12 INTRODUCTION 



in economics (thus escaping the limitations of the older agriculturists) 

 with the definite purpose of making a professional career in the field 

 of agricultural economics. The question then obtrudes itself: What 

 conception does this emerging group of specialists entertain concern- 

 ing the subject which they are in process of elaborating ? Here we 

 find, as previously suggested, a striking kinship with the French 

 iconomie rurale. The goal set up is productive efficiency, and agri- 

 cultural economics aspires merely to extend the farmer's technique to 

 cover and control value returns as well as mere physical units of 

 product. Most of our agricultural economics has been developed in 

 connection with our colleges of agriculture and, without disparaging 

 its very great value and service, it may be suggested that current 

 conceptions of the subject still remain somewhat under the shadow 

 of this agricultural-college origin. That is, the system of independent 

 and individually organized farm operation, which has grown up in the 

 United States during the cheap and free land era, is taken as the 

 datum plane above which is to be erected a structure of prosperity 

 and economic efficiency. It may be an entirely valid conclusion of 

 sociology or political science that we need to maintain an independent 

 land-owning class of farm proprietors. But it is obvious that the 

 economic theory of agriculture built upon such a premise is likely to 

 be quite different from one constructed by economists untrammeled 

 by preconceptions other than those laws (such as diminishing returns 

 or the broader principle of combining proportions) which are the 

 foundations of their own science. 



There has been another group of thinkers, to be sure, growing up 

 outside the professionally agricultural interests in recent years, as the 

 failures or distresses of farm life and industry have crowded them- 

 selves upon general public attention. Migration to the city, decline 

 of our agricultural surplus, and the rising cost of living have caused 

 merchants, bankers, educators, politicians, and even the private con- 

 sumer, to feel a sudden access of interest in questions touching the 

 economic organization of our agriculture. They have not been con- 

 cerned primarily about the prosperity of the individual farmer nor 

 pledged to maintain the existing order, but they have been decidedly 

 solicitous about the efficient working of the system as a whole, to the 

 end that there may be cheap and abundant materials for trade and 

 manufactures and a lower cost of living. 



Now many of these persons have taken the position that the 

 efficiency and success of agriculture as a whole are to be obtained only 



