Excerpt from Selected Readings in Rural EconomicsThe study of rural economics is cultural because it has to do with men in the broadest possible sense. Men have lived with out printing presses or printed books and even without books of any kind. The qualities which characterize our race were fixed before there was art or architecture. Very few, if any, changes or improvements in the race have taken place since, but, except for the lowest savage who lived exclusively by hunting and fish ing, no people has ever lived without agriculture, that is, without some means of increasing the soil's capacity to produce desirable things for human consumption. I remember reading a fascinating icle a few years ago on the oldest trade in the world. By was meant a specialized occupation which would exclude re. The oldest trade, or specialized occupation, accord that article, was working in flint. This was fascinating e it introduced one to a very important chapter in the life human race. That is cultural information which gives one ible knowledge of and sympathy with man in all his existence and all stages of his civilization. But even making of flint instruments is less valuable in this respect than knowledge of the various processes by means of which man as extracted a living from the soil. This is practical knowledge in a strict business sense, because wide knowledge of rural economy, of the epochs in agricultural istory, of the changes that have taken place, of the reasons why taken place, of the tendencies of the present, and of the.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.