26o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dream unless, added to the possession of a heart for such work, the 

 clergyman knows the farm problem sufficiently to appreciate the 

 broader phases of the industrial and social life of his people. (5) Edi- 

 tors of farm papers, and of the so-called 'country' jjapers. Probably 

 the editors of the better class of agricultural papers are less in need of 

 instruction such as that suggested than is almost any one else. Yet 

 the same arguments that now lead many young men aspiring to this 

 class of journalism to regard a course in scientific agriculture as a 

 vestil)ule to their work, may well be used in urging a study of rural 

 social science, especially at a time when social and economic problems 

 are pressing upon the farmer. As for the country papers, the 

 work of purveying local gossip and stirring the party kettle too 

 often obscures the tremendous possibilities for a high class service to 

 the rural community which such papers may render. ISTo men, in the 

 aigricultural states at least, have more real influence in their community 

 than the trained, clean, manly, country editors — and there is a multi- 

 tude of such men. If as a class they possessed also a wider appreciation 

 of the farmer's industrial difficulties and needs, hardly any one could 

 give better service to the solution of the farm problem than could they. 

 (6) Everybody else! That is to say, the agricultural question is big 

 enough and important enough to be understood by educated people. 

 The farmers are half our people. Farming is the largest single 

 industrial interest in the country. The capital invested in agriculture 

 is four fifths the capital invested in manufacturing and railway trans- 

 portation combined. Wliether an individual has a special interest in 

 business, in economics, in education, or in religious institutions, he 

 ought to know the place of the farm and the farmer in that question. 

 No one can have a full appreciation of the social and industrial life 

 of the American people who is ignorant of the agricultural status. 



The natural place to begin work in rural social science is the agri- 

 cultural college. Future farmers and teachers of farmers are supposed 

 to be there. The subjects embraced are as important in solving the 

 farm problem as are biology, physics or chemistry. No skilled farmer 

 or leader of farmers should be without some reasonably correct notions 

 of the principles that determine the position of agriculture in the 

 industrial world. A brief study of the elements of political economy, 

 of sociology, of civics, is not enough; no more than the study of the 

 elements of botany, of chemistry and of zoology is enough. The specific 

 problems of the farmer that are economic need elucidation alongside 

 the study of soils and crops, of plant- and stock-breeding. And these 

 economic topics should be thoroughly treated by men trained in social 

 science, and not incidentally by men whose chief interest is technical 

 agriculture. 



The normal schools may well discuss the proj^riety of adding one or 



