Knowledge that Transforms

Until the last few years the economist has rather dogmatically assumed that the modern movement toward combination characterizes only those forms of enterprise which necessitate the employment of large amounts of fixed capital-notably, public service corporations, such as railroads, and certain manufacturing industries which have reached an advanced stage of technological development. The farmer, both because of his situation and because of certain peculiarly distinctive features of agriculture, has usually been conceived of as a permanently isolated producer. Yet the farmer is not altogether unfamiliar with proposals to combine, nor has he always turned a deaf ear to the pooling schemes that have been evolved for his benefit. However, the difficulties connected with unified action are many and obvious, and in general they have proved insurmountable. In the first place, agriculture is notably a non-capitalistic pursuit. Only a limited amount of capital can be invested upon a given land area, while there is need of a relatively large expenditure of manual labor, or at any rate, of personal supervision on the part of the cultivator. There is nowhere subordination of the producer to the system under which he works, as is so often the case under the capitalistic methods of modern machine industry. The farmer's occupation is, in short, admirably fitted to develop independence of action and impatience of all forms of restraint. Furthermore, his mode of life conduces to the fostering of a strong individualism. Living more or less segregated from his fellows, it is difficult for him to realize that his pecuniary success is to a very appreciable extent bound up with theirs. In fact; it is doubtful if a purely intellectual realization of a community of interests could ever be sufficiently potent to bring the farmers of the country to combine forces. It needs the addition of a certain spiritual element to bring about an effective organization, such as the sentiment of a common hatred.

Journal Article The Dun-Gibson Index Number Get access Wesley C. Mitchell Wesley C. Mitchell University of California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 25, Issue 1, November 1910, Pages 161–172, https://doi.org/10.2307/1885829 Published: 01 November 1910