INTRODUCTION 3 



The study of rural economics is cultural because it has to do 

 with men in the broadest possible sense. Men have lived with- 

 out printing presses or printed books and even without books of 

 any kind. The qualities which characterize our race were fixed 

 before there was art or architecture. Very few, if any, changes 

 or improvements in the race have taken place since, but, except 

 for the lowest savage who lived exclusively by hunting and fish- 

 ing, no people has ever lived without agriculture, that is, without 

 some means of increasing the soil's capacity to produce desirable 

 things for human consumption. I remember reading a fascinating 

 article a few years ago on the oldest trade in the world. By 

 " trade " was meant a specialized occupation which would exclude 

 agriculture. The oldest trade, or specialized occupation, accord- 

 ing to that article, was working in flint. This was fascinating 

 because it introduced one to a very important chapter in the life 

 of the human race. That is cultural information which gives one 

 the widest possible knowledge of and sympathy with man in all 

 phases of his existence and all stages of his civilization. But even 

 the making of flint instruments is less valuable in this respect than 

 the knowledge of the various processes by means of which man 

 has extracted a living from the soil. 



This is practical knowledge in a strict business sense, because 

 a wide knowledge of rural economy, of the epochs in agricultural 

 history, of the changes that have taken place, of the reasons why 

 they have taken place, of the tendencies of the present, and of the 

 reasons for those tendencies gives one a broader basis or a larger 

 background for the study of the specific problems of the present 

 than can otherwise be secured. We are now in a period of agri- 

 cultural reconstruction. Far-reaching and fundamental changes 

 are taking place. Every period of fundamental economic change 

 is a period of strain and stress, of large success and unmerited 

 failure. There are tides in the afl^airs of men, which, taken at 

 the flood, lead on to fortune, but, it should be added, which, 

 taken at the ebb, lead on to misfortune, to failure, to bankruptcy. 

 Periods of rapid and fundamental change are the periods when 

 these tides ebb and flow most powerfully. They who adjust them- 

 selves to the new conditions are carried as by a favorable tide to 



