THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 19 



common profit enjoyed by the son or daughter and by the kin of vary- 

 ing degrees of relationship to the head of the patriarchal household. 

 As for the feudal regime of the Middle Ages, Professor Ashley has 

 admirably pointed out how fully the activities of the manor were dic- 

 tated by custom and how completely competition was excluded. 

 Under all these older types of social organization, the economic prob- 

 lem of agriculture was absent or, speaking more accurately, lost to 

 view beneath some other aspect political, domestic, military, or 

 whatever. 



It is evident that even in the earlier stages of this process economic 

 considerations began, here and there, to emerge. Slaves, which at 

 first were merely plunder from the conquered enemy, came to have a 

 market value, based upon capitalization of their labor power. Like- 

 wise, labor dues under the feudal system were arranged somewhat 

 upon an exchange basis, labor being the price of military protection or 

 judicial security. Barter grew up, and in time the articles exchanged 

 came to have their values computed in terms of some standard unit, 

 such as a sheep or a measure of grain or oil primitive types of 

 money. 



In all these cases the conduct of agriculture was becoming an 

 economic and not merely a technical problem. The development of 

 Mediterranean commerce and of Roman ideas of property rights went 

 far toward defining the problems of agricultural economics in classic 

 times, but the social organization of the Middle Ages again obscured 

 consideration of a purely economic character behind a haze of politico- 

 ethic conceptions of "just price" and feudal right. It was in the 

 break-up of feudalism and the coming of the Industrial Revolution, 

 therefore, that the modern economic problem of agriculture emerged 

 to be a vital issue for Western Europe and a gradually enlarging por- 

 tion of the rest of the world ever since. 



In America, the flood of free land, the spread of new settlements 

 beyond the reach of transportation facilities, the scant use of cur- 

 rency, and the absence of pecuniary emulation where all men were 

 substantially equal and opportunities for spending were few, brought 

 a brief respite from the problem along our frontier of exploitation. 

 But since the latter part of the nineteenth century (and in the older 

 sections, much earlier), the problem of how best to organize agricultures/ 

 as part of a price-regulated society has been full upon us. Only in 

 proportion as we attain, from year to year, a more adequate compre- 

 hension of the constantly changing details of this problem and make 



