roblem.

Business skill must be added, business methods enforced. The farmer must
be not only a more skilful produce-grower, but also a keener
produce-seller. But the moment we enter the realm of the market we step
outside the individualistic aspect of the problem as embodied in the
current doctrine of technical agricultural teaching, and are forced to
consider the social aspect as emphasized, first of all, in the economic
category of price. Here we find many factors--transportation cost,
general market conditions at home and abroad, the status of other
industries, and even legislative activities. The farm problem becomes an
industrial question, not solely one of technical and business skill.
Moreover, the problem is one of a successful industry as a whole, not
merely the personal successes of even a respectable number of individual
farmers. The farming class must progress as a unit.

But have we yet reached the heart of the question? Is the farm problem
one of technique plus business skill, plus these broad economic
considerations? Is it not perfectly possible that agriculture as an
industry may remain in a fairly satisfactory condition, and yet the
farming class fail to maintain its status in the general social order?
Is it not, for instance, quite within the bounds of probability to
imagine a good degree of economic strength in the agricultural industry
existing side by side with either a peasant regime or a
landlord-and-tenant system? Yet would we expect from either system the
same social fruitage that has been harvested from our American yeomanry?

We conclude, then, that _the farm problem consists in maintaining upon
our farms a class of people who have succeeded in procuring for
themselves the highest possible class status, not only in the
industrial, but in the political and the social order--a relative
status, moreover, that is measured by the demands of American ideals._
The farm problem thus connects itself with the whole question of
democratic civilization. This is not mere platitude. For we cannot
properly judge the significance and the relation of the different
industrial activities of our farmers, and especially the value of the
various social agencies for rural betterment, except by the standard of
class status. It is here that we seem to find the only satisfactory
philosophy of rural progress.

We would not for a moment discredit the fundamental importance of
movements that have for their purpose th