PREFACE 



This volume represents an effort to carry over into agricultural 

 economics some results of recent experience in the use of the discu'ssion 

 method of teaching elementary and intermediate courses in eco- 

 nomics. The book aims to bring together in an orderly arrangement, 

 (i) a store of information which may profitably come within the view 

 of the student who desires to understand the economic phenomena 

 of agriculture, and (2) a considerable number of opinions which have 

 already been expressed as to the meaning of these facts. The intro- 

 ductory discussions contributed by the editor are not designed to 

 reconcile the theories propounded by the many authors quoted, nor 

 to give an authoritative "interpretation" of the whole. In some of 

 them are suggested the reasons which led to the inclusion of par- 

 ticular selections, some of them point out salient aspects of the prob- 

 lem dealt with in the chapter, some suggest the need of more careful 

 scrutiny than seems as yet to have been given to one or another phase 

 of our subject. Very evidently, then, the book is offered as food for 

 thought and a stimulant to the thought-process, not as a scripture 

 to be learned by rote. 



While, on the one hand, it does not aspire to give a final answer 

 to all the economic problems of agriculture nor to teach a hard-and- 

 fast system of rural economy, neither does it, on the other hand, con- 

 tent itself with merely presenting a certain number of concrete 

 "cases," putting upon the student the necessity of distilling the 

 principles from the facts. For, even granting the possibility that he 

 might achieve some measure of success in such an effort, it would be 

 poor economy of labor. We should be accounted improvident if, in 

 building our agricultural economics, we should fail to utilize, as fully 

 as possible, the foundations laid in the past. The beginner will do 

 well to avail himself of such principles as have already been formu- 

 lated, making experimental applications of them to the actual condi- 

 tions which he observes about him. Ultimately he may perceive 

 deficiencies in these statements of economic law, but for a longer or 

 shorter time they will furnish him a much-needed guide to critical 

 and constructive thinking. The plan of this book, therefore, is to 

 have each chapter (except a few which are frankly descriptive hi 



