In giving these pages to the public I offer no apology for a restatement of fundamental principles always requiring adjustment to new life and circumstances; but economic literature has usually dealt too exclusively with the phenomena of manufactures and commerce to gain the sympathy of rural people.
An experience of more than thirty years in handling such subjects at the Michigan and Kansas Agricultural Colleges, together with the expressed confidence of former pupils whose judgment I trust, has led me into the effort to bring the subject home to farmers and farmers' families in this elementary way.
I have carefully refrained from quotations, or even references to works consulted, for the obvious reason that such formalities would distract the attention of most readers from the direct, common-sense thinking desired, and render the style of the book more complex. I hereby acknowledge my debt to the leading writers of past and present upon most of the topics treated, not excluding any school or party.
The statements of facts I have taken from best authorities, with care to verify, if possible, by comparisons. Many data have been diligently compiled and rearranged for more exact presentation of facts, and the phenomena of prices of farm crops have been analyzed with especial care. The necessities of the printed volume have to some extent obscured the charts by reduction, but I trust they may be intelligible and interesting to all students of agricultural interests.
No attempt has been made to argue or to expound difficulties beyond a simple statement of principles involved, and the spirit of controversy has been absent from my thoughts throughout. Whatever bias of opinion may appear is without a tinge of bitterness toward those who may differ. I trust that men of all views may recognize in these pages the wish of their author to have only truth prevail. In offering this volume to farmers I do not assume that all questions of wealth and welfare can be settled by rule.
I hope to point out the actual trend of facts, the universal principles sustained by the facts, and means of most ready adjustment to circumstances in the evolutions of trade and manufacture. The business sense of farmers is appealed to for the sake of their own welfare.
Several important questions of rural welfare have been touched only suggestively because [pg ix] the limits of the volume could not admit of fuller treatment. My gratitude is offered especially to Professor Liberty H. Bailey, of Cornell University, to whose suggestion and patient attention the existence of this volume is due.
