s are free to any one interested enough to ask for
them."

"You mean to say the government gets up things like this--pays men to
find out and write 'em up--pays to have 'em printed--and then gives
'em away to _anybody_? Why, they're valuable!"

"Yes; but they are nevertheless quite free. I have a number, if you'd
like to go over them. Or you can send for new ones."

"But why do they do it? Where's the graft?" he wondered.

"The graft in this case is common sense in operation. If farms can be
run with less labor and loss and more profit and pleasure, why, the
whole country is benefited, isn't it? Don't you understand, the
government is trying to help those who need help, and therefore is
willing to lend them the brains of its trained and picked experts? It
isn't selfish thwart that aim, is it?"

He said nothing. But he read and re-read the bulletins I had, and sent
for more, which came to him promptly. They didn't know him, at the
Bureau; they asked him no questions; he wasn't going to pay anybody so
much as a penny. They assumed that the man who asked for advice and
information was entitled to all they could reasonably give him, and
they gave it as a matter of course. That is how and why he found
himself in touch with his Uncle Sam, a source hitherto disliked and
distrusted. This source was glad to put its trained intelligence at
his service and the only reward it looked to was his increased
capacity to succeed in his work! He simply couldn't dislike or
distrust that which benefited him; and as his admiration and respect
for the Department of Agriculture grew, unconsciously his respect and
admiration for the great government behind it grew likewise. After
all, it was _his_ government which was reaching across intervening
miles, conveying information, giving expert instruction, telling him
things he wanted to know and encouraging him to go right on and find
out more for himself!

_Now_ if he had asked himself what his government could do for him, he
had to answer: "It can help me to make good."

And he began to understand that this was possible because he obeyed
the law, and that only in intelligent obedience and co-operation is
there any true freedom. The law no longer meant skulking by day and
terror by night; it was protection and peace, and a chance to work in
the open, and the sympathy and understanding and comradeship of
decent folks. The government was no longer a brute force which
arbitrarily popped men