THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 75 



observation could supply, it is now essential that he be a broadly 

 educated man, familiar with the conditions affecting his own business 

 in all parts of the world. Henceforward the successful farmers will 

 be only those so educated; the weaker farmers will be those who 

 direct their labors least wisely; these, again, will be those who know 

 least. It is therefore a logical necessity that those farmers who 

 expect to live as such shall adapt themselves to their changed environ- 

 ment by acquiring the information necessary to enable them to sus- 

 tain themselves under their changed conditions. 



Farmers are apt to denounce the great salaries paid in some walks 

 of life, but they are nearly always the price paid for knowledge at 

 market rates. The farmer who prefers the life of a banker has merely 

 to know better than anyone else what property is safest to lend money 

 on, and to make his ability known; some bank will soon want him. 

 Farmers are large borrowers, and as they are apt to seek loans which 

 they have not the knowledge to use wisely, the bank president must 

 be a better judge of the possible profits of farming than the farmer 

 himself, lest the bank's funds be invested where they cannot be got 

 back when wanted. This means a high salary for the bank officer, 

 which goes to reduce the profit of the farmer, for ignorance must pay 

 its own bills. If farmers could know enough about their own business 

 to make loans to them certain to be so wisely used as to pay interest 

 promptly and the principal at maturity, a less expensive man could 

 lend them money, and the farmer's profits be so much increased. 



I simply record my own judgment, which is that the farmer has 

 ceased to be the independent man whom I knew in my boyhood. He 

 is attacked by the care and worry of the business man, without the 

 business man's equipment to meet them, and he is losing ground. 

 We are being distanced, not by greater strength, but by a wiser use 

 of strength. Other classes know better than we what it will pay to 

 do or avoid. This knowledge comes, not by vague speculation, but 

 by the mastery of facts. We farmers reason well enough upon what 

 we think to be true, but we are so often mistaken in our facts that 

 we are as apt to be led into doing unprofitable things as into attempt- 

 ing those which are profitable. 



. So long as the farmer is on virgin soils in a growing country with 

 extending markets a knowledge of the ordinary farm practice of the 

 locality serves his purpose very well. But the modern farmer does 

 not live under such conditions. He lives, for the most part, upon 

 deteriorated soils, in communities which seem to have gotten their 



