INTRODUCTION II 



sort. This is but the inevitable consequence of the fact that the 

 workers were trained as horticulturists, soil chemists, or veterinarians, 

 rather than AS economists. Their lack of specialized training caused 

 the treatment of the subject to be fragmentary and superficial pre- 

 scribing salve for outbreaking sores, rather than tracing back the 

 chain of their causation to some constitutional or organic derange- 

 ment. Strangely enough, in the very quarters where the scientific 

 method had been enthroned by chemist, entomologist, thremmatolo- 

 gist, agrostologist, and all the numerous brotherhood of scientific agri- 

 ^ culture, it was empirical methods that were resorted to in the attack 

 upon the economic problems of agriculture. Rural credits have been 

 discussed as though the cost of capital accumulation or the produc- 

 tivity of capital outlays had no bearing on the question; farm prices 

 in terms of "the parasitic middleman"; and the whole question of 

 utilization and conservation of natural resources under the blanket 

 of the "inherent rights of the farmer." 1 Co-operation is urged as a 

 panacea for all rural ills, not as merely one particular form of economic 

 organization, whose effectiveness in operation is determined and 

 limited by the appropriateness of that special type to the given 

 situation. 



Schools that give evidence of the highest ideals so far as their tech- 

 nical courses in agriculture are concerned, who would regard it as 

 fairly impious to offer courses in agronomy, animal husbandry, or 

 horticulture without demanding a thorough grounding in chemistry, 

 biology, and physics, appear to think that nothing but common-sense 

 is prerequisite to a mastery of the most complex of the economic prob- 

 lems with which our agricultural industry finds itself confronted. 

 Many such institutions, even some agricultural colleges in important 

 farming states, offer no comprehensive survey of the field of agricul- 

 tural economics but, instead, one or two separate subjects (co- 

 operation, marketing, and rural credits are the favorites), which must 

 in the nature of the case be mere descriptive treatments, since the 

 / students have had no previous training in general economic principles. 

 Often the instructor himself has little more. 



We are all aware, however, that the last few years have witnessed 

 a considerable change, and that the subject has been greatly advanced. 

 Young men who were intimately interested in, and familiar with, 

 agricultural conditions (and who thus avoid the disability under which 

 the older economists labored) have been carefully training themselves 



1 See Report of the Country Life Commission, pp. 29-41. 



