2 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



War as a means of livelihood. The terms "war " and "plunder" 

 are usually applied to efforts of one nation, tribe, or community 

 as a whole to get land, wealth, or some other economic advantage 

 from another community as a whole. Where the same methods 

 are practiced by the members of a nation, tribe, or community 

 against their own fellow citizens they are called murder, robbery, 

 and theft. Cannibalism and slavery have seldom been practiced 

 except against members of outside communities, against people 

 to whom one did not feel any of the obligations of a common 

 citizenship. It is obvious that such methods of getting a living 

 are destructive rather than productive. The world as a whole 

 could obviously never be enriched by war and plunder, for 

 example, though the successful party may be enriched if the 

 plunder is rich enough to more than balance the cost of the war. 



Even within the same nation, tribe, or community there are 

 sometimes practices which enrich one man or group of men at 

 the expense of others. Such practices are always the mark of a 

 weak and inefficient or of a corrupt government, and are grow- 

 ing less and less in proportion as governments become efficient 

 and honest. There are also practices by means of which men 

 get a living by serving other people or the community as a whole. 

 These include the commoner industrial and business practices 

 and the leading forms of professional and personal service. The 

 fewer there are in any nation who get their living at the ex- 

 pense of others, and the more there are who get their living by 

 productive and serviceable practices, the better it is for that 

 nation, and the more it will prosper. 



Economic and uneconomic methods. Accordingly the first and 

 fundamental distinction to be made among different ways of 

 getting a living is that between the uneconomic or unproductive 

 methods and the economic or productive methods. The uneco- 

 nomic methods of getting a living are sometimes destructive, and 

 include all those occupations in which one's success depends 



