Foreword
When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 law creating a Federal food stamp program, he called the measure “a realistic and responsible step toward the fuller and wiser use of an agricultural abundance” that “weds the best of the humanitarian instincts of the American people with the best of the free enterprise system.” In fact, the origins of the program date back to a temporary system implemented during the Great Depression that allowed those on welfare to use food stamps to purchase at half price items that the Department of Agriculture had declared to be in surplus. Always controversial,…
