INTRODUCTORY 



THE present volume is, so far as I know, the first attempt 

 to present any comprehensive review of the farmer's 

 position and relations as a business man. I am quite 

 sure that it is the first to pursue those relations to their 

 ultimate foundations, group them together, and place them 

 in popular form for convenient examination, disentangled, 

 so far as they can be, from the affairs of other classes. The 

 book is, in fact, an elementary treatise in applied economics, 

 in which the farmer's interests are employed as a constant 

 standard of comparison. The facts and principles set forth 

 are, of course, entirely famiHar to economists, and, to a great 

 degree, to the different classes of business men, as to the 

 points where their interests directly impinge on those of 

 the farmer. The farmer, for the most part, has not had his 

 attention called to these matters, and, so far as he has con- 

 sidered them, has been prone to rely too much upon a partisan 

 press, and the utterances of political and other orators, who 

 seek to accomplish some present end by exciting and increas- 

 ing his prejudices. As a result, the farmer is continually at 

 a disadvantage in his pecuniary dealings with those better 

 informed than he as to the trend of commercial movements. 

 The only remedy for the farmer is a study of fundamental 

 principles, in the light of which he may correctly read the 

 meaning of current events. This book is intended as an aid 

 to such study. By our own intellects we must form our 

 own judgments, but we all need the aid of the experience 

 of others. 



While nothing in this book will be new to economists, 

 and very little to experienced business men, I am quite sure 

 that much will seem strange to many in the classes for which 



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