21 THE OFFICE OF AGRICULTURE IN THE SOCIAL ECONOMY. 



itself an expensive agent, so facilitates and cheapens exchanges, 

 as to relieve agriculture and manufacture from the far greater 

 cost of making these same exchanges by the time and labor con 

 suming processes of barter. 



TV 7 e have seen that agriculture is interested in the prosperity and 

 improvement of all mechanical and manufacturing interests: that 

 agriculture in common ivith the arts is interested in-the prosperity 

 of commerce. 



Agriculture, in common with manufacture and commerce, is 

 interested^in the prosperity of the professions. Without the 

 agency of these; without the sound social conditions of HEALTH, 

 ORDER and MORALITY, production would be at an end. So 

 much for the economic argument. Above all, it is interested in 

 that agency which terminates not on the physical products, nor 

 yet directly on social conditions, but on the man himself. 

 The raw material of the educator is the young mind, the un 

 formed intellect of the community. This resulting product is 

 the finished man, prepared by varied knowledge and discipline, 

 and by special training, to act well his part as agriculturist, 

 artisan, merchant, capitalist, physician, lawyer, or teacher; use 

 ful in the civil state, and in those more exalted relations which 

 concern him as a member of the human family, and a subject of 

 the universal empire of God. 



The educator, whether of the school or the press, stands at 

 the point of power, and applies the moving force to the mech 

 anism of human society. His is the highest office in the social 

 economy. 



Agriculture is interested in the prosperity and growth of large 

 towns. A town or city is a part of the business machinery 

 of the country. In some agricultural communities there has 

 sprung up a narrow jealousy of the town, grudging its prosper 

 ity, tainting legislation by unequal taxation, and a denial of the 

 facilities necessary to healthy development. In the large town 

 the principle of competition is the most active, and furnishes 

 the best check upon monopoly. The interests of town and 

 country are mutual and harmonious. 



Lastly, agriculture is interested in the improvement and per 

 fection of its own processes, in the discoveries of science and their 

 applications, in that close union of the intellect of the state 

 with its productive arm, which will finally do away with social 

 distinctions, and leave each individual to stand on his personal 

 merit as a part of the social system. 



