AN UNTILLED FIELD IN EDUCATION 223 



place of the farm and the farmer in that question. 

 No one can have a full appreciation of the social 

 and industrial life of the American people who 

 is ignorant of the agricultural status. 



The natural place to begin work in rural social 

 science is the agricultural college. Future farm- 

 ers and teachers of farmers are supposed to 

 be there. The subjects embraced are as im- 

 portant in solving the farm problem as are 

 biology, physics, or chemistry. No skilled farm- 

 er or leader of farmers should be without some 

 reasonably correct notions of the principles that 

 determine the position of agriculture in the 

 industrial world. A brief study of the elements 

 of political economy, of sociology, of civics, is not 

 enough; no more than the study of the elements 

 of botany, of chemistry and of zoology is enough. 

 The specific problems of the farmer that are 

 economic need elucidation alongside the study 

 of soils and crops, of plant- and stock-breeding. 

 And these economic topics should be thoroughly 

 treated by men trained in social science, and 

 not incidentally by men whose chief interest is 

 technical agriculture. 



The normal schools may well discuss the 

 propriety of adding one or two courses which 

 bear on the social and economic situation of the 



