706 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol.41 



field of rural economics has been quite limited thus far, and has not 

 yet formed a prominent feature of the experiment stations. 



The need for investigation, however, and especially for funda- 

 mental inquiry has become more urgent with the growth of teaching 

 and the attempts at regidation or improvement of economic methods. 

 These have revealed the fragmentary character of information based 

 on broad investigation, and have suggested topics which need more 

 systematic study. Naturally the first effort has been to build up a 

 substantial backgi'ound of fact to show what the actual conditions 

 are and thus give a basis for more intensive inquiry. There is a 

 feeling that a point has been reached where the latter type of work 

 should become more extensive, in order to disclose relationships and 

 reasons and thus to develop the principles which are operative. 



Specialists maintain that the method of science is quite as appli- 

 cable to questions in farm economics as to those in other branches, 

 and that the field embraced may furnish subjects just as scientific 

 and suitable to high grade investigation as the physical and biological 

 aspects of agricultural practice. These may be approached in the 

 same spirit and given the same careful treatment in the gathering 

 and analysis of data as subjects bearing on soil fertility or the cause 

 and control of plant disease. The fact that the problems differ in 

 kind and in method of study does not necessarily imply that in one 

 class the work is in any sense inferior in character, less searching, 

 or more rigid in interpretation. 



Because the statistical instead of the experimental method is em- 

 ployed seems no reason why economics should be excluded from the 

 experiment station, which as the research branch of the agiicultural 

 college is comprehensive in its scope. After all, the character of 

 the work is what determines its grade and entitles it to be ranked as 

 scientific research. Questions relating to the technology of produc- 

 tion were first taken up by the experiment stations, and these have 

 usually more than absorbed the funds thus far available. In the 

 provision for expansion effort should undoubtedly be made for this 

 newer branch, in which there will evidently be increasing demand for 

 information. 



Doubt as to the importance of a general expansion of economic 

 research is perhaps attributable to the character of much of the 

 work in the past, and the feeling that the number of broad underly- 

 ing principles which may be developed is relatively limited. The 

 taking of data has sometimes appeared to be an end in itself, supply- 

 ing interesting information on conditions which are constantly fluctu- 

 ating rather than permanent, and arc not shown to conform to fixed 

 laws. A census or a survey may furnish the basis for research with- 

 out itself being in that field. It may bear the same relation to 

 original inquiry that deriving results from a series of simple experi- 



