guard. If country-life surveys have possibilities of 

 great good, they also have equal possibilities of great 

 damage. 



The goal of survey-work in agriculture is to 

 make a record of the entire situation and to tell the 

 whole truth. Fragmentary surveys and piece-work, 

 however good they may be in themselves, do not rep- 

 resent the best effort in surveys. Practically all our 

 surveys have thus far been fragmentary or unrelated, 

 but this is the work of a beginning epoch. We shall 

 almost necessarily be obliged to do still further frac- 

 tional and detached work ; but it is time that we begin 

 to train the imagination on completer and sounder 

 programs. The whole basis and condition of the 

 rural community must be known and recorded. The 

 community must know where it stands. It must 

 understand its assets and its liabilities. 



Survey-work is legitimate wholly aside from its 

 application. I have no patience with the doctrine of 

 ''pure science," — that science is science only as it is 

 uncontaminated by application in the arts of life ; and 

 I also have no patience with the spirit that considers 

 a piece of work to be legitimate only as it has direct 

 bearing on the arts and affairs of men. We must dis- 

 cover all things that are discoverable and attack 

 those that are not discoverable and make record of it 



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