PREFACE 



Though agriculture is our oldest and by far our largest and 

 most important industry, it has only recently occurred to us in 

 the United States that we had a rural problem. Nations, like 

 individuals, are wont to prize the things they do not have rather 

 than the things they have. Agriculture was so natural to our 

 conditions, and established itself so easily, that we took it as a 

 matter of course and gave our attention to the development of 

 industries which did not show a disposition to grow naturally. 

 Accordingly, during the first century of our national existence, 

 our economic policy was framed mainly in the interest of the 

 urban industries. The logical result of this artificial fostering 

 of manufactures and commerce was the rapid building up of 

 great overgrown cities and the creation of a group of urban 

 social problems for which we were woefully unprepared. During 

 the next twenty-five years these problems occupied the attention 

 of economists and students of social science almost to the ex- 

 clusion of everything else. It is only during the last decade that 

 we have awakened to the fact that there is a rural as well as an 

 urban problem. The agricultural colleges and the universities 

 began offering courses on agricultural and rural economics, and 

 there has been a remarkable development of interest in agricul- 

 ture in the high schools of the country, which augurs well for 

 the future of rural civilization in America. 



The present treatise is written in the hope that it may direct 

 attention toward some of the salient features of the rural problem. 

 It emphasizes the public and social aspects of the problem 

 somewhat more, and the business aspect somewhat less, than 

 do most treatises on this subject. As a partial defense for his 



