I WAS THINKING ABOUT THE SUCCESSES OF SOCIALISM

in America and I recall that John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that America agriculture makes a pretty good case for the usefulness of a socialist approach to a sector of our economy. I decided to look into this a little more and found "AMERICAN AGRICULTURE: A Brief History" by R. Douglas Hunt.

I've just begun reading it and found on page 117 that farmers supported the Federal government in its efforts to improve internal transportation by funding canals and railroads. On page 147, I found a tidbit that helps answer the question this Politico article raises, "What's the matter with South Carolina?" This partial answer is that South Carolina has a long history of preferring ignorance to knowledge. In the 1840's, John C. Calhoun, the most distinguished senator produced by the state, denounced an annual publication by the Patent Office that provided statistics and other information about farming as "one of the most enormous abuses under this government."