CHAPTER XX 



THE FIELD OF RUKAL SOCIOLOGY 

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF RURAL LIFE * 



A. R. MANN 



SOCIOLOGY is the study of human experience. It views the 

 problems of life from the standpoint of their effects on the 

 quality of the human beings who inhabit the earth. In its ap- 

 proach to the great industrial problems of the day, for example, 

 it subordinates the important questions of how may production 

 be increased most efficiently and economically to what it regards 

 as the ultimate question of the effect of the organization of indus- 

 try, of the hours, wages, and conditions of labor, on the persons 

 who perform that labor. We say that sociology concerns itself 

 with the human values rather than with the material values. 



Not that the sociologist disregards the importance of the 

 material values, or the production of wealth. He knows how 

 indispensable these are, and how essential it is that the processes 

 of wealth production shall be perfected for the good of the race. 

 (He is concerned with every factor which promotes or retards 

 industrial efficiency. But his concern is not for increased output 

 and more wealth for the sake of the wealth, but for the sake of 

 the persons whose lives are bettered either in the production 

 or in the use of that wealth. When the sociologist contends 

 for an increase in wages, the end he has in mind is not that the 

 workman may have a larger pay check and more money in his 

 purse, but that he may be able to safeguard the health of his 

 family better, may educate his children, may gain some release 

 from the mere struggle for existence to devote to personal devel- 

 opment. Not the accumulation of wealth, but the enlargement 

 and refinement of personality is the end the sociologist seeks; 



i Adapted from The Cornell Countryman, Vol, XIV, No. 6, pp. 459-461, 

 March, 1917. 



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