FAEMEKS' INSTITUTES. 175 



immediately connected with the greatest possible development of those produc- 

 tive resources of which our farms are capable, and shall have reached a conclu- 

 sion that shall comprehend its very great necessity, and the material advantages 

 to be gained by the introduction of a system that will be capable of acliieving 

 such results ; but before we shall have started the car of agricultural progress 

 onward upon this ascending grade, there is still another consideration of the first 

 importance, which we should not overlook did we aim at achieving the most 

 perfect success. For if it be true that our present system of farming is the cor- 

 rect criterion by which our actual knowledge of practical agriculture is measured, 

 then it must follow that there should previously have been made a corresponding 

 improvement in the farmer himself. AVe can all understand the force of the 

 axiom which teaches that the fountain cannot rise higher than its source. Con- 

 sequently we cannot believe that agriculture will be competent to progress any 

 faster than the agriculturist. The farmer has given ample proofs of his high 

 appreciation of much knoAvledge in the professions and in the various other 

 vocations, but thus far he has failed to realize its value and importance in his 

 own. 



We have been repeatedly asked by farmers. Why do you desire that your sons 

 shall receive anything more than a common business education if they are only 

 intending to become farmers ? This query conveys a painful significance. It 

 discloses the very low estimation in which the average farmer holds his calling, 

 and the veiy limited amount of acquired knowledge and cultivated ability he 

 deems is requisite to conduct successfully the most important industry of civil- 

 ization. Does he really suppose that other people will voluntarily entertain a 

 higher appreciation of him and his vocation than he does himself? We have 

 seen no phase of human nature that would warrant the indulgence of any such 

 expectations, but believe, on the contrary, that it is not impelled b}^ any such 

 disinterested considerations. Xor does it in its mad pursuit of wealth and 

 power hesitate to reach for and grasp them above the prostrate forms of those 

 who block its way. 



While this prevalent low standard of educational acquirements is considered 

 suSicient for all the needs of the farmer, is it wonderful or strange that the 

 young men who have grown up on the farm, and who may have harbored a 

 dawning suspicion that they possessed faculties and nurtured aspirations for 

 which they could not entertain a hope that tliey should ever be able to develop 

 their higher expression or enjoy their more rational gratification by remaining 

 upon the farm? The arch of their prospective horizons has been spanned by no 

 rainbow of promise which they believed would relieve the monotony of a life 

 which they regarded must otherwise be devoted to toil and drudgery. They have 

 received no sure intimations that the curtain could be Avithdrawn which 

 obstructed their view of a hidden world which tlie book of nature could reveal, 

 captivate, and charm by its strange, beautiful, and mysterious revelations, 

 which could have changed by giving the desired direction to their thoughts and 

 moulded differently their destinies by substituting new hopes and wiser aspira- 

 tions. But in the absence of all such counteractins: tendencies and encoura^re- 

 ments to pursue a vocation in which culture and superior knowledge has been 

 regarded as being out of place, they have thus been constrained to search in 

 other fields more promising, in which they hoped to reap the golden harvest of 

 their 5-outhful dream«. They expect to accomplish this by joining the ranks of 

 the already overcrowded professions, or by turning their faces toward our large 

 cities, flushed with the glow of health and buoyant with young hopes and high 



