734 AGRICULTURE 



social, political, or to increase production? What are the moral and 

 psychological effects of cooperation? What relation can cooperation 

 have to the isolation of the farmer? To his hygienic conditions? Is 

 it possible or desirable by means of cooperation to save small indi- 

 vidual ownership of farms? 



Is it true that the country promotes health better than the city? 

 What are the diseases of the country? Are there mental diseases of 

 isolation? Are most of the farmer's diseases due to his work, environ- 

 ment, or poor intellectual preparation to meet the requirements of his 

 condition? What could the state do for the farmer from a hygienic 

 standpoint? What are the relations of farm water-supplies to the 

 prevalence of typhoid fever and other diseases? 



How is isolation to be overcome? By a hamlet system? Or by a 

 distributive system of communication -- as by better roads, trolley- 

 lines, auto-vehicles, rural mail delivery, telephones, traveling li- 

 braries, cooperative reading-courses? Is the social life of the small 

 village as vital and wholesome as that of the separated farm-home? 



These are only the merest suggestions of a very few apparent 

 present problems. They are not to be solved by any a priori reason- 

 ing, nor by using the stock statistics and opinions of economists and 

 sociologists. The field must be newly studied. New data must be 

 collected. New means of attack must be developed. With much 

 painstaking, actual facts in detail must be secured. What is the actual 

 social and economic status of every farmer in a township? a county? 

 a state? Who knows? History must be studied from a new point of 

 view. The very foundation of historical development is public 

 opinion of the common people; and until within the past century the 

 common man was the farmer. Agriculture is the basis of history. 

 The best data of the actual conditions of the people antecedent to the 

 French Revolution are said to be found in Arthur Young's minute 

 description of the agriculture of France. The historian of agricul- 

 ture is yet to be born. 



As an example of the inadequacy of our information on important 

 economic problems, let me cite the most pressing problem just now 

 confronting the American farmer the question of farm-labor. Farm- 

 labor is scarce; it is dear; it is inefficient; it is unreliable. Yet we read 

 of the armies of the unemployed asking for bread. Why? Who can 

 answer? Who has the data? There seems to be not one authority 

 to whom we can turn. It is apparent that these serious pressing 

 problems scarcity, expensiveness, inefficiency of farm-labor are 

 only symptoms of some deep-seated maladjustment. 



A large proportion of the labor on farms is done by the farmer him- 

 self or his growing family. The inability to find steady employment 

 for laborers is a very difficult problem. Ordinarily, men desire to 

 work all the time and to use their energy to the best advantage. 



