EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS

when the Supreme Court broadly authorized states to regulate businesses, a dramatic shift. Noted , the ruling settled “one of the most important questions ever considered by the court.” The great recasting began with one federal bureaucrat who thought he knew more about farming than most farmers—and, in fact, did. As a farmer in Benton County, Minnesota, before taking a job with the new Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC, Oliver Kelley had been a voracious reader of agricultural journals, enthusiastically adopting new techniques. He was the first farmer in Minnesota to plant timothy to feed his horses and to own a mechanical reaper. His spread survives as a “living history museum" maintained by the Minnesota Historical