EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. XXXII. June, 1915. No. 8. 



Perhaps no branch of work rehithig to agriculture is attracting 

 more attention at the present time than rural economics. Questions 

 of the far-reaching influences and rehitions of systems and practices 

 in farming, of cost of production, of waste and economy, of the 

 farmer's return for his labor and investment, and many others of 

 similar nature are seen to be of fundamental importance, and to call 

 for special expert study. Organization and business management 

 are looked to for the advancement of the industry in much the same 

 way that experiment and research in production have been looked 

 to in the past. Fortunately, provision is being made for such studies 

 in increasing amount, and the phice of this effort and its relation to 

 the experiment station is being worked out. 



A great deal of our station work has been from the very first eco- 

 nomic in purpose and application, although it has not always been 

 thought of as in the field of economics. It relates to a productive 

 industry whose methods are economic, involving the elements of 

 buying and selling, prices of supplies, cost of production, and profit 

 and loss. And the station work has been concerned very directly 

 with the business side of the industry, to make it more productive, 

 more profitable, more safe as a means of livelihood. True, the sta- 

 tion work has been thought of as largely directed at the science of 

 production, but in fact it has very often reached over into the eco- 

 nomics of production and distribution, especially in its simpler forms. 



The subject matter of economics is defined as the study of man's 

 efforts to get a living. The means by which he is enabled to do this 

 through agriculture, the influences which aid and hinder him, and 

 the proper weighing and understanding of these, are in the field of 

 rural economics. Man's success in agriculture has resulted from his 

 knowledge of how to control and direct the forces of nature, and this 

 has been promoted by the accumulation and interpretation of expe- 

 rience, and more recently by the employment of the experimental 

 method, which goes outside the realm of experience in acquiring facts 

 and testing theories and traditions. 



It is natural that at the outset simple, practical questions, many 

 of them dealing with the commercial side almost exclusively, should 

 have pressed upon the stations, and that the working out of these 



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