The Origin and Development of Farm Economics in the United States

Abstract

It is unsafe to assign any date as the first point in the beginning of philosophy or science. Since innumerable men have been freely making statements on all subjects since speech began, hazy remarks of an ancient may be, or may be thought to be, the intellectual ancestor of nearly every new thought. Very early in his development, man began to think of flying, hereafter, if not at present. But this had little relationship to the work of the Wright brothers in a bicycle shop, or to Langley's mathematics. Some very excellent observations on farm management were made by Pliny and Cato.' Some of these were true and some were not. The average of accuracy was probably higher than for the chemists of that time. Since agriculture was one of the first interests of mankind, innumerable helpful observations occur throughout history. The Egyptians had some well developed ideas on land tenure. Arthur Young's Travels included observations on farm economics. With the above cautions in mind, I believe it is safe to make the statement that little definite scientific work was done in the field of farm economics before 1900.