CONSUMPTION 8 1 



to ignorance of the relative qualities of different products or wilful 

 blindness to the results of their use. The individual consumer, whose 

 demand is the ultimate force in shaping the character of our agricul- 

 tural production, remains surprisingly aloof from intelligent criticism 

 of the worth (physiological or other) of his own personal or subjective 

 estimates of want. The more ignorant he is the more does he insist 

 on giving to those raw desires the objective form of dollars offered in 

 the market. And against this "effective demand" no consideration 

 of social cost can prevail. The individual farmer must follow the 

 dictates of market price if he is to succeed in his commercialized enter- 

 prise of farming. 



Whether as economic theorists or as practical producers and 

 sellers of farm products, we have as yet done little more than scratch 

 the surface of this question of consumption. But it is evident that 

 the character of consumers' wants, the possibility of modifying those 

 wants, the limits of that possibility, and the results which flow from 

 one sort or another of consumption standards, are problems well 

 worth the attention of whoever is interested in the business of agri- 

 culture. Concrete evidence of the significance of this last point is 

 given by the efforts of the "wet" interests to demonstrate that pro- 

 hibition would mean widespread agricultural loss. 



But the farmer's personal problem of consumption is likewise 

 worthy of attention. An income of one thousand dollars well spent 

 will go a great deal farther toward securing the satisfaction of wants 

 than a much larger sum badly spent. Taken in the large, the Ameri- 

 can farmer has been deprived of the chance to learn how to spend. 

 Going upon the land empty-handed, he has had to save and save, to 

 devote the year's dividend to the accumulation of capital rather than 

 to the increase of satisfaction through consumption. The pioneer's 

 family curtailed its use of meat that the farm might be more rapidly 

 stocked with cattle, or denied itself furniture that a mower or binder 

 might be bought. The need for capital in agriculture was being 

 increased through the very years that moneyless men were seeking to 

 establish themselves as independent farmers on the lands of the United 

 States. No praise is too great for the self-denial by which that needed 

 capital was accumulated. But the situation of farm folk today is 

 changed or changing. Such uses of income were productive expendi- 

 tures, and now that the time has arrived when a new generation can 

 clip the coupons from that investment the problem of how to spend 

 shares in importance with that of how to save. 



