200 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, [Jan., 



I know of no better cure for these wild views as to land than to 

 set a man to work on it. Land is not like air and water, as some 

 would have us believe ; it has value only as man's labor gives it 

 value. There is an abundance of cheap land yet on the earth. 

 Land, of itself, is worth little or nothing ; only as work is done on 

 it has it any agricultural value, and only as it has work done on 

 it, or near it, has it any value at all, other than as a free hunting 

 ground for savages ; and there is no better way for the people to 

 learn this fact in political economy than for them to have some 

 experience in working on the land. 



Of late, the subject of city schools has attracted much attention. 

 In the cities there have been great advances, and we see great 

 buildings and graded schools, and the feelings of many are that 

 for purposes of the education of youth, they are vastly superior to 

 the smaller country schools. / douht this in toto. There is a gain 

 in some things, but there is an enormous loss in others. The 

 teacher in the city school has vastly less personal influence ; he or 

 she is not Mr. A, or Miss B, it is the teacher in Number 6, or the 

 teacher of Number 9; and the child loses its individuality even 

 more than the teacher. Moreover, the parent is often shut out 

 from any aid to his children; he can neither direct their studies 

 nor aid them in them; he can merely have a sympathy with the 

 methods. 



I trudged a mile to a country school in my childhood. It lacked 

 the appliances of the modern great city schools; we had a few 

 maps and a small library, but I had the aid of my parents in my 

 studies. My own children go to a great city school thUt boasts of 

 several hundreds of pupils. (I speak feelingly on this matter.) I 

 am allowed no voice in what they shall study, nor when they shall 

 study it; I am not even allowed to aid them in their studies out of 

 school hours. To me the doctrine seems monstrous, and as a 

 teacher, as well as a parent, I deplore the results and ejects every 

 day. I went to a country school such as it is fashionable now to 

 make fun of, but it is a subject of daily sorrow and regret, that my 

 own children, in a great city school, have not the educational 

 advantages that I had in that smaller country school. I am not 

 overpainting this matter. I know what I am talking about, and 

 weigh my words well in this special matter before speaking them. 

 I have given this subject much thought for the past few years, as 

 some of you personally know, but the great organization, which 



