424 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



auimals call an out-cross, efforts to implant book love in the pedigree 

 can claim no assurance of success. 



This topic of mine is one that has been very widely and thought- 

 fully discussed, but I don't think that any of us who are responsible 

 for its discussion have even been able to authoratively announce just 

 what this education of the farmer shall be. 



For myself, I claim he should be, by reason of the multitudinous 

 needs of his business, the most comprehensively and the most thor- 

 oughly educated member of society. His business covers so many 

 lines to the special study of each one of which men of trained minds 

 are devoting their lives, and it is not to be supposed that the busy 

 working farmer can master all the minute details of each one of 

 these subjects, but it should be part of his education that he be able 

 to grasp the fundamental principles of each one relating to the 

 different branches of his farming. And further, this education 

 should show a willingness to take to himself and use all the impor- 

 tant matter that these men of special study and research shall bring 

 forth for his information and use. 



Collateral to this willingness to use what is scientifically brought 

 him should be a discriminating judgment that may serve him in 

 eliminating theory from fact and false from the true. It does not fol- 

 low that because some teacher announces a thing that that thing is 

 true, for there have been false teachers and men of one wrong idea 

 since the earliest history of the race. This contemplates that the 

 ideal farmer shall have a technical knowledge of his business as the 

 best equipment for the most profitable conduct of that business, but 

 through me as spokesman, it does not contemplate that he shall be 

 induced to acquire this technical knowledge merely because by its 

 possession he shall be able to make more money. 



That the making of money is important and laudable and worth 

 striving for I shall not deny, but as the mainspring of all man's en- 

 deavor, I cannot but regard it as unworthy the educated farmer. 

 This ideal farmer's education will embrace the uses of money for the 

 comfort, education and elevation of his family, for the beautification 

 of his home, the enlargement of his own usefulness and the uplifting 

 of the dignity of his business. 



Furthermore, his education shall embrace a knowledge of good 

 government as aifecting all the governed, for the time might come — 

 I am no prophet, and don't pretend to say it will — but the time might 

 come when he will be called to fill some high office, we will say as 

 Governor of his State, and he must not be found with no oil in his 

 famp. When we meet men of other callings or professions away 

 from their places of business they carry no ear-marks by which a 

 stranger may determine their occupation, and I see no reason why 

 the farmer should not mingle with any body of business men, without 



