68 



AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



committee admittedly was crude and tentative, yet it did stimulate some 

 interest. 24 In general, however, progress was slow. In 1903, one prominent 

 rural educator observed that "beyond elementary work in economics, in 

 civics, and occasionally in sociology, little opportunity is given students 

 to study the farm question from its social standpoint. With few excep- 

 tions, these institutions offer no courses whatever in rural social problems, 

 and even in these exceptional cases the work offered is hardly commen- 

 surate with the importance of the subject." 2 



When the colleges of agriculture did begin to act, it was in Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota, where the cooperative movement had reached significant 

 proportions, that the first serious beginnings were made. T. L. Haecker, 

 of the University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, launched 

 his campaign for the establishment of cooperatives as early as 1891, but 

 it was not until 1908-9 that the University of Minnesota listed a course 

 on the "Economics of Agriculture," dealing with such subjects as markets, 

 prices, transportation, farm ownership, size, organization, and the labor 

 system. In 1902-3 the University of Wisconsin offered a course in agricul- 

 tural economics under the instructorship of Henry C. Taylor, thereby 

 blazing a path for which its college of agriculture was to become justly 

 famous. Taylor's book, An Introduction to the Study of Agricultural 

 Economics, the first to bear in its title the term "agricultural economics," 

 appeared in 1905. But in spite of its title, Taylor's text had no section deal- 

 ing with marketing, rural finance, agricultural labor, wages, standards of 

 living, cost of transportation, taxation, or related problems. 26 By 1911 

 Professor C. J. Galpin of the University of Wisconsin began his studies in 



24. Alfred C. True, A History of Agricultural Education in the United States, 

 1785-1925, U. S. Dept. Agri., Misc. Publication 36 (Washington, 1929), p. 253. 



25. Kenyon L. Butterfield, "American Agricultural Education," Popular Science 

 Monthly, LXIII (July, 1903), pp. 257-58. 



26. Report upon the Survey of the University of Wisconsin: Findings of the State 

 Board of Public Affairs and its Report to the Legislature (Madison, [1915]), pp. 949- 

 50; Andrew Boss, "Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, 1885-1935," Uni- 

 versity of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 319 (St. Paul, 1935), 

 pp. 34-35; The College of Science, Literature, and the Arts, 1908-1909, University 

 of Minnesota Bulletin (Minneapolis, May 26, 1908), p. 100; Edwin G. Nourse, 

 "Agricultural Economics," in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (15 vols., New 

 York, 1930-35), I, 534-35- 



