INTRODUCTION 13 



by giving to the farmer-as-we-find-him a better training for his task 

 and by making this training include business as well as scientific 

 aspects of farming. Professor Carver writes a book to "emphasize 

 the public and social aspects of the problem," 1 and Mr. Roosevelt 

 launches a Country Life Commission for " better farming, better busi- 

 ness, and better living." But these efforts to make more stable the 

 economic foundations of the existing politico-social system, as they 

 work downward from the security of the yeoman class to the prosperity 

 of the individual farmer, meet the rural leaders who are striving 

 upward from personal success to group solidarity, and both join hands 

 in a practical program of rural betterment. 



It is evident, however, that this second movement is by no means 

 the American counterpart of the Agrarpolitik of Germany. To be 

 sure, it regards the country as the natural breeding ground of the 

 nation, and the country family as the bulwark of our social and 

 political system. But it does not propose that the whole course of 

 agricultural production should be stimulated or retarded or, in general, 

 artificially directed by means of tariffs, bounties, special transporta- 

 tion rates and labor arrangements toward the goal of national 

 self-sufficiency in time of war. It is concerned rather with the 

 maintenance of "economic independence," the most productive use of 

 natural resources, and a proper balance between extractive, com- 

 mercial, and manufacturing industry. But a close scrutiny of this 

 recently awakened concern in farming as a business will serve to 

 reveal possibilities of a new economics of agriculture which shall be 

 more independent, more searching, and more thoroughly economic in 

 character than any we have known in the past. 



In the wild turmoil of exploitation, agricultural issues were con- 

 fused; in the subsequent swing of interest toward trade and manu- 

 factures they were to a large extent neglected. But the present 

 lively interest in agriculture promises a better balancing of our various 

 industries and the thorough, patient disentangling of the economic 

 issue concerned with agriculture. What we have learned in the more 

 highly (and perchance less personally) organized departments of indus- 

 trial life will give us at least hypotheses and suggest ways of going 

 about the analysis of the problem of agriculture. Entrepreneurship, 

 for instance, has come to be viewed as a distinct factor in economic 

 enterprise, with a definite and recognized position of reward and 

 service. What shall we say of entrepreneurship in agriculture? 



1 Principles of Rural Economics, p. v. 



