AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 257 



AN UNTILLED FIELD IN AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL 



EDUCATION". 



By kenyon l. butterfield. 



AGRICULTURAL education in this country has thus far been an 

 attempt to apply a knowledge of the laws of the so-called 'nat- 

 ural' sciences to the practical operations of the farm. Comparatively 

 little attention has been paid to the application of the principles of the 

 'social' sciences to the life of the farmer. AU this is partly explained 

 by the fact that the natural sciences were fairly well developed when 

 the needs of the farmer called the scientist to work with and for the 

 man behind the plow — when a vanishing soil fertility summoned the 

 chemist to the service of the grain grower, when the improvement of 

 breeds of stock and races of plants began to appeal to the biologist. 

 Moreover, these practical applications of the physical and biological 

 sciences are, and always will be, a fundamental necessity in the agri- 

 cultural question. 



But in the farm problem we cannot afford to ignore the economic 

 and sociological phases. While it may be true that the practical suc- 

 cess of the individual farmer depends largely upon his business sense 

 and his technical education, it is folly to hope that the success of agri- 

 culture as an industry and the influence of farmers as a class can be 

 based solely upon the ability of each farmer to raise a big crop and to 

 sell it to advantage. General intelligence, appreciation of the trend of 

 economic and social forces, capacity to cooperate, ability to voice his 

 needs and his rights, are just as vital acquirements for the farmer as 

 knowing how to make two blades of grass grow where but one grew 

 before. It finally comes to this, that the American farmer is obliged 

 to study the questions that confront him as a member of the industrial 

 order and as a factor in the social and political life of the nation, with 

 as much zeal and understanding as he is expected to show in the study 

 of those natural laws governing the soil and the crops and the animals 

 that he owns. 



In this connection it is significant to note that farmers themselves 

 are already quite as interested in the social problems of their particular 

 calling and in the general economic and political questions of the day, 

 as they are in science applied to their business of tilling the soil. Not 

 necessarily that they minimize the latter, but they seem instinctively 

 to recognize that social forces may work them ill or work them good 

 according to the direction and power of those forces. This statement 



VOL. Lxin. — 17. 



