The Bismarck Tribune

Reading that opinion a farmer may well be induced to consider what John Marshall would have said about the AAA. In passing it may be in point to mention that the federal government did as much to create western agriculture as any agency for it opened up these lands and gave them free to homesteaders who would brave the perils of the Great Plains and build an empire in a wilderness of prairie. True, the government did not establish agriculture in the west, but it did induce its spread and in so doing created a situation which is no longer practically important. The thing is done.

Yet the history of the supreme court itself lends comfort to the farmer, for it provides insight to the fact that some workable, constitutional farm program can be established. Some day, America will put to work John Marshall's forgotten wisdom:

"A power to create implies the power to preserve."

It should not be amiss to think that the government should, in part, aid in preserving that which it in part created.

Quoting from Marshall's opinion: "we admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the government are limited and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think a sound construction of the constitution must allow the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution, which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it in a manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional."

Certainly a farm program for the purpose of achieving a parity price for agricultural products is a legitimate end.

Agriculture is a nation-wide pursuit and to say that a program for its aid established by the federal government, constitutes an invasion of state's rights is merely a hair-splitting technicality.