8 INTRODUCTION 



access to the open sea. In a war with Russia, France, England, or several 

 of these countries together, the adequate maintenance of the home popula- 

 tion might be seriously endangered. To be sure, this danger is somewhat 

 lessened by a strong fleet, such as we hope to have in our possession in the 

 course of a few years, but yet is by no means entirely removed. // remains, 

 at any rate, an especially vital problem for German agriculture to strive to 

 provide its domestic needs of indispensable means of subsistence, and particu- 

 larly its breadstuffs. Out of regard for its own existence, even, the govern- 

 ment is compelled, so far as lies within its power, to assist agriculture in 

 the solution of this problem. 1 



Thus is German agricultural economics indentured to the service of 

 a politico-military master, rather than left to an intellectual freedom 

 of enterprise. It is designated Agrarpolitik a not- to-be-neglected 

 segment of the cameral Nationalokonomie. 



Quite different is the tconomie rurale of France, and decidedly 

 worthy of our attention because it appears to be most closely akin to 

 much of the work which has been done in our own country. While 

 the character of the German Agrarpolitik was being determined by 

 the dedication of all scholarly endeavor as well as material resources 

 to the purpose of national strength and self-sufficiency which has been 

 unfolding since 1870, France has thought more in terms of individual 

 prosperity of her farming population as furnishing the raw material 

 of national well-being. Agricultural economics has been viewed as 

 the culmination of a mighty effort on the part of agricultural science 

 to put in the hands of the cultivateurs of France the most complete 

 intellectual equipment possible for the pursuit of their calling. We 

 may well let Jouzier, who has written probably the best of the French 

 texts, speak for himself and his colleagues. He points out that, after 

 the agriculturist has had a thorough training in pure science and the 

 sciences technologiques of his craft 



He is then able to practice the art of agriculture, which involves simple 

 transformations of material by the process of cultivation, but not the indus- 

 try of agriculture, which involves, at the same time and to a greater extent, 

 the realization o(.an increase of wealth. And he needs, moreover, in order 

 to enable him to accomplish this double purpose, to appeal to social science, 

 which teaches him to understand man so far as he is a social being, the needs 

 and desires which govern him, the higher laws which he obeys in the social 

 relationships which he forms with his fellow-men; he ought lastly to have 

 recourse to rural economics in order to learn, as we have said before, to 

 co-ordinate the action of all his industrial resources, to the end of making 



1 Goltz, Vorlesungen iiber Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, p. 1 1. 



