Life's Pleasures Quote by David F. Houston

A bureaucratic sentence, but not a neutral one: it reads like a progress report designed to turn a plant into a policy success story. David F. Houston - a politician and cabinet-level administrator in the early 20th-century U.S. - is doing something quietly muscular here. He’s not merely observing that “beans” are useful; he’s announcing that a market has been summoned into existence, fast, and now deserves to be treated as strategically important.

The phrasing “recognized so quickly and so generally” is a tell. Recognition doesn’t just happen; it’s cultivated by institutions: government research stations, wartime procurement needs, and industry eager for cheap inputs. The quote’s calm tempo papers over urgency. Houston pairs “oil production” with “human food,” a double-justification that shields the crop from moral scrutiny. If it’s fuel, it’s industry; if it’s food, it’s public welfare. Either way, the state can rationalize incentives, acreage shifts, and supply-chain coordination.

“Commercial standing far in excess” is the punchline, and also the sales pitch. Value is framed as status: the crop “acquired” a new rank, as if economic hierarchy is a natural order rather than a political arrangement. Subtext: farmers should plant more, investors should finance infrastructure, and the public should accept a reorientation of agriculture toward extractable commodities. In the era when oils, margarine, and industrial lubricants were becoming mass-market necessities (and when global supply shocks were common), Houston’s language turns agronomy into nation-building: the humble bean upgraded into a strategic asset, legitimized by speed, scale, and official approval.