354 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is the rural problem? And in the answer may be revealed, without 

 need of extended discussion, the mission of the college. 



1. The days are going by when agriculture may be classed with the 

 mining industries. Soil culture is supplanting pioneer farming. Skill 

 is taking the place of empiricism. The despotism of the grandfather 

 is passing. Applied science and business practise have been hitched 

 to the plow. Yet the most obvious need of American agriculture is 

 better farming. Improved farm land in the United States gives but 

 nine dollars of gross return per acre ; the average yield per acre of corn 

 is 23.5 bushels, whereas a very modest ideal would be double this 

 amount; the wheat yield is 13.5 bushels per acre, in Germany nearly 

 twice as much. These are crude but legitimate illustrations of our 

 inferior farming. We must have greater yields of better products, 

 secured at less cost per unit. The farm problem is, therefore, first of 

 all a problem of increasing the technical skill of our farmers. Science 

 unlocks the cabinet of nature's treasures, but only the artist-farmer can 

 appreciate and use the storehouse thus opened to him. 



2. But produce-growing is not the only aspect of the farm problem. 

 Each effective pair of shears needs two blades; in this case produce- 

 selling is the other blade. Mere productiveness does not solve the farm 

 question. The farmer cares less for the second spear of grass than he 

 does for a proper return from the first spear. Business skill must be 

 added to better farming methods. The farm problem is also a business 

 question. 



3. The moment, however, we begin to discuss price we enter a realm 

 where economic factors dominate. We commonly say demand and 

 supply determine price; but effective demand and effective supply are 

 the resultants of many forces. The supply of a given product is influ- 

 enced by the cost of growing in various locations, by cost of transporta- 

 tion, by competition of other countries. The demand is influenced by 

 the state of wages, by standards of living, by effectiveness of distribu- 

 tion. The farmer may not always control these conditions, but he 

 must reckon with them. He must know the laws of economics as well 

 as the laws of soil-fertility. The farm problem becomes then an indus- 

 trial question; for the farmer's prosperity is influenced most pro- 

 foundly by the economic life of the nation and of the world. And in a 

 still wider sense is the rural question one of economics. The industry 

 as a whole must prosper. It is of no great moment that here and there 

 a farmer succeeds. The farming class must prosper. Of course indi- 

 vidual success in the case of a sufficient number of farmers implies the 

 success of the industry. But it is quite possible to have a stagnant 

 industry alongside numerous individual successes. The farmers as a 

 whole must be continually and speedily advancing to better economic- 

 conditions. 



