farm a better place in which to live and rear a family. As a 

 subject it draws much of its data from geography, history, 

 agriculture. 



Its aim is to improve business conditions on the farms, 

 in order that country life may be made more permanent and 

 satisfying and the rural population conserved. 



The increase in the cost of living during the past ten years 

 has aroused general interest in all rural life problems. We 

 are coming to realize that with our population increasing at 

 the rate of two millions per year, with all of our first grade 

 land under cultivation, with our unsatisfactory conditions of 

 marketing, we are as a people coming face to face with the 

 problem of cheaper food; and that we can no longer afford to 

 neglect those forces which make for rural betterment. 



Value of Economics. A large part of the backwardness, 

 narrowness, and unhappiness of life in both city and country 

 is due to a lack of comprehension of conditions in the commu- 

 nity in which we live as compared with the conditions in other 

 communities. All of us have to decide what we shall do in 

 life ; all of us have to meet certain demands which society lays 

 upon us ; hence we need to know something about the econom- 

 ic and social conditions, not only where we live but elsewhere. 

 Boys and girls in the city need to know more about country 

 life than they do. They need this training for its social value. 

 Some of them will turn to the farm ; others will be closely con- 

 nected with business related to farming; all of them will be 

 citizens of a nation whose prosperity largely depends upon 

 the prosperity of its farmers. Boys and girls in the country 

 need to know more about the opportunities and possibilities 

 of farm life. The tendency of education in the past has been 

 to over-emphasize the advantages of city life and to under- 

 emphasize the opportunity the country affords for leading a 

 useful and happy life. The boy whose school training has 

 been such as to lead him to believe that the country offers no 

 opportunity while in the city there is but little chance of his 

 not becoming a Morgan or a Rockefeller has been given a dis- 

 torted view of life. Economics should teach the truth about 



