ABSTRACT
In the American political system the accumulation of power by the central government has been further limited by what might be called localization. The job of government is not to take over, own, or operate the economy, but to improve and expand the opportunities for successful private enterprise. The synthetic rubber plants, built by the government for the military purposes of the second World War, were sold back to private industry. In the United States the private lives of private citizens have always been felt to be more important than the public history of the nation. The weighting of the traditional social balance toward private and individual life, and away from the public and national, has probably gone further in the United States than in any other large nation. Throughout our national history, the central government has held, through one or another circumstance, huge tracts of public lands.
