No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 423 



THE FARMER'S EDUCATION. 



UY MK. \V. V. McSl'ARKAN, Furniis, I'a. 



Before a iiiaa will seek a thing lie must have a sense, at least in a 

 general way, of its importance and value to him as an individual. In 

 his quest for the thing desired, if he shall succeed, it is highly im- 

 portant that the seeker for anything of value shall have a foundation 

 of character, stability and steadfastness of purpose that shall be to 

 him an earnest of success. 



To any farmer of mature mind or to any other student of the econo- 

 mic conditions and requirements surrounding our occupation as soil 

 tillers, no argument need be brought to prove the proposition that 

 ■\ve need in our business and for the elevation of our lives all the edu- 

 cation we may get, but what shall we do with the man who rejoices in 

 his ignorance as an inheritance from his father, kept unchanged 

 through many generations? If this man had kept pace with the 

 changing conditions that have made his business grow away from 

 the one time scanty needs that w ere supplied by the then best avail- 

 able knowledge that we now call ignorance, there might be a hope 

 that he would come to realize for his children at least the need of 

 more education. 



In no wise or manner do I give expression to any thought that 

 fails to honor the good men and true who did the early work of our 

 farming. They builded the houses, cleared and fenced the lands, 

 and pitted their strength and endurance against the wildness of the 

 wilderness. They met and withstood hardships and privation and 

 walked fairly in such light as they possessed. But for the farmer 

 of to-day, with the new light all around him to boast ^'thus did my 

 father," is not so much an honoring of the sire as a lamentable evi- 

 dence of the degeneracy of the son. 



I know^ there is a season of seed-time and another of harvest, and 

 that large crops require long seasons, but so much seed of this educa- 

 tional sowing seems to fall on such unkindly ground that we may 

 doubt if it shall ever germinate. It may show up in seventeen years 

 like the locust, and like it be split in the back. 



A man will never get an education if he does not read books, and 

 the love of books and a taste for reading them, and the power of un- 

 destanding them are largely attributes of heredity. If a lack of ap- 

 preciation of books and intellectual attainments shall have become 

 a fixed type in a family, unless there shall be what we breeders of 



