INTRODUCTION 7 



II 



But this is only half the story, and many who profess an interest 

 in the subject would doubtless pronounce it much the lesser half. 

 The demand of the hour is not for a science adjusted with nicer 

 refinement to all phases of the truth, but for an art to give immediate 

 and practical counsel concerning the conduct of today's farm under- 

 takings. When technical improvements have gone as far as they may, 

 it is still evident that modern agriculture is more than a merely tech- 

 nological process, since the success of agriculture is to be measured 

 in income and not alone in physical units of product. Toward this 

 end of enlarging cash return in an exchange society the art of economic 

 organization is not less important than scientific knowledge of fertility 

 and plant and animal breeding. 



When we come to set forth this art of agricultural economics in a 

 formal statement, however, it becomes evident that its character will 

 be much modified by the nature of the goal we have m mind. Is it 

 that of individual gain, national strength, or social well-being ? We 

 in America have got, perhaps, far enough away from the older and 

 narrower ideas of nationalism so that we feel little or no conflict 

 between these latter two ideals. And under conditions of peace the 

 economist would be likely to agree that a policy that secures social 

 welfare makes, by so much, for national strength. However, the 

 first group of writers who turned serious attention to the subject were 

 not thinking solely of conditions of peace. In Germany the economic 

 art of agriculture has not been concerned primarily with securing a 

 large return to the farmer or of directing the productive forces of the 

 nation into the channels where national resources and market condi- 

 tions offered greatest return upon suh cexpenditure, but a canny eye 

 has been kept upon the exigencies of possible war and the need of 

 having the country able to feed itself in such a crisis. By way of 

 illustration, we may quote a few lines from a treatise on agricultural 

 economics published in 1899: 



Under normal circumstances the domestic agricultural production of a 

 nation should certainly provide for the needs of the resident population as 

 to necessary products of the soil, especially as to the indispensable foodstuffs. 

 Otherwise the country falls into a position of greater or less dependence upon 

 other states, which are in a position to produce more human subsistence than 

 is needed within their own domains. This dependence is especially pre- 

 carious in time of war and for such lands as, like the German Empire, are 

 bounded on nearly all sides by other countries, and have only a very limited 



