8 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



subduing the earth is only the larger aspect of the work of get- 

 ting a living ; for getting a living means, as indicated above, 

 extracting the means of subsistence, of comfort, and of happiness 

 out of the material world which surrounds us. 



The pastoral stage. Among those peoples who originally got 

 their living by hunting, and who therefore subsisted largely upon 

 animal food, the next stage of industrial development was usu- 

 ally the pastoral. This was a stage in which men got their living 

 principally by herding and breeding animals which they had 

 tamed and domesticated. This was more economical than hunt- 

 ing, for several reasons. In the first place, the people protected 

 their useful animals from beasts of prey ; again, they drove 

 away the wild and less useful animals which might consume 

 the grass needed by their own animals. By these methods 

 larger numbers of useful animals were enabled to live in a given 

 territory, and thus more ample subsistence was secured. Not only 

 was the subsistence more ample ; it was also more regular in its 

 supply and more easily accessible. 



The pastoral industry consisted, as already indicated, in giv- 

 ing a preference to certain selected types of animals and in 

 excluding other animals which would interfere with their 

 multiplication and growth. It was eventually found, however, 

 that certain plants were more useful than others, either as forage 

 for the animals or as food for man, and that these plants could 

 only be increased by waging war against other plants, now called 

 weeds, which contended against the useful ones for the posses- 

 sion of the soil. When men began to give the preference to 

 these useful plants, to prepare the soil for them, and to destroy 

 the useless ones in order that the useful might multiply and 

 grow, agriculture was born. That is what agriculture consists of 

 to this day. This was an improvement over the mere herding 

 of animals, as herding had been over hunting. By enabling more 

 useful plants to grow than had grown before, subsistence was 



