Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/63

 hands, it must be plain to everyone that the net effect of its work over many years has been a series of immense benefits to the American farmer—benefits that have at once reduced his labour and augmented his profits. Nevertheless, it is a matter of history that the farmers of the United States, when the Department began as a bureau of the Patent Office in 1830, opposed it almost unanimously, and that for years their bitter derision kept it feeble. Without leaving the United States one may go even farther back. When John Adams, during his presidency, proposed to set up a Weather Bureau, he was denounced as an idiot and a scoundrel, as Henry Adams has set forth in the introduction to “The Decay of Democratic Dogma.” Examples from our own time are so numerous and notorious that it is needless to direct attention to them. It is axiomatic that all measures for safeguarding the public health are opposed by the majority, and that getting them upon the books is mainly a matter of deceiving and checkmating it. What happened in Los Angeles when a vaccination ordinance was submitted to a popular referendum is typical of what would happen anywhere under the same circumstances. The ordinance was