancement. They have been
public-minded, able, far-seeing men and women, and they have rendered an
unmeasurable service. The rural movement has been brought to its present
state without any demand for special privilege, without bolstering by
factitious legislation, and to a remarkable degree without self-seeking.
It is based on a real regard for the welfare of all the people, rather
than for rural people exclusively.

Thrice or more in this book I have spoken as if not convinced that the
present insistence on "efficiency" in government is altogether sound.
That is exactly the impression I desire to convey. As the term is now