The world of the farmer, especially in its upper third, is now intricately related to the world of big government, forming with it a combination of private and public enterprise wherein private gains are insured and propped by public funds. The independent farmer has become politically dependent; he no longer belongs to a world of straightforward economic fact.  Centralization has brought consolidated farming and farm chains, run like corporate units by central management. . . . Industrial and financial interests that have invested in farm properties are active agents for rational methods of production and management. They have the money to buy the machines and employ the engineers. Even where they do not invest, own, or manage directly, they take over processing and marketing. . . . Thus the farmer must deal with the business interests closing in on the processing and the distributing of his product (White Collar: The American Middle Classes, 1951, 40-41).