SOME NEXT STEPS 181 



Agriculture, therefore, has always been recognized as of high 

 economic, social, and political consequence. But with few exceptions 

 the economist, like the physicist, has pretty much let agriculture alone 

 as a subject of study for its own sake. As a consequence, this great 

 industry has not much profited by the intelligent application of well- 

 known economic principles, nor have farmers as a class much en- 

 joyed the benefits of instruction in economic theory and the well- 

 known facts of broad human experiences in business relations. 



The result has been that while here and there a few among the 

 many students of agriculture have done the best they could in a 

 pioneer manner, in acquiring in a kind of second-hand and rather 

 belated fashion something of a knowledge of economics as a kind of 

 top graft upon a technical training in agronomy, horticulture, animal 

 husbandry, or what not; yet the world awaits a generation of men 

 trained from the bottom up in the application of the essential prin- 

 ciples of economics to the serious business of farming and its relation 

 to the world of commerce and finance, in which it forms so large 

 a part and upon which the prosperity of the farmer so largely depends. 

 We need new agricultural specialists trained to think in terms of 

 economics. 



One of the results of these coming economic studies will be a 

 clearer conception on the part of the public of the difference between 

 agriculture as a great national industry and farming as an individual 

 occupation. As a national industry, it ranks with other great produc- 

 ing enterprises, and the value and variety of the product is the thing 

 in mind. As an individual occupation, it is intensely human. 



From the individual point of view, agriculture is different from 

 other producing industries in three essential respects : 



First: The unit is exceedingly small and the turnover slow as 

 compared with the managerial ability required and the capital invested. 



Second: To the individual and his family, farming is a mode 

 of life as well as a business, because the home is intimately involved 

 with the producing plant. 



Third : In general, the occupancy of the land changes about once 

 every twenty years and much more rapidly than the ownership. That 

 is to say, the life of the farmer is much shorter than the life of the 

 citizen, and this involves difficult questions of ownership. 



Because these things are so, an agriculture may be very prosperous 

 to the country at large while very unprosperous, even oppressive, to 

 a very large share of the citizens engaged in actual production. This 

 is what has given rise to the recent demands for better credit systems, 



