336 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



and in the high purposes which they have in mind. But hitherto 

 the proportion of the effort expended by these agencies which has 

 reached the actual farmer is comparatively small, and the amount 

 absorbed by the farmers and put into practice even smaller. In 

 other words, the work up to the present time has largely been 

 experimental, or learning by experiment what ought to be done. 

 Principles have then been taught in institutions to people who 

 in turn have in mind the teaching of people to teach still other 

 people. Up to the present time almost all of the work has been 

 teaching various persons to teach ; it has not been teaching the 

 farmers to produce. Though hundreds of millions of pages of 

 literature have been distributed among farmers, only a small per- 

 centage has actually been read, and only a small percentage of 

 that read has been put into practice. It has taken almost all, if 

 not all, of the education which has reached the farmers to date, 

 to prevent any downward movement in the quantity produced per 

 acre of land actually cultivated. 



