TRANSACTIONS OF STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 125 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



By BENJ. IDE WHEELER, 

 President of University of California. 



Within the past decade agricultural depression has called into being, 

 in almost all the countries of civilization, rigid governmental inquiry 

 as to causes and remedies. From all sides comes in answer to this 

 inquiry the one demand, though varied in different places in tone and 

 detail, — still the one demand for better products and lower cost of pro- 

 duction. This means one certain thing, — nothing more, nothing less: — 

 agriculture, agricultural processes, agricultural life, cannot isolate 

 themselves from the great tide of the world's progress. The fast-rising 

 level of individual human competency, as well as of the rewards of such 

 competency, must make itself felt within the precincts of agricultural 

 life. Intercourse, cooperation, and machinery have made it possible for 

 the individual life in commerce and manufacture to count for vastly 

 more than it could a generation ago, and indeed have made it necessary. 

 No wall or barrier exists between classes and conditions stout enough 

 to defend agricultural life from the tremendous influences of the 

 enhanced productiveness of individual effort in other fields. Conditions 

 which in the older type of human life were provincial have now by 

 active intercourse and interchange been brought into the fierce light of 

 national or international testing. Blind and haphazard effort has been 

 forced to give place to effort planned at long range and in view of wide 

 ranges of facts. Effort based on traditional rules or the rule of thumb 

 has been forced to yield to trained professional effort. Wide-viewed 

 science makes the rules now instead of tradition. Trained intelligence 

 supplants dull plodding ignorance in doing the work. 



It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the conclusions reached in 

 all the investigations alluded to lead to the recommendation not so 

 much of more legislation as of more and better education. Legislation, 

 like drugs, may help the patient to turn a sharp corner, or put him in 

 the way to get the full benefit of nature's work, but it does not create 

 health. 



The attitude of the public mind with regard to the practical value of 

 research and experimentation in agricultural lines has notably changed 

 within the last decade. Associations of agricultural and horticultural 

 producers throughout the country now advocate liberal promotion of 

 scientific investigation and of instruction based upon the results thereof. 

 Individual producers are choosing materials and shaping policies in 



