No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 227 



meationed are essential to a farmer's success from a financial, 

 social and political standpoint, what kind of an education will he 

 require? I can imagine someone saying "That would mean a college 

 education, with half a dozen years in the graduate schools." While 

 I do not agree with the sentiment that a college education will 

 ruin a good farmer and would go so far in the opposite direction 

 as to say that every good farmer would be improved by a college 

 education; nevertheless, I believe that public schools should furnish 

 an opportunity to every farmer's boy and girl to get all the school- 

 ing necessary for a successful life upon the farm. What the coun- 

 try boy needs is thorough grounding in the rudimentary elements 

 of knowledge in the several branches of science. Where did the 

 leaders who do the actual work in the cities come from? In the 

 vast majority of cases from the country. 



That he can acquire and use this knowledge is abundantly proven 

 when we look at the leaders in everj- branch of life todaj' who have 

 come from the farm. No calling is without them, no trade could 

 get along without having its ranks constantly recruited from the 

 country. The education which this condition demands is a thorough 

 common school course, devoted mainly to those branches which the 

 schools will use in later life. But you ask is such a course possible 

 for a farmer's boy and girl in a rural community? I answer yes, 

 it is. The farmer's boy and girl are entitled to just the same ad- 

 vantages that the children in the towns and cities enjoy; first, be- 

 cause the farmers are the great producers of the wealth. They 

 take it first hand from the earth. As most all other branches of 

 industry are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the farm, what 

 w^ould become of the town if the farmer should disappear? Why 

 do we have great railroads, which have turned themselves into gigan- 

 tic trusts, if not to haul the produce from the farm? Mills and 

 factories are built to work up the farm products. The iron and 

 steel industries exert to a large extent to house, transport and 

 manufacture that which is yielded by the farm. Let one crop fail 

 over an extended area and every trade and occupation feels the 

 effects. A failure of a single staple crop would mean failure and 

 wide-spread ruin. Should not then those wiio manage the most 

 important factor in the country's prosperity receive the best edu- 

 cation possible? Today every town and village has its high school, 

 and in the cities many of them are better than the colleges were 

 a few years ago, but the country on which the nation depends for 

 its prosperity has the same old school that was the pride of the 

 community a century ago. It has the shortest term and the poorest 

 schools. The teachers are the cheapest, and often the most in- 

 efficient, the schoolhouse poorer still, while the equipment is the 

 least the law allows. The millions in the city depend upon the farm, 

 yet every man's child has the opportunity to get a good education 

 except the farmer's. It has long been the disgrace of the country 

 districts that the cattle and horses are better provided for and 

 trained than the children. Farmers who have ventilators in their 

 barns have been known as school directors to vote against putting 

 modern beating and ventilating systems in the schoolhouse, be- 

 cause it cost too much. A few months in the year when the 

 weather is the coldest and mv.d or snow the deepest is the only time 

 the country children have a chance to prepare for life's work. 



